Naughton and charges to treat Cork as normal

GAELIC GAMES NATIONAL HURLING LEAGUETHE CORK footballers made a bold statement of intent in their return to action last Sunday and the expectation is the hurlers will want to do likewise this Sunday. A three-month lay-off while on strike has a tendency to raise a team's adrenaline beyond normal league levels.

So, Dublin have been forewarned - and Cork's visit to Parnell Park for their first outing in the Allianz Hurling League will undoubtedly have an extra edge. And, just as Roscommon discovered last Sunday in the football league, Cork, despite their self-inflicted hiatus, aren't necessarily playing catch-up.

It's a game that also revisits the issue of Cork's penalty for that hiatus: the forfeiture of points from their opening two games, against Kilkenny and Waterford, which Cork failed to fulfil. While Kilkenny and Waterford were handed those points, Dublin have to earn them, and this could have a pivotal bearing on the final league standings - and particularly the battle against relegation.

Dublin manager Tommy Naughton is expecting Cork to come out with that old image of all guns blazing, but then he was expecting that anyway. He's not about to get distracted by anything as hypothetical as how one team may benefit as a result of the strike, when the only thing Dublin can do about it is worry about their own performance.

"Well we're certainly not treating Sunday any different to any other league game," says Naughton. "It does look as if the Cork footballers got back up to speed fairly quickly, and I expect it will be same with the hurlers. But it's not as if the other counties got any sort of massive head-start. It's still very early in the season, and no team is going to be especially sharp at this time of the year.

"People are saying Cork will be more fired up for this than usual. It's hard to know. Maybe they will, but I don't think it's about us trying to get fired up to match them, because we'd be doing that anyway. This is a very important league match no matter who it is we're playing.

"The thing about this league is that it's not a massive campaign anyway, but actually very short, with only five matches. So that makes every match crucial, no matter which team it is you're playing, or when you're playing."

Roscommon football manager John Maughan was adamant Cork should be made play the games they failed to fulfil, because his team was suffering unfairly as the points in that situation went straight to Dublin and Meath.

Kilkenny did put in a request to reschedule their hurling match against Cork, which was rejected by Croke Park, but again Naughton is not getting tied up in the past.

"I wouldn't, really, be thinking that way at all. What happened with Cork was the result of an extraordinary circumstance. And of course it was all out of our hands. So I'm only interested in ourselves, and only interested in our next game, which happens to be Cork."

The reality is Dublin need to be fully focused on their own form, having endured a heavy 1-21 to 2-10 defeat to Kilkenny in round two. Considering they'd drawn with Kilkenny in the corresponding fixture a year ago, this was viewed as something of a setback to Dublin's hurling progress over the last 12 months.

"I suppose, in fairness, it probably was a step back for us, having drawn with them last year. But then I've always said you can't really compare matches from a year ago, because they'll always be different. The same as next year's match will be different again. But it was a disappointing result, no question about that. And going in there I was hopeful that we would put it up to them a lot better than we did. Having said that I do believe we are still going in the right direction."

There is still some evidence of that: in their opening game, for example, Dublin had comfortably beaten Antrim, a game they lost a year ago - and which ultimately cost them a place in the league play-offs. However, Antrim bounced back from that by beating Wexford in round two.

Naughton will finalise his team for the Cork game after training tomorrow, with only a couple of injury concerns. Declan Qualter is still troubled with a shoulder injury, and while Alan McCrabbe and Pádraig O'Driscoll are also carrying knocks they may yet be available. Ronan Fallon continues to be club-tied with St Vincent's.

Among the newcomers for this league are defender Paddy Bergin and midfielder Simon Lambert. While Stuart Mullen has been on the panel for the past couple of seasons, he has come to prominence in recent weeks as free-taker - hitting 0-12 in the win over Antrim and 0-6 in the defeat to Kilkenny.

"We've brought in, I'd say, five or six new players for this league, and I'm very pleased with the way they're going. The problem is we've so few matches to try them out, but they are doing well, and we do have a few more options now."