Bellew harbours mixed championship emotions

CAVAN boss Ollie Bellew is looking forward to this Sunday’s Lory Meagher Cup opener against Warwickshire – but he’s not exactly so enthused about the inclusion of New York in the competition.

New York will enter the competition for the first time following a vote at the GAA’s Annual Congress, with 76.8 per cent of delegates approving the relevant motion (the Cavan chairperson Mark O’Rourke was among those who spoke out strongly against their inclusion).

Not only have they received a free pass to the semi-finals, but they are odds-on favourites to win the competition outright, and Bellew believes it’s highly unfair to developing hurling teams who could find themselves steamrollered by the Exiles.

“I need to make it clear and put it on the record I have absolutely no gripe with New York. I’m delighted to see New York in All-Ireland competitions, but at this level, at this tier, it’s a massive own goal.

“Terry Reilly, the chairperson of the Hurling Development Committee, came out and said New York shouldn’t be in this tier, and they totally disregarded him. I sometimes wonder what the GAA are doing, when one minute they’re talking about how important the development of hurling is, and then the next minute are totally disregarding the chairman.

“Why can they not look at last year’s pre-season competition where New York hammered Mayo and hammered Leitrim? To me there’s zero logic to it, and zero knowledge of what size of a beast they’re dealing with in the New York side.

The Cavan team will cross that bridge when and if they come to it, as their first task is making it out of the group stages. They’ll travel to take on Warwickshire this weekend and Bellew is hopeful that it’ll be a positive experience, even if they suffered the disappointment of relegation out of Division Three in the league.

“It’s an amazing tournament, you’re always caught by surprise by the standard as everyone ups their game and ups their intensity. I don’t think anybody could honestly predict the winner of the Lory Meagher any other year than this one.

“Warwickshire is a difficult place to go to, you’re away from home and out of your comfort zone, and the pitch out there maybe isn’t as good as home.

“But we’re very heartened by the London game this year, we went across the water and were expected to be lambs to the slaughter. With 10 minutes to go we were still in front. It was a great learning curve and gave us confidence that if we reach our full potential, we’re actually a very good hurling side.”

Cavan were unfortunate to get relegated from Division Three, losing out on the head-to-head rule with Armagh, who also had four points on the board by close of play.

“Yeah it all comes down to depth of squad. In the first week we were hit by Storm Eowyn and didn’t get to play Mayo, so our down week, we had a refixture. We ended up going five weeks back-to-back and injuries and fatigue took their toll. We went from potentially being promoted to facing relegation so it was just a run of bad luck in the last fortnight really, that’s all that cost us.”