University of Limerick coach Brian Lohan, who led the university to last year's Fitzgibbon Cup, says that Munster colleges have this year been put at a "massive disadvantage" because of the provincial council's decision at the end of last year to exclude third-level teams from the province's pre-season tournaments, both football and hurling.

This is because none of the other provincial councils have changed policy in relation to the participation of college teams and the rules governing that involvement stipulate that colleges have first choice of any players who might otherwise be part of their county panels.

The Clare All-Ireland winner points out that that all six of the Fitzgibbon Cup sides in Munster will have to face opponents who have had in January “access to both competition and their players”.

County panels

“That’s great for them,” he says. “It also means that their players aren’t involved to the same extent with their county panels. So if you look at NUIG, they played Galway this week; DIT played Kilkenny and UCD played Laois at the weekend.

“They have first call on their players whereas the Munster colleges have no access to their players during a month that used to be the most useful for Fitzgibbon preparation.”

According a Munster Council source, the decision was driven by the counties, who unanimously wanted to restrict the competitions, the McGrath Cup for football and the Munster Hurling League, to counties. One of the reasons is understood to be the lack of competitiveness in some of the fixtures involving the colleges.

Although there is substance to that objection, in last year’s Munster hurling league the average defeat – in the absence of IT Tralee who had shipped some heavy beatings – for college teams was six points.

It was also the colleges that sustained the McGrath Cup when two years ago four counties – Clare, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford – boycotted it in protest at the removal of the open draw in the senior provincial football championship.

Some of the same absent counties also approached the colleges for challenge matches during that January.

Match opportunities

Lohan says that the non-inclusion of the college teams has greatly reduced match opportunities for emerging players.

“What you’re seeing is that the counties are carrying really large panels at the moment, in excess of 40 players in some cases.

“If you had the colleges involved in the Munster league similar to what has happened in the past, they wouldn’t have to be carrying those numbers in January when intercounty managers are under pressure to see as many players as possible.

“The ideal place to be looking at players is in competitive matches and that’s what was happening. Last year they could be seen playing with their colleges. They were widely reported on and you could see who was going well and who wasn’t and not just in training or challenge matches.”

With the Fitzgibbon Cup on the horizon at the end of the month, UL have been playing challenge matches – against Offaly, Limerick and Munster club champions Na Piarsaigh as well as the other colleges in the province . But the problem for Lohan has been that not only are the third-level teams deprived of first choice on players but they struggle to get them at all, even for training.

“Typically we’re down – we have five on the Limerick panel, five on the Tipperary panel and on the main Clare panel three plus another three on the extended panel – 15 players. Gone. So it’s very hard to prepare a team under those conditions.

“On occasion we have access to those players but it’s very hit-and-miss. For example we had a challenge arranged with Limerick but Clare organised one for the same date so we were down players.”

Lohan says that he understands the priorities of young players and doesn’t expect them to act any differently.

“The club is a player’s first priority but then the county. There’s no club matches apart from the teams in the All-Irelands so for most the priority is the county. It’s very hard to be putting pressure on them when their aim is to make their county side but it’s created a lot of difficulties for the college teams.

“I remember last year on January 10th we were going down to play Cork in the Munster league and we had first call on the Clare, Limerick and Tipp players so it meant we could have all our panel together and begin the preparation for the Fitzgibbon.