'The GAA talk about player welfare, well this is the ultimate in player abuse'

MANAGER'S VIEW O'Rourke fuming after Shane Walsh and Mathew Costello pick up injuries

Every cloud has a silver lining and while Meath manager Colm O'Rourke was disappointed with much of his side's performance in the NFL div 2 victory over Clare he was delighted to get another two points on the board against a side that have caused Meath a lot of issues over the last few years.

While O'Rourke was clearly frustrated with much of Meath's play, his anger was more focused on the injuries picked up by Mathew Costello and Shane Walsh and having his hand forced to take off Cathal Hickey and Darragh Campion.

O'Rourke blamed the heavy workload of being involved in Sigerson Cup as the reason for the hamstring issues picked up by Costello and Walsh.

Costello was injured in DCU's win over MTU Cork which came just over 48 hours after the Dunshaughlin man had returned from playing a starring role in Meath's NFL Div 2 opening round win over Cork.

Walsh was also outstanding for DCU in that contest, but fatigue obviously played a huge part in the injury that forced the Na Fianna man out of Sunday's win over Clare inside just 12 minutes.

Campion and Hickey both played the full contest between TU Dublin and UCD on Wednesday last which went to extra-time and O'Rourke fumed that the the demands on college players who also play for their counties is nothing less than "an abuse of players".

"It is absolutely ridiculous that a player like Mathew Costello has to come back from Cork and less than 48 hours later is being put out in a very important game for his college," fumed O'Rourke in his post-match interview.

"The timing of the Sigerson is all wrong. We have six players tied up in it and we had to take off five of them today and two of them are now injured with hamstrings.

"They are pure overuse injuries. It's a disgrace, it's an abuse of players and it shouldn't be going on at this time.

"Sigerson is a great competition. I was delighted to play in it myself and win it with UCD, but it wasn't at that time competing with county football.

"This is especially important for Div 2 teams who are not guaranteed access to the All-Ireland series unless they finish high in the division.

"We should have access to all our players and we shouldn't have to compete with the Sigerson. I know the managers of those teams have tried to mind those players, but they can't possibly do it. They are back out again in semi-finals on Wednesday night.

"I just think it's an absolute disgrace what is happening to the best of our young players. They are so willing to give of themselves. The GAA talk about player welfare, well this is the ultimate in player abuse," said O'Rourke.

With Meath's next outing in Derry on Saturday 18th February O'Rourke is hoping that he might have Walsh, Costello, Hickey and Campion available for that trip to Owenbeg, but with more Sigerson Cup games this week (the semi-finals are on Wednesday night in Carlow), the Meath manager will be watching through his fingers.

It is unlikely Walsh or Costello will be fit for DCU's semi-final against UL, but Campion and Hickey both look likely to start for TU Dublin in their semi-final against UCC.

While O'Rourke will be concerned about how his college stars get on, he is glad of the break for a week.

"It is absolutely vital now that we have the break because we are beginning to run into serious issues with players. We definitely wouldn't have had those two fellas (Costello and Walsh) if we had a game next Sunday," he said.

"The big problem again is that there is Sigerson again on Wednesday night, so we'll have to wait and see who comes out of those games and in what sort of shape.

"It would not have been fair to Darragh Campion and Cathal Hickey to ask them to play a full game today after playing in Cork last Sunday, then they played in a game on Wednesday that went to extra-time.

"I thought they did really well considering the miles that they have on the clock.

"They have done really no training with us. They have had a lot of games between the league, Sigerson and challenge matches. It means on a Tuesday night we can't train them, Thursday night we can't risk training them again either, so from that point of view they have done very little with us.

"We have to be careful with them because fellas that are as honest as they are they would love to train every night with us.

"In fairness to the managers of the college teams, they have worked them easy too, but you can't just play game after game after game in demanding conditions and not run the risk of serious injury and hamstrings are really a sign of overuse," said O'Rourke.

As well as his frustration with the Sigerson Cup there was also the matter of his side playing below the standard he expected against Clare.

O'Rourke bemoaned the concession of too many frees, but while he was disappointed with the return of just eight points he was pleased with the four goals, the win and that more young players got valuable game time into their experience bank.

"Happy with the win, but we wouldn't be too happy with the performance,” warned O'Rourke.

"We didn't play with the same energy that we did in the second-half in Cork, I don't know why that is. Maybe last week took a lot out of the team.

"We just didn't seem to perform very well. Scoring eight points isn't good enough in any game, but if somebody said to you before the start of the league that we would play two games and win the two of them you wouldn't be too worried about the performances, but it is something we will have a look at because the lads are capable of better than that.

"It was especially important for the three lads that played in the full-back line today to get game time and we are very happy with the way they performed.

"It is great to get the two wins, but there is a lot of things I am unhappy about, particularly the players we have lost to hamstring injuries, Shane Walsh and Mathew Costello.

"If we could improve (the concession rate) by three points every game it would help. Again we gave away a lot of frees. It seemed like the majority of their scores came from frees.

"It is something we thought we had worked on from last week when we gave away 11 points from frees, but it is a big problem for us again.

"We did create another very good goal scoring chance. At this level of football you need to be getting 16, 17 or 18 points. Conditions were perfect, the ground was good, so to only get eight points is very disappointing.

"We are very happy with the goals, but we would like to see that when the goals dry up, as they will and we might only get one, then we'll need 15 or 16 points to win any big game.

"We did a lot of good kicking today, but we did kick away a lot of ball as well. There are a lot of things we are unhappy about today. Our retention of possession, our scoring rate. It is disappointing in a lot of ways, the result doesn't cover up a lot of the flaws that were in our performance and we need to work on. The lads are great, we'll sort it out."

With all the enthusiasm building following O'Rourke's appointment and the excellent second-half performance in Cork the Meath supporters came out in huge numbers on Sunday and while O'Rourke had wanted to give them more reasons to be cheerful he was delighted to see them.

"It was wonderful. We would love to have given them more to shout about in the second-half. The game went a bit dead from a Meath point of view. I'd love to have seen them put on three or four points in the last five or six minutes, but it just didn't work out.

"It was wonderful to see the crowd back and it was something that we really appreciate. There is a lot of goodwill towards this team, so hopefully we can give our supporters something to shout about."

O'Rourke has brought a very definite change in style to Meath's play. The kicking game is being utilised a lot more, but there were times on Sunday when the hosts had to be patient against a well-organised, packed Clare rearguard.

O'Rourke warned that Meath can expect more of the same defensively in the upcoming games and he expects that his team will have to mix up their style of play to maintain their winning run.

"They (Clare) definitely caused us problems. In the first-half we couldn't seem to get any good ball into our forwards," recalled the manager.

"They are a mature team and have been knocking around the second division for a while. We are fortunate that they didn't have Keelan Sexton and Darren O'Neill in their starting team, they are two of their most important players.

"Their defensive style caused us problems, but that is part of the learning process.

"We are going to have to learn quickly now because there will be a lot of other teams that will be as defensive as Clare.

"When we have Louth here they will bring something similar. Derry in the next game are very defensive, so we will have to learn quickly.

"We will have to try to combine both styles of play for the next day against Derry," concluded O’Rourke whose focus now turns to Derry.