BASED on developments in last year's championship, the Cork footballers are entitled to fancy their chances of coming up trumps in the opening round of the National League against Monaghan on Sunday. Nobody would dispute that the Rebels were hugely impressive in qualifying for the All-Ireland final, and their subsequent failure to Kerry has done little to dampen optimism regarding their prospects in the year ahead.

Monaghan, for their part, didn't enjoy a particularly encouraging championship campaign in 2009, with their only victory from three outings coming at the expense of Armagh in the opening round of the qualifiers. That win was sandwiched by a brace of defeats at the hands of Derry, and the latter, after being well beaten by Tyrone in the Ulster semi final, made their exit from the All-Ireland race when succumbing to Donegal.

Given that Cork made light work of dispatching Donegal in the All-Ireland quarter final before fashioning a decisive win over Tyrone, it would seem as if they deserve to be rated someway above Monaghan in the pecking order at the moment.

As well as that, Cork were comfortable victors over the Farney County men in the Division 2 league final last season, so there are fairly solid grounds to contend they will have Monaghan's measure. But hopes of a Cork win must be tempered by the fact that Monaghan are invariably a tough nut to crack when operating on home soil, and they had the satisfaction of putting one over on Conor Counihan's side in last season's Division 2 clash.

They came through by 213 to 1-9 in that match up in Scotstown, and Cork selector Ger O'Sullivan is under no illusions as to how difficult it's going to be to turn the tables at the same venue on Sunday. " We have a few players carrying injuries at the moment, and Graham Canty, Anthony Lynch and Alan Quirke are likely to miss the league opener against Monaghan," he revealed.

"But you are only allowed to carry a panel of 24 players for every match in the league this season, and we intend to have a look at up to 45 over the course of the campaign, so, to be honest, we aren't too worried if there are fellas on the injured list at this stage.

"To a certain extent we will be fielding an experimental side on Sunday, but at the same time we are very keen to pick up two points and reverse last year's result up in Scotstown where Monaghan beat us fair and square. We would like to think the 24 players we will be bringing up for the fixture are all capable of doing a job for us, and that the quality of the team won't be lessened significantly by the absence of a few regulars."

O'Sullivan believes that Cork will benefit from competing in Division1 this season, particularly in terms of gauging the potential of the newcomers on the panel. "It's really in Division 1 that you learn a lot about players, because you will always come up against top opposition, which wasn't the case last year when we were involved in a few poor games.

"Monaghan were the only team to beat us in Division 2 last year, and there wasn't a whole lot between us when we met them again in the final. I reckon it will be another close match on Sunday, but it would obviously be nice to have a couple of points in the bag going into the game against Kerry the following weekend."

While O'Sullivan suspects that Cork could be a few weeks behind other teams in terms of preparation, he doesn't regard that as a bad thing. "The lads had a long season last year, and they were entitled to a bit of a break over the winter.

"November and December were closed months as such, so there wasn't a whole pile done, and we were away on holidays for the first fortnight in January. We have played CIT, Limerick and Dublin in challenge games since then, but whether we are up to the level that Monaghan are at now is something we won't find out until Sunday.

"We would be hopeful of winning, but I suppose the main thing for us as selectors is to learn a bit more about the players, and we will look forward to the remainder of the league irrespective of the outcome," admitted the Cork mentor from Dromtariffe," he confirmed.

- Noel Horgan