All-Ireland Club hurling championships: Whereas the prospects of not having to face Joe Canning would cheer most teams, Loughmore-Castleiney manager Eamonn Sweeney regards the fuss over the Portumna shooter as a distraction ahead of Sunday's All-Ireland club hurling semi-final.
"We haven't even spoken about it," said Sweeney yesterday. "As far as I'm concerned he will be playing. You couldn't be speculating any other way because then he appears on the day and you're not properly ready."
Neither is he convinced by Canning's absence from the Limerick IT team that progressed to this year's Fitzgibbon Cup semi-finals earlier this week.
"He didn't play on Wednesday but that doesn't prove anything. To play would have been asking for trouble. It's not as big a problem for him - he's not an explosive player, the sort who rely on pace and are most troubled by hamstring. He takes scores from where he gets the ball."
Aside from the mind games involved in possible injuries to the opposition, first-time Munster champions Loughmore are happy in advance of the weekend with no injury problems of their own apart from two long-term absences that were never under consideration.
If Sweeney, who captained Loughmore to the 1988 county title and is also club chairman, has a quibble it is that the length of the off-season between winning a provincial title and lining up for the All-Ireland semi-final at over two months makes continuity for teams very difficult.
"The break is too much. Teams can lose form. We've had a couple of challenges, which worked out fine but you still don't know how a team's got over the break. We're very fit but hurling-wise it's hard to know how to get it right. Go at it bald-headed and you lose your freshness. We haven't overdone things though and we're looking forward to it.
"We had a good break over Christmas and came back gradually at a relaxed pace. We didn't even talk about Portumna until last week."
Having surprised more hotly fancied teams in both the county and provincial championships Loughmore have the advantage of outsider status against the 2006 All-Ireland champions. Sweeney says that anyway it wouldn't be in the nature of the club and its supporters to get carried away by the biggest match in their history.
"There's no major hype," he says. "We're not that type and don't go overboard easily but it is a massive occasion and it'd be telling lies to say otherwise. But I think there's more pressure on Portumna. They're short odds to win the All-Ireland and we're not expected to win on Sunday."
The team is an effective blend of experience in the form of Tipperary All-Ireland medallists Paul Ormond and David Kennedy plus younger talent, most notably the wunderkind teenager Noel McGrath, who has turned just 17 since the Munster success.
McGrath was on the receiving end on a day of torrential rain in Limerick of some overly physical treatment at the hands of Clare champions Tulla, which drew an angry response from Sweeney immediately after the Munster final.
"Maybe I was a bit over the top," he says, "but what really annoyed me was that it was the younger lads who got it. It would be different if they picked on Paul Ormond or David Kennedy."
For all the attention - positive and negative - trained on him, the young McGrath has coped extremely well, according to his manager.
"He's not feeling the pressure - he's very, very level-headed for a 17-year old. His father Pat would have gone through it and keeps his feet on the ground.
"We don't train him that much and just let him play away in the Harty (with his school, Our Lady's Templemore)."
• The Central Competitions Control Committee has confirmed that they will not be refixing the National Hurling League Cork-Kilkenny match despite the All-Ireland champions' offer to decline the CCCC's award of the points and play the fixture this weekend. The committee was of the view that they couldn't play just one of the four matches that Cork forfeited after being unable to field because of the dispute between players and county officials.
