Quarter-finals offer few clues as to winner
WELL, here it is again! For the third time in four years in the Munster Minor Championship it’s Cork versus Kerry in a semi-final with the loser finished for the year before the summer starts in earnest. The rights and wrongs of this situation aside, Kerry have a tremendous record in these matches, not just against Cork but elsewhere as only the 2011 defeat to Tipperary in Thurles stands as a recent loss at this stage.
No two years at Minor level are ever the same and maybe more so this year with the Minor Championship now fully played with under-17 footballers.
Last year at this stage was arguably where David Clifford showed those in Kerry - and beyond - he was everything we thought he would be after the promise of 2016, but with no such experience to call on ahead of Tuesday night, matters are delicately posed.
At the semi-final stage of a provincial championship you’d usually expect to be able to reach back into competition for clues as to how this penultimate game might go, but given the ease with which Cork and Kerry eased through their respective quarter-finals those clues are in short supply.
Cork humbled Waterford to the tune of 27 points - 4-20 to 0-5 - so whatever the Cork management might say about needing to improve and making mistakes that evening in Pairc Ui Rinn, the reality is that Bobbie O’Dwyer and his selectors will have learned very little.
Ditto Peter Keane that Kerry. The Kingdom’s 1-15 to 0-4 quarter-final win wasn’t quite the whitewash that occured in Cork, but Kerry were never once under pressure against a Tipperary that was extremely disappointing.
With the Cork goals coming from Aodhán Ó Luasa (1-5 in all), Conor Corbett, Seán McDonnell, and Evan Cooke, as well as Dara O’Sullivan and Michael O’Neill contributing three points from play each, Kerry will be mindful of a potential scoring threat from several outlets, but quite how those players perform against far better opposition, as they will in Tralee, remains to be seen.
Kerry’s first outing in Thurles showed there is something there for the Minors to be positive about, maybe the fact Tipperary have come through the Losers Round play-offs to make the other semi-final with Clare shows they actually did beat a useful outfit, but the lack of spring and panache does lend itself towards caution in six days’ time.
Exciting forward Paul Walsh gained most of the plaudits for the Thurles victory, but equally impressive was the concession of just four points - similar to Cork’s five against Waterford -, but this will be a fair more serious examination of their worth with Ó Luasa expected to be the main Cork threat alongside Corbett and Sean McDonnell.
Calling this is most difficult as we have only one competitive game and the younger age of all the players to go on but it should be a very close contest.
Usually an All-Ireland Schools success would give Kerry supporters some confidence about a Kerry Minor side doing well after. There isn’t such a success to go on here this year and one feels on the law of averages Cork will get the better of Kerry sometime at this level.
Whether it is next Tuesday in the cauldron in Austin Stack Park only time will tell but don’t be surprised if this goes all the way to extra-time like three years ago in the last such meeting in Tralee.
Verdict: Cork