Evans fears six-week break may lead to departures

TIPPERARY FOOTBALL manager John Evans has expressed concern over the six-week break between the first round of the Munster football championship and the first round of the All-Ireland qualifiers – which he fears may contribute to an exodus of younger players in their efforts to secure employment. The enforced lay-off is obviously not unique to Tipperary yet Evens believes it is more detrimental to their cause given the team are in a largely developmental phase.

All this is, of course, assuming Kerry beat Tipperary in the first round of the Munster football championship in Thurles on Sunday.

Assuming Kerry do win – and Evans says he’s “realist” enough to admit they surely will – then Tipperary won’t see any championship action again until June 26th. That long lay-off, Evans suggests, can’t be good for a team like Tipperary.

“It is quite concerning,” he says. “I mean it’s a huge, huge gap. First of all you’ll have to give players a rest. There’s no way you can keep training them for six weeks continuously, after a loss, and without a game. They’ll definitely need a break.

“But the other problem is that not all the players will be able to stick around. We’ll try to entice them to stay local as best we can, because really we can’t afford to lose any players. We’ve lost two players already in Aidan Fitzgerald and Séamus Grogan, and they’ve been huge losses, no doubt about it. Aidan emigrated earlier on in the year, and Séamus left as well, because he couldn’t get employment.

“He had settled in very well at centrefield, lost a lot of weight. Aidan is over six foot, and a terrific full forward. Séamus too is over six foot. These are players that are just impossible to replace.”

Fitzgerald left for England to seek work, and Grogan to the Netherlands, and the fear for Evans now is a few more players may be forced to follow suit when faced with a six-week break from football, if they are actively seeking employment.

The losers of this Sunday’s Wicklow-Carlow tie in Leinster and the Derry-Armagh tie in Ulster are faced with the same six-week break, while the counties beaten the Sunday after next don’t fare much better as they face a five-week break. Yet Evans believes for a developing team like Tipperary there is a greater risk of player exodus.

In saying that, Evans recognises the fact that the very nature of the football championship – where each of the provincial competitions are played off on different schedules – inevitably means some teams will face longer lay-offs than others. While one solution may be a more streamlined provincial championship, Evans doesn’t suggest the GAA go down the road of an open draw.

“Look, the provincial championship is still very exciting, for most counties. Of course the qualifiers are also there for a purpose, and that’s what we’re looking at.

“When some of the stronger teams that lose out in the provincial championship come into the qualifiers, against developing teams, or weaker teams, or whatever you want to call us, there is always a chance, and we’d be hoping for a bit of a run in the qualifiers alright.

“But we’re still in the development stage, two and a half years into it. It’s a whole new team there, and while they’ve done well at under-21 level (where they beat Kerry), and being promoted out of Division Four, and Division Three, and back down to three, there’s a lot more interest in Tipperary football anyway. It’s thriving really.

“We do have a very young panel. Nearly all the players have come up from the under-21s over the last couple of years, and would still be relatively inexperienced at championship. But we’re hopeful we’ll be able to put in a good performance on Sunday.

“I’m very much a realist myself, and I know that Kerry are big, big favourites. But the lads are looking at it in a positive way, that it’s a privilege to play Kerry. Luckily we’ve no injury problems We’d a few concerns over the past few weeks, but they’ve all seemed to have come around. Touch wood.”

Given they are on home turf on Sunday, Tipperary could normally assume to have at least one advantage over Kerry – but again Evans is realist enough to know that’s really no advantage at all.

“I would say it’s actually an advantage to Kerry, to be playing on a beautiful field like Semple Stadium, with the wide open spaces. Some people were saying to me we should have played it off in some small field, and put 13 men behind the ball. But that’s all negativity, not what we’re about.”

And Evans doesn’t fall for any of the talk of Kerry being less of a force this year due to their big-name retirements: “Well they won the All-Ireland last year without Kieran Donaghy, and that was the real test last year. He’s moving really, really well again. Paul Galvin is firing on all cylinders as well. We’ll go out to perform, knowing we’re taking on the finest team in Ireland. We’ll see can we make it an occasion anyway.”