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McDermott hails stronger Clare football panel

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Although the Clare senior footballers were beaten by NUIG last Sunday in an early season challenge game played in Tubber, their league preparations will ratchet up a few notches in Cooraclare this weekend.
Clare will play UCC in the first round of the McGrath Cup on Sunday at 2pm. The winners will play Cork IT a week later in the quarter-final. Clare will be without David Tubridy (injury), Ger Quinlan, who is on honeymoon and Kevin Hartnett who will be playing with Tralee IT in the same tournament. They will also be minus Adrian Cahill, Niall Browne and David O’Connor, all of whom are attempting to declare for Clare although they are not from the county.
Their eligibility has yet to be confirmed though as Clare have to be designated as a weaker county by central council. That is due to happen in the coming weeks. 
“It would have been ideal to have them for this weekend,” Clare manager Micheál McDermott, who is starting his second year managing the senior county team, said.
Enda Coughlan, Michael O’Shea and David Russell, all of whom were part of the 2010 squad, are not on the panel and it looks unlikely that they will return.
“They are not part of it at the moment,” McDermott confirmed.
“Ger Quinlan is away for six weeks so he will be missing the first two matches in the national league. But he has been training hard himself in the gym over the last two months and is in good shape,” the former Kilmurry-Ibrickane manager added.
Despite the absence of a number of experienced players, McDermott feels that the 2011 squad is an improvement on last year’s.
“We feel we have a stronger panel this year, than we had last year and there’s going to be an opportunity for lads to step up to the plate and put their marker down this Sunday to maybe get a place on the team going into the national league,” he suggested.
The winter training ban means that county teams should not have been training collectively until January 1. McDermott feels that this ensures a lack of sharpness amongst county teams early in the season.
“The football side of it probably wouldn’t be as sharp as it should be but they’ve done a good gym programme themselves over the last two months. I’d be expecting a good performance despite not having played a lot of football,” he maintained.
UCC face a particularly long trip from Cork to Cooraclare and it’s questionable why the game wasn’t fixed for Shannon, Cratloe or Sixmilebridge, which would have considerably cut the ­journey from the southern capital. Still Micheál McDermott expects UCC to provide Clare with a strenuous early season test. 
“From what I believe with UCC I think they’re in the final of the college league against NUIG. That was supposed to be played before Christmas but it wasn’t because of the weather. But the fact that they are coming into Sigerson, they are going to be in good shape and their pace probably would be ahead of us at the moment,” he said.
Twelve months ago, Clare were knocked out of the McGrath Cup in the opening round by UCC on a 0-12 to 0-9 scoreline. Clare led 0-4 to 0-0 after just nine minutes but were eventually well beaten by the students.
“We have to worry about our own game and play the type of football that we’re hoping to play.
“That’s based around a fast moving, high-intensity game. That’s what we’re looking to do this year and build on last year,” McDermott said.
“We’ve a strong panel of 30 players at the moment and I think we’ll have a strong 15 on Sunday,” he believes.
Clare will start their Division 4 NFL campaign on Sunday, February 6 when they play Leitrim in Carrick-on-Shannon. The McGrath Cup will help them to warm up for the league and if Clare are to mount a meaningful bid to escape from Division 4, they should be making progress in the McGrath Cup.
Games in that tournament would be significantly more ­helpful than playing challenge games.
The management team of Micheál McDermott, Liam McHale and James Foran are now in year two of their tenure and know their players well. Their immediate objective will be to start the league campaign with a win in Leitrim but a decent run in the McGrath Cup would be a big help towards preparing for a concerted cut at the league.

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