Leitrim manager critical of hectic games scheduling

ANDY Moran believes that Leitrim should be looking at the way Sligo is maximising its talent if they want to make a sustained breakthrough at inter county level as he agreed that the toll of recent games caught up with the Green & Gold in Sunday’s Connacht SFC Quarter Final against the Yeatsmen.

Sligo cruised to a 0-15 to 0-6 victory over a depleted Leitrim but Moran pointed to Sligo’s progression over the past five years as a pathway for Leitrim: “The key thing I think with Sligo is that they have done five years of conditioning, they have Sean Boyle who I would know very well from Mayo.

“He went down the year I finished with Mayo, that was the Covid year, they worked really hard during that year, they worked really hard in 2021 and even when we saw them for the first time in 2022 in the Dome, you could see the difference between Sligo and our fellas. There are some high quality players in Carrabine, Murphy, Luke Towey when he is playing.

“Can they play at a higher standard? Absolutely but as I said, they’re the standard bearer for us, they’re a small county who are absolutely maximising what they have. That’s huge and I think Leitrim can take a lot from Sligo.”

Reluctant to use it as an excuse for the nine point defeat, Moran did agree that the schedule of games of four weekends in a row had caught up with Leitrim: “Now Sligo are down a good few players too so I don’t want to make it that that’s the only thing because that wouldn’t be fair on Sligo but for us as a smaller county, it would probably be tougher.

“You go up to Portlaoise, you have to be really emotionally vested in the game, you come down and play Tipperary, you have to win the game, there’s emotion in that. Obviously you have the high of getting promoted - then you have to get yourself ready for Croke Park six days later and it was probably a step too far for us.

“I look at Conor Reynolds there, he has been playing with an injury for the last four weeks and he has been absolutely outstanding for us. For it to finish like that, I wouldn’t be happy with that for him but that’s the way it goes. Our biggest goal this year was to get promoted, have a good run with the U20s, a good run in the Tailteann Cup so that is still going.”

Already without the injured Donal Casey and the U20 barred Barry McNulty and Jack Foley, Leitrim were dealt another big blow before the game when Mark Plunkett was ruled out of action due to illness, a blow the Leitrim boss acknowledged they simply could not afford.

“Mark was a loss on top of all the other losses,” said Moran, “We made a big call with Barry & Jack last Wednesday, unfortunately, it didn’t go our way today. I suppose the call was made because if we beat Sligo today, we’d be playing Galway and more than likely going into the Tailteann Cup so that was why the call was made, we prioritised the U20s.

“Mark just added to that, Niall Walsh, Cathal McHugh and a few others - we just don’t have that depth of panel that we can lose a few players but that’s the way it was. It definitely affected us today. It is tough, Donal is such a big player for us, he is one of those players you could see playing Division 1 no problem but he has got five weeks to get himself right.

“Listen, Sligo are the team we are really trying to mirror our performance on. We wouldn’t like the nature of that defeat but the reality is that if we lose three to four to five players, if we lose the likes of Barry and Donal Casey, they’re huge, huge losses. You add Mark Plunkett to it then, Jack Foley has been huge for us, it was probably a line too much for us.”

Moran also had some tough words on the condensed nature of the inter-county championship, pleading with the Gaelic Players Association to raise the issue: “The GAA are dismissing the championship if I’m being honest with you. We come here today, did that feel like a championship game? To anyone? I don’t think it did. We’re trying to scramble bodies together for the last while, we threw the U20s in top of that and for smaller counties, it is very tough.

“Yes, we tried our best to get everyone up and going today but I think the evidence is in front of everybody’s faces, we struggled with that. I thought we played well for the first 20 minutes against that wind but after that, I think it was very flat from our boys. I think the week off probably helped them a lot.

“We played Sligo in the last round of the League last year and I did interviews with the boys and that is exactly what I was giving out about. We had to get on a plane ten days later to go to New York but Sligo had to go to the League Final and then London. If Sligo had lost that League Final, they would have had to go to London on the back of a loss and that could have been a very risky game but they won, momentum carried them through and they won quite handily.

“But it is just setting teams up for failure in supposedly our biggest competition, the championship. I just think the GPA needs to have a serious, serious look at themselves. The GAA just put out the fixtures but the GPA have to say I need to protect the players and we need to look after them. Obviously Tom is a good friend of mine but what they are doing to players at the minute is absolutely insane.”

Now Leitrim have a five week break before the Tailteann Cup and a chance for players to rest and recover: “We have a 33 man panel and we have two long terms injuries in Jordan Reynolds and Cillian McGloin and then we have four U20s and that brings us down to 27 already. Obviously Mark and Conor were sick and concussed which brings us down to 25 and then we have three hamstrings so we’re down to 22 players before we even start.

“The five weeks will help us a lot - it is not that we have an injury crisis or anything but the U20 competition will be over, I hope it is not, it will be very close to being over so we will have those four lads back. We will add a few lads from the U20s squad and then we will get all our injured lads back which will make a huge difference to us.”