Nally was not allowed to assemble his squad of players until Monday, March 1, despite the fact that their first game in the Leinster Minor Football League, a home fixture against Wexford is due to take place this Saturday.

Two weeks ago, Louth's U-21 panel destroyed Wexford, but Nally is not expecting a similar type performance from his young guns.

He said: "I am not too interested in the scoreline this Sunday, it is more about trying to get my squad together."

In order to get an accurate reflection on the quality in the panel, Nally's squad have an intense six week schedule with three league fixtures and two challenges matches squashed in between them.

When that is finished, Nally is hoping that he will know his finalised squad for the Leinster Minor Championship game against Laois.

"The minor squad were not allowed on a field together until Monday night. We have been hampered by this rule but the league is vital to our plans so that we get the chance to get up to speed with the squad.

"We are delighted to be in the league as a few years ago, we were not in it. We could play all the challenge matches we like, but we need the competitiveness of a league game.

"A lot of the stuff we did with these lads would have been done at U-14 to U-16 level, when we could have access to them for the majority of the season. It was a more hands on approach then. "We would have liked to slowly phase them in with matches and training sessions in January and February, but that's the way things are and that is why we have organised some more challenge matches, against Armagh and Dublin to help us.

However Nally has identified a problem with this as with fixtures coming thick and fast, players can easily pick up injuries.

"The problem though is that after the intense six week schedule, we could easily burn the lads out in that period or several of them could get injuries, but we have 38 lads at the moment and the plan is to get them down to 30 for the Laois game."

gary@dundalkdemocrat.ie