'It’s been uplifting' - Shefflin opens up on new Kilkenny under-20 boss role

This weekend sees the beginning of a manic April of action for Kilkenny teams with the under-20 hurlers commencing their Leinster championship campaign with an away tie against Kildare in Hawkfield on Saturday afternoon (2pm).

Following on from that the Cats will have further round-robin games with Wexford and Galway as they look to hit the ground running under the new management of Henry Shefflin.

The Shamrocks Ballyhale and Kilkenny legend has taken over from Mark Dowling and with a talented squad at his disposal, he will be hoping his troops can kick off the year with a win.

Asked about whether he always wanted to come back and manage a Kilkenny county side, the 10-time All-Ireland winner acknowledged that it’s something different and a challenge he’s not experienced before.

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“Anyone that is involved in management will tell you that you don’t know what is going to happen as it brings a lot of challenges.

“Once I came back and got the experience with Galway, I helped out with my children’s under 16 hurling and camogie teams with Ballyhale before the seniors came along so you’re always very much involved.

“You enjoy the buzz of it and we’d all still love to be playing, but that’s not the case. It’s a great honour to be involved with teams and like anything you are involved with, you really enjoy it.

“This has been a lot different for me as you are dealing with 18, 19 and 20 year-olds and it’s an age grade that I had never dealt with before.

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“It’s been uplifting at the same time as there is great energy around the place and the young players bring that which means there is a buzz which is great.”

Three of Shefflin’s star players in Ed McDermott, Rory Garrett and David Barcoe were away on a training camp in Spain with the senior team earlier in the week but are back ahead of the round one fixture.

Added to the fact that a sizeable chunk of the squad were also part of the All-Ireland winning St Kieran’s team on St Patrick’s Day and it’s been far from a straightforward lead-in to Saturday’s provincial opener.

“We are lucky that we have a big squad and there’s a reason for that as we had seven players involved with St Kieran’s and three with the Kilkenny senior panel.

“The grade in itself is someway fractured as you never really have everyone together and we’ve a couple of the seniors who haven’t togged out with us yet as they are away on a training camp and we’ll have them for the first time on Thursday night before the game on Saturday.

“That’s the nature of it but to be fair to the players they are playing at a very high level against some serious competition and that will bring them on.

“The great thing about the under-20 championship is that there is three games in the round-robin and we need to be improving as we go along.

“That’s the aim for ourselves and we hope the team can settle alongside lads that they haven’t played with before so overall it is a positive and it’s great that there is that up and coming player in Kilkenny as the county needs those younger players coming through.

“Getting that exposure at the top level will only benefit our own squad as a whole as the rest of the lads will be looking to make that step too so it definitely drives the standards which is all we want,” Shefflin added.

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