Carlow senior hurling manager Tom Mullally says that of the three years he’s been involved with the county setup, “this is the year we find a bit more honesty in what we’re dealing with” regarding the selection of the inter-county team.
Speaking with KCLR’s Brendan Hennessy after defeat to Kerry in round two of the Allianz National Hurling League Division 2A on Sunday, Mullaly refused to be drawn on the topic of certain players missing from the senior setup at the moment – including whether Sean Murphy was to make a comeback.
“I think your asking me a question that maybe I’m not going to give you an answer that you want me to and that’s just being straight. We have a panel at the minute and that’s what we’re working with. Those who have been involved with other competitions or things like that and some lads will be available and some lads won’t. The key criteria for 2023 is that people want to play for Carlow and are willing to abide by the standards that are required to play for Carlow, that’s our only ask of anyone who comes into Carlow and I think the players so far have put themselves there.
“They’re applying themselves, they’ll make mistake’s along the way but they’re very honest. Of the three years we’ve been involved, this is the year we find a bit more honesty out of what we’re dealing with. I would be quite happy with where we are at and we hope to push forward and that our performances will improve and that our link-up play will improve and results will also improve”.
No rest
Brendan put it to Mullally that there would be no rest for the wicked with the league coming to an end before going straight into the Joe McDonagh Cup.
“That’s what we want. We’ve been waiting, we started before Christmas [at] the gym and all that kind of stuff was done. Going back in the new year, the likes of Kildare had a lot of games played before we played them in the first round of the Kehoe Cup and we had nothing played. Obviously, looking at results on paper you would be wondering what Carlow would be at but we were trying to apply ourselves and get ourselves right as a group and as a panel. The games will come, but that’s what we want at this stage.
We want to refine and get the link-up play going and try and push for 70 minutes and be making decisions to win the game. At the end, today didn’t come off but I think we’ve gained a lot out of today. It’s not moral victories, we’re not looking for those, we want to put ourselves into the equation so that we can win games but the first thing we’ve got to do is be competitive.
Listen back to the full interview on Scoreline Extra below
