Venue toss up angers Rennick

Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha, Ha, Ha has an equivalent in Louth this week. Louth football manager Paddy Clarke is laughing as a result of his county board calling correctly when a toss of a coin decided the venue for Sunday's Leinster senior football championship clash with Wicklow. The match will be in Drogheda.

Wicklow manager Niall Rennick is not amused with the flippant heads or tails method to decide a venue for Sunday's match and will be taking his team to the Louth venue with great reluctance. He feels the match should have been played at a neutral venue.

The Wicklow boss is infuriated with his county board officers for agreeing to the toss and, ironically, he has the support of his counterpart Clarke. "It really should not have happened," said Clarke. "It just goes to show how the Leinster Council rate the fixture, by tossing for home or away. It may have worked out all right for us but a replay would present us with the daunting prospect of going to Aughrim."

Rennick said: "For guys to give away half their year training four hours a night for four evenings per week and then for a coin to be tossed to decide their destiny cannot be right. Not fixing the match for a neutral venue is not fair on anybody. It's the whole principle of the thing that I object to. There is no reason why the game could not have been fixed for Parnell Park (in Dublin), Navan, Newbridge or at any one of the quality venues around the province."

"The only reason it is not going to be played in Croke Park next Sunday is because Elton John and Billy Joel are playing there on Friday and Saturday," says the Wicklow boss.

Rennick is also not pleased that four members of the county panel played county championship hurling seven days before the Louth match.

Of the county team he says: "The league win over Cork in Aughrim a few weeks ago was very encouraging. Since then we have had a very heavy programme of county league and championship games. This to me is an indication of the priorities the Wicklow fixtures committee give to the preparation of the county's senior football team."

Rennick has asked the county board on numerous occasion to ease up, but to no avail. "They print a little fixtures booklet and God help anyone who would prevent that booklet from being fulfilled."

A number of key Wicklow players are reportedly troubled with injuries as a result of playing in these club games.

Rennick's problems have unquestionably been increased by the continued absence of star players: "A number of quality players signed themselves out," he says. Midfielder Fergus Daly has not been with the panel since October and full back Hugh Kenny, who was married last week, has been another notable absentee.

For more than a decade now, Wicklow football followers have felt that if Kevin O'Brien was on form the team would be more than halfway to attaining its objective.

Rennick says this about the Baltinglass player: "He has displayed over the years that he certainly still is one of the best corner forwards in the country."

Even so, Rennick rejects the notion that the team is built around O'Brien. "Tyrone built a team to some extent around Peter Canavan. You can't afford to build a team around any individual because if that individual gets injured or is taken out of a game then it's very difficult to pick up pieces."