CORK BOSS KIERAN Kingston has confirmed that forward Daniel Kearney has opted out of the county’s senior hurling squad for the 2020 season.
30-year-old Kearney, who made his championship debut for Cork in 2012 against Tipperary, was a regular in the half-forward line in recent seasons having first emerged as a midfielder and has been part of three Munster senior title victories.
Kingston revealed that the Sarsfields club man ‘wanted some time out’ of the inter-county game and doesn’t foresee a return this season.
“Daniel’s not involved,” stated the Cork manager, speaking tonight at a press event in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
“We’d love to have him involved, as would the players, but Daniel, for his own reasons, has decided to take some time out from hurling at inter-county level and we respect that decision and wish him the best.
“At this stage, I don’t think we can look at Daniel for 2020. He has been recently made captain of Sars as well and we have to respect his decision. He wanted some time out of inter-county hurling, he’s nine or ten years giving his life to it.
“We’d love to have him but we don’t and we have to move on. It gives an opportunity to someone else.”
Cork commence their league campaign next Sunday away to Waterford with Alan Cadogan, Mark Ellis and Christopher Joyce confirmed absentees while the management are conscious of not rushing defender Colm Spillane back into action after he missed the entire 2019 campaign.
“Colm Spillane has had some game time but is not fully back. Colm hadn’t played since the county final in 2018. That was his last game. We gave him some time against Waterford (in the Munster senior hurling league in December), he got some time against Limerick, it was the first time he really got a bit of gametime into him which is great.
“But it’s just a matter of incrementally increasing that as opposed to full exposure too quickly. Back and achilles, he had two injuries so it took a while.”
Cork continue to monitor the playing schedule of their younger players involved in the Fitzgibbon Cup.
“We’ve only four or five playing midweek this week because UCC don’t have a game and most of our guys that are with the college are with UCC, we’ve 14 with them. They were playing yesterday, we must see that they came through okay. I don’t think there’s anything major yet.”
Attacker Declan Dalton and defender Ger Millerick both lined out for Fr O’Neill’s in Saturday night’s epic All-Ireland club final, they’ll now be available to link back up with Cork again.
“Declan’s on our panel and Ger is, they’ve both been there since the start, since we got together in November. Unfortunately we haven’t seen a lot of them recently because they’ve been involved with their clubs.
“But yeah, we’ll sit down with Declan this week and see where he’s at, and Ger and see if they’re carrying any niggles and reintegrate them both back into the panel.”
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Mayo v Galway in Connaught junior final on Sunday in Carrick on Shannon