Kennedy reckons Clare can reach All-Ireland quarter finals no matter how they fare today
HE KNOWS enough about Clare football to realise what a win over Kerry would mean to the county but John Kennedy can’t see it happening.
A Kerry man with three All-Ireland medals, the former Clare manager believes there’s no great fear of Killarney being sacked this afternoon by raiders from the north.
The larger issue of how far Clare will progress in the Championship, however, is an entirely different matter and Kennedy isn’t alone in including the Banner in his list of teams that could still be standing come August.
Clare’s last two great summers both came in the 1990s, famously beating Kerry in ’92 to claim the Munster title and lowering Cork five years later.
But in the qualifier era where the general consensus is that the serious business only starts with All-Ireland quarter-finals, being included among those teams could very well rank up there with Clare’s achievements of the ’90s.
The present Clare side has shown enough under Colm Collins to suggest it’s a realistic goal, gaining Allianz League promotions in two of the last three seasons to rise up to Division 2 level.
More than that, the manner of their Division 3 final win over Kildare, when all of their big guns fired at Croke Park, indicated they’re at home among the game’s higher achievers.
‘It’s all about progress for Clare and that doesn’t necessarily mean they have to beat Kerry,’ said Kennedy. ‘There’s a qualifier route there and I think if you’re involved with Clare you’re seeing no reason you couldn’t go all the way through that. Is an All-Ireland quarterfinal achievable for Clare? Absolutely.
‘They’re a Division 2 team now. That’s below the top eight but they’re right there in the next tier and there’s lots of teams in that division aiming to be still around in August.
‘For this Clare team, it’s something that’s attainable and I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t a target for them. That would mark a fantastic year for Clare.’
Older Clare supporters who partook in the celebrations after the ’92 success may baulk at the suggestion of eclipsing that with a mere run to the last eight.
But it’s a fact that in 15 years of the All-Ireland qualifiers, Clare have only once reached the last round, in 2012. That wasn’t exactly progression either as they happened to reach a Munster final with a solitary win over Limerick and were subsequently hammered by Cork, in the final, and Kerry in the qualifiers.
In that same 15-year period, Clare have played just 39 Championship games, a little over two a summer, which boils down to regularly losing in the Munster championship and regularly losing their next game in the qualifiers.
Set in that context, it would be a huge achievement to successfully navigate the entire back door system. Or they could simply beat Kerry today and rip up that script.
‘Funnily enough, they’re going into this in an ideal way, not showing too much against Limerick and getting the win without much fuss,” said Kennedy, a three-in-arow All-Ireland winner from 1984 to 1986. ‘The fear is that if Clare fall behind early on and leak a few scores they’ll be playing catch-up and will find it difficult to contain a side like Kerry.
‘But Clare have a good system and a great level of
fitness, their results this year have proven that. So they’ll go in believing they can do it but I don’t see Kerry being complacent about this or getting caught.
‘I think they’re pretty serious about every game under Eamonn Fitzmaurice and it’s kind of all systems go now towards an All-Ireland semi-final with Dublin.’
Kennedy managed current Kerry players like David Moran, Barry John Keane, Shane Enright and Peter Crowley at Under 21 level. His sense of the team right now is that they are bloodied after two national final defeats to Dublin in nine months but unbowed.
‘With 10 minutes to go in the League final, they were right there in it,’ said Kennedy. ‘But there were an awful lot of positives for Kerry to take out of the league. I think they’ll be quite happy with the things they’ve been trying out.
‘The big questions in Kerry now are what things they’ll stick with and what will they discard. Will they keep Paul Murphy at number 11 and Donaghy at midfield? Will Mark Griffin be left at fullback? Will there be more time for Brian O Beaglaoich, Tadhg Morley, Jason Foley, Killian Spillane, Mark O’Connor, all those fellas? I think it’s an uncertain time for Kerry but an exciting time.’