Cork football boss Keith Ricken looks set to be without the services of a number of established players for the coming season.
Ricken has confirmed that Ruairi Deane, Sean White and Michael Hurley are not currently part of his panel, though he is hopeful of coaxing the long-serving Mark Collins back for the 2022 campaign yet.
He explained: “We're there since the eighth of December, that's the first time we got together with fellas. We haven't seen everybody and for one reason or another the panel has been very fluid. But, at the moment, they're not in for training at the moment.
“The way I see it and the way I have it, the Cork panel is a snapshot. It's not a panel you put out at the start of the year and you keep that as your panel. The Cork panel is a snapshot of the best players in Cork at that particular moment in time as we see it, as the selectors would see it.
“That's it at the moment. We're looking at young lads at the moment and we're looking at older lads at the moment and we have these lads in training and the others are available as well.”
Asked about Collins specifically, Ricken commented: “I would hope Mark would be [involved]. From what I had heard before I ever took over, Mark had indicated that he wasn't going to play.
“I've met Mark a couple of times and he has other stuff on, personal stuff, and things like that and we have agreed to talk again at the end of this month.”
Ricken ran his eye over 41 players in the McGrath Cup campaign which ended in a 12-point final defeat to Kerry last Saturday and Cork open their Allianz League campaign away to Roscommon next Sunday.
He added: “You've probably seen most of the guys that we have available for the Roscommon game at some point. We have the Barrs lads obviously. We'll have three or four of them involved and how they'll be after their championship will determine. We've left them alone to concentrate on their championship which is important.
“Basically we have a number of guys who are on the long-term injury list. Like Killian O'Hanlon, Aidan Browne, Nathan Walsh, Conor O'Callaghan, lads like that who are on a different recovery process so they've a good while before they come back yet.
“We've a number of guys on the short-term, and then we've a number of guys who picked up injuries in the past couple of weeks with the colleges and so on and so forth and we haven't see them yet. The likes of Brian Hartnett and lads like that, they picked up injuries.”
Get the latest sports headlines straight to your inbox by signing up for free email alerts
