Like the rest of us Daniel Kearney doesn’t like cleaning caked mud off his footwear - that’s one of the many reasons he likes Championship time:
“When you don’t have to clean your boots you know the Championship is around the corner. It’s good feeling and it makes all the long nights in November and December training in the rain and the mucky fields worthwhile," he says ahead of this weekend's showdown with Waterford for a place in the Munster Hurling Final.
It’s not just an aversion to cleaning that excites Kearney about the summer but the prospect of playing fast pace games is also a reward for their winter efforts, "when you’re coming into the Championship the ground is harder it leads to faster crisper hurling."
It’s no surprise that on the profiles page on the county board website Kearny states first touch as the most important skill in the game.
Speed, both of thought and movement is something that the 25 year old has in abundance but his midfielder partnership with Aidan Walsh is not the marriage of brain and muscle that some might think it is.
Goldfinger and Oddjob they are not with Kearney insisting they do a lot of the same things, "He likes to attack, I like to attack - we both like to defend as well and it’s a balancing act you have to read each others minds. A lot of it is instinct knowing if I go forward that Aidan will go back.”
The Sarsfields player sees his own role as a key to opposition defences, although that’s getting harder to do and he cites the first half of the Championship opener between Limerick and Clare as an example speaking broadly about the modern game:
"Each manager wants to get the competitive edge if that mean withdrawing a man, withdrawing loads of men or having a spare man. That’s what they’re going to do you can only react to that you’d have trust in your management to have the right system in place."
Don’t forget our live game on Off the Ball this Sunday is Derry and Down's Ulster quarter final, throw in is at 2pm - and we'll have live updates from Waterford v Cork in Thurles.
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