ULSTER football manager Brian McEniff may draft Ciaran McBride and Joe Brolly into his squad for Sunday’s inter-provincial semi-final following injuries to Down pair Ross Carr and Mickey Linden plus Donegal’s Tony Boyle.
Carr and Linden both picked up knocks when they lined out for Down in a challenge game against Dublin on Saturday.
Boyle also has a thigh strain which could rule him out of Sunday’s clash against Leinster in Navan.
McEniff said last night that there was “no point” in fielding players who wouldn’t have the proper level of fitness for a match like Sunday’s.
IIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOIIIIIIIIIII
CELTIC manager Tommy Burns has been banned from the touchline for a year by the Scottish Football Association.
And fiery Burns has also been hit in the pocket again with a £2,000 fine by SFA disciplinary chiefs.
The shock move increases pressure on the Celtic manager in what supporters view as a crunch year for the club as they try to stop arch rivals Rangers equalling their nine-in-a-row league record.
It also comes at a time when the great debate in Scottish football centres around controversial refereeing decisions which have swung games against Celtic and in favour of their rivals Rangers and has led to claims of a conspiracy against the Parkhead club.
IIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOIIIIIIIIIII
NORTHERN Ireland manager Bryan Hamilton is facing an injury crisis ahead of tomorrow’s friendly against
Italy in Palermo after Keith Gillespie became the latest player to pull out of the squad last night.
The Newcastle winger has a groin strain and was pulled out of the squad by his club hours after Sheffield Wednesday withdrew wing-back Ian Nolan because of a chest infection.
Gillespie and Nolan join Iain Dowie and Phil Gray on the injured list and leaves Hamilton with a seriously depleted squad.
He is also without Southampton’s Jim Magilton and Leicester pair Colin Hill and Neil Lennon, due to this week’s Coca-Cola Cup games.
It leaves him with a squad of veterans like 35-year-old Stoke full-back Nigel Worthington and untried youngsters such as Manchester teenagers Philip Mulryne of United and City’s 17-year-old Jeff Whitley.
“They have a great chance of taking part in the game at some point but I will be looking to put out a fairly experienced side because this is a very emotive game for the Italians,” said Hamilton, who flew out with his 18-man squad from London yesterday.
IIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOIIIIIIIIIII
IRELAND hooker Keith Wood, who’s captained the side in the last two internationals, will know later this week if he will play any further part in the Five Nations Championship this year.
Wood left the Lansdowne Road pitch on Saturday just before the interval in the game with France, his left shoulder damaged after an accidental collision with French centre Thomas Castaignede.
At first the Harlequins player believed he could be out “between two and six weeks”, and on Saturday evening the initial medical opinion was that he might only be forced to miss the trip to Wales on Saturday week.
But yesterday Wood was still in considerable discomfort and he was scheduled to have further x-rays in a London hospital in the hope of diagnosing the extent of the injury more precisely.
It looks increasingly likely that he’s suffered some ligament damage, though it’s not the shoulder which was so badly dislocated two seasons ago, keeping him out of rugby for a year.
<
