McEniff in the chair may see McHugh in the hot seat

GAELIC GAMES: The Donegal County Board are finally in a position to announce a new senior football manager. The appointment is due to be finalised tonight by the sub-committee responsible for finding a successor to Mickey Moran.

Newly-appointed county chairman Brian McEniff, who had been co-opted on to the committee in recent weeks, confirmed yesterday several names still remained in the hat but the position was expected to be filled this evening when the football panel are also due to come together for their first official training session of the new season.

"There has been a lot of speculation about who is and who is not still in the race," said McEniff. "I'm not going to speculate further on that, but we don't want to wait any longer because we are all eager now to get things moving again."

As things stand, Donegal are the only county without a senior football manager, though McEniff has already been involved in some pre-season training sessions. The full panel of 32 plus an additional five players will take part in the first official training session in Ballybofey this evening, with another session scheduled for Saturday morning.

Former county star Martin McHugh, who managed Cavan to Ulster success in 1997, remains the county's number one choice but up to now he has backed away from any offers from the county board. However, McEniff's arrival as chairman may convince McHugh to take on the position.

Otherwise it appears Michael McIntyre, who worked as a selector with Moran this year, will get the job. McIntyre was one of the first men approached for the job, and has also previously managed the county under-21 side and trained the senior side under the management of Declan Bonner.

It is understood former Monaghan player Eugene Hughes was approached over the position, but at this stage it appears unlikely the county board will look beyond McHugh or McIntyre.

The Dublin County Board will take applications for the position of senior hurling manager as well as for the new full-time director of hurling up until this Friday. Originally it was understood applications would close ahead of the County Convention on Monday night.

It is unclear what the level of interest is in both positions. Newly re-elected chairman John Bailey won't be examining the applications until they've been received at Parnell Park at the end of the week, and it could be several weeks before the position is filled as county secretary John Costello is to spend Christmas in Australia.

In the meantime Bailey is campaigning strongly for a new stadium to be built on the south side of the city. During Monday night's convention he referred to such a development as "essential" to the future of the GAA in the county, and yesterday pointed towards the Tallaght area as the most obvious location.

Bailey also announced planning permission had been granted for the installation of floodlights at Parnell Park. It was hoped work would start in March.

Elsewhere, Kerry County Board chairman Sean Walsh criticised the Strategic Review Committee report as moving "too fast" in his address to last night's county convention in Tralee.

"They attempted to move the association forward too fast," said Walsh, "and not always in the right direction. The (Special) Congress would have been better served by fewer motions and dealing with more specific issues, and not attempting to do away with the position of the people that they required to support the implementation of the report."

While Walsh also said Central Council should be given the final say on opening Croke Park to other sports or not, he called on the council to reverse their decision to award All-Ireland medals to the full panel of 30. He said this devalued the medal from when it was only given to 24 players.

Finally Walsh called on the GAA to cease the sponsorship of inter-county games by alcoholic drinks companies, saying the games "would survive if drink companies were unable to sponsor them".

The Cork County Board executive met last night to set a date for the next round of negotiations with the county's striking hurling and football panels. Chairman Jim Forbes was confident yesterday the next meeting would take place before the end of the week, and that progress could be made.

It is still undecided how many player representatives will enter the negotiations, beyond the fact that both footballers and hurlers will be included. Forbes was also hopeful that numbers could be agreed upon with the board officers in order for the negotiations to resume as soon as possible.

Elsewhere, Championship 2002, the latest edition of the all-colour reference book that records the drama and excitement of the football and hurling championships, is now available. The author is once again RTÉ Gaelic games correspondent Brian Carthy.