Meet the New Boss.....

Kilkenny machine clicks into gear ahead of championship

Once bitten not twice shy for Suarez

1Clare has the most exciting young squad in Ireland

The revelation by Darach Honan that he may not make any senior county appearance this season is another disappointing blow for one of the county's finest talents.

The drama of last monday's Manchester derby could be overshadowed by events on Sunday afternoon with Man City taking on Newcastle while Man Utd host Swansea.

Clare's heavy defeat to Cork last night won't have come as any major surprise to football people across the county or the province.

The U21 system is so heavily in favour of the big two of Kerry and Cork that the annual pairing of the rivals in a Munster final is getitng quite tiresome.

 Clare boss Colm Collins rightly pointed out the need for an open draw or at least some change to the overall All Ireland system to give teams a second chance.

Player Power always wins-unless the team does...

As Andre Villas Boas would attest its never the players that get sacked-managers are always blamed for results going against  a team of when things go wrong.

AVB made the fatal mistake of dropping key older players in the squad and with such powerful figures as Lampard and Terry unhappy and results also going against him the writing was very much on the wall.

It may not be spoken about publicly but Michael Mc Dermott and Davy Fitzgerald are both under pressure this weekend ahead of two key games.

The pressure on both sides is different but the cost of failure come Sunday evening will be no less devastating.

If Clare fail to beat Limerick then its going to be next to impossible to get out of Division Four.

It will also probably mean the end for Michael Mc Dermott as Clare boss as Clare have almost no chance of making any serious impact  in Munster or the All Ireland series.

A texter to Clare FM on Friday described Davy Fitzgerald as Clare's "Napoleon".

Now I'm not quite sure what the texter may have been getting at with that one but I assume the assertion was more of a great leader rather than the man exiled and ridiculed in his latter years.

Either way Saturday night was a fairly impressive start for his reign as Clare manager.

I know he has already taken charge of Clare in the Waterford crystal but the league start was the big one.