John Owens still hopes the O'Groman siblings will be available to the Waterford footballers.

Deise football boss Owens received a major blow when twin brothers Maurice and Thomas - stalwarts of his team who have both earned representative honours with Munster - announced that they were going to try out for the county hurlers this year.

Owens' loss appears to be Michael Ryan's gain but as long as the pair haven't made the cut with the hurlers, the football manager is keeping his fingers crossed that they'll become available to him once more before the calendar year is out.

"There's no guarantee that they'll be with the hurlers later in the year, or even on February 5th," Owens says in the Independent.

"But they felt like they wanted to give it a go. When I was with Tipperary, I experienced the same problem and I always knew that we were fighting an uphill battle." Tweet

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