NEWS ROUND-UP:MONAGHAN'S TOMMY Freeman has closed the book on the incident in which he was headbutted at the end of the National Football League fixture with Dublin in Parnell Park on Easter Sunday. Dublin team statistician Ray Boyne admitted responsibility and received a 16-week suspension but also travelled to Monaghan to apologise in person.

Asked at yesterday's Adidas promotion in Croke Park about his feeling on the matter, the current All Star replied: "There's no feeling on it at all. It's something that happened and that's it. It's put to bed and that's all I have to say. He came down and apologised and I accepted it and I was grateful for the man coming down and that's it.

"It's something that happened and it's been all sorted out now and put to bed."

Also put to bed at the weekend was Waterford's defence of their National Hurling League title after Sunday's quarter-final defeat by Tipperary. Hurler of the Year Dan Shanahan was another of the players brought to Croke Park by Adidas and he accepted that Waterford weren't playing at the level they attained last spring when on the way to winning the league.

"It's not full-force hurling yet," he said. "The hurling starts in June, July, August - hopefully. I've a lot of work to do myself; we've a lot of work to do too. Hopefully come June we'll have the work done and get the result against Clare."

Waterford manager Justin McCarthy said after the match on Sunday that he had delayed the start of training this year in order to give players some opportunity to rest after a very strenuous if ultimately disappointing season last year.

"I suppose we are a bit later this year," said Shanahan. "It's something Justin is doing. We've been out the last six weeks in a row so you can't do any hard training on the Tuesdays or the Thursdays ahead of games.

"We have a break for another eight weeks so we'll have pretty hard training and a lot of good training sessions between now and June."

Asked about what positives he would take out of the NHL season, he pointed out that for someone struggling with his form identifying reasons to be cheerful isn't a priority.

"Even when you're playing badly you're trying to take positives out of the game. At the moment I only look after myself. There's a few young fellas after coming in and doing well. Our six backs, our two midfielders and our goalkeeper played very well.

"From there up there's a lot of work still to be done, including myself."

For someone whose immense championship season saw him rack up eight goals, the travails of the league have been frustrating but as someone who makes no bones about his concentration on the summer, he is currently gearing preparations towards optimising his form for eight weeks' time when Waterford face Clare in the Munster championship.

"Personally I'm doing what I did last year: the gym three nights a week, two night's a week training and a match - out five nights a week. My physical trainer Gerry Fitzpatrick knows. He'll tell me when to stop doing the weights and stuff like that. I'll listen to him and hopefully it'll come right.

"When you hit the onion bag you know you're in form. I'll know myself when I'm back in form. It'll take a lot of hard work because I suppose people will be watching me that bit more after what I did last year. But when they watch me it gives someone else the room.

"Hopefully someone else can do what I did last year - maybe I can do it again myself. There's a long way to go lads. It's only April and there's a hell of a lot of hurling to be done."