Begley chooses college over county December 12, 2013





Ireland's Colm Begley with the Cormac McAnallen cup. INPHO Ireland's Colm Begley with the Cormac McAnallen cup. INPHO

Most Read Stories

Laois star Colm Begley will be lining out for DCU in the O'Byrne Cup.While it's generally accepted that colleges have first call on players for such competitions, some players opt to play with their county team. But Begley has no plans to go against the grain, and doesn't expect new Laois manager Tomas O Flatharta to have a problem with it either."Well I think it's the colleges who have preference anyway," the former Aussie Rules player says in the Irish Times."He (O Flatharta) hasn't mentioned it yet to me. But I think I'll be playing with DCU. I've always played with DCU that way. If there's an issue we'll talk it out and discuss it, and we'll see how DCU go first."Begley has already trained under O Flatharta and is expecting Laois to be more attack-minded than they were under his predecessor Justin McNulty."Some freshness always brings a bit of excitement no matter who it is. What I liked is he was focusing a lot on football. We were a bit too defensive over the last few years and not expressing ourselves, so hopefully now we are going to be doing that."I didn't enjoy playing that style of football a lot of times. Tomas has brought in Jerome Stack as a football coach and he is supposed to be very good. I'm not looking for us to be playing Brazil-style football or anything like that, but let us . . . not be so defensively minded."