Fermanagh captain Eoin Donnelly has committed to Pete McGrath’s Ulster squad

ULSTER manager Pete McGrath has taken significant steps towards assembling a squad for next month’s Interprovincial tournament, which takes place on the weekend of December 10/11th at Parnell Park.

Perhaps surprisingly, this will be the Fermanagh boss’s first time leading the line for Ulster after the travails of last year’s ill-fated tournament, which was postponed and ultimately not played due to Storm Desmond.

McGrath’s search for a squad has already neared completion, and he reports that two high-profile names are unable to take part, albeit last year’s captain Eoin Donnelly is fit to take his place after an injury-hit summer. It is also understood that Armagh’s Stefan Campbell has been approached for selection.

He said: “Eoin has committed, he’s in good enough shape at the minute. Conor McManus is simply unable to commit at this time of year, Michael Murphy is also unavailable.

“Michael was involved with his club up until a fortnight ago, I understand those things but it’s our job to get a group of players together who are keen and committeed and available and will put a couple of sessions in and then go and play it and enjoy it and hopefully enjoy it.

“There are a number of players who are away that weekend, they’re just on holidays and that’s it. But we will have a squad of 26 and I would like to think we have most of the squad in place at the moment, we still have a few places to fill and it’s just a matter of contacting people.”

“Last year was my first appointment, hopefully this is will my first experience of managing an Ulster team and I’m looking forward to it.”

McGrath will be assisted by Tony Scullion and Diarmuid Marsden. The interprovincials have come in for heavy criticism in the contemporary era and there remains uncertainty about its future. Generally the tournament attacks a lowly attendance, but it wasn’t ever thus, as McGrath explains:

“When I was growing up in the 1960s, the Railway Cup was a massive thing. Every St Patrick’s Day the final was shown live on RTE. There were very few matches shown live apart from the All-Ireland final and so on. “To have the game on TV was a big, big thing. The crowds in some cases exceeded 40,000 and there was a glamour about it and there was a real, real prestige about it. It definitively had a gravitas about it.”