Keane: motivation is to win and get to Croke Park
A SIXTH consecutive appearance for a Kerry Minor side in an All-Ireland Minor quarter-final sees them travel to Portlaoise on Saturday facing a Louth side who are venturing beyond Leinster at this level for the first time since 1953.
The Wee County recently lost their first Leinster final appearance since 1971 to Dublin meaning they would face Kerry at this stage and while the opposition might not be the mostly highly regarded based on tradition, Kerry minor manager Peter Keane feels that the Kerry squad’s own personal motivation should keep them on their toes ahead of Saturday.
“Ordinarily you would be playing a game like this in Croke Park other years but with the way the dates fell this year we weren’t expecting that the quarter-final would be there. Now the motivation is to try and win here and ensure that we will be in Croke Park for an All-Ireland semi-final,” Keane said.
While it has appeared straight-forward in Kerry getting to the business end of the year, Keane says that with the initial draw in Munster pitting Kerry against Cork at the semi-final stage, no sense of feeling guaranteed about being here was evident at the outset amongst the camp.
“The draw made it very hard for us to think about this time of the year when we started because we knew we would have to get a lot of preparation done earlier than last year to be right for May when we would be playing for an extending run this year,” he said.
An extra week of a gap between the Munster Minor Final and the All-Ireland quarter-Ffnal this year has meant more games in the County Minor Championship being played with the competition down to the semi-final stage as opposed to the quarter-final stage this time last year. Keane acknowledges that there can be concerns about burnout but feels such an environment creates hunger and a sense of sharpness amongst the panel.
“In fairness to the County Board they managed the window that was there for the Minor Championship games well and it does give you the opportunity to bring in a player who caught your eye and see how he gets on against the panel itself. That keeps all the players on their toes because they know if they don’t perform that they could be replaced. A lot of what we have been doing since the players came back to us is really about trying to keep them fresh,” the Cahersiveen man said.
With the Munster Final being played before the Leinster semi-finals this year, it has given the Kerry management a good chance to assess the eastern province in advance of the quarter-finals and Keane feels that Louth deserve respect for the manner in which they came out of Leinster.
“They looked dead and buried in the game against Wexford in the semi-final but came back to win while similar to Clare against us in the Munster Final they were caught by two sucker punches early on with the goals Dublin got against them in the Leinster Final. There is a bit of know-how about them and they appear to be a very athletic side from what we have seen of them,” he said about Saturday’s opponents. It will be hard to convince anyone that Kerry will go into this game as anything other than favourites based on form, pedigree and tradition and Keane admits to a certain extent that keeping the players in the right frame of mind ahead of the game.
“There’s a lot of things going on for the players at the moment between thinking about their Leaving Cert results and what might follow after that but in a football sense they know they have to perform in this game to not only keep their year going but also make sure of their places for an All-Ireland semi-final if we make it there. They know if they don’t perform that there are other players there who could take their place,” he said.
Regardless of Saturday’s result there will be another outing for the U-17 contingent in an All-Ireland Semi-Final the following weekend against Roscommon, something that Keane agrees will be challenging not just for the players but also the management team.
“In fairness everyone is putting their shoulder to the wheel on that one (the two different games) and trying to make sure one doesn’t take over from the other in trying to get things right for both matches. The one thing I think we got right is having the same people involved in both sides.
“A lot of counties went with separate management teams for both this year and it didn’t seem to work. I saw that Galway played the Connacht U-17 Final without their Minor contingent and that is probably a good reason to have kept all the players under one management set-up. Different managers will want different pounds of fleshes from players involved in two different teams and in the end they can end up being no good to either,” he said of trying to make two different sides work successfully.
When asked about David Clifford’s form this year with all the talk that is being generated about the Fossa player’s future, Keane said he is very happy with the team captain’s temperament in the face of it all but with the trip up the M7 looming on Saturday, Keane is confident the Minors can replicate the level of performance seen in the Munster semi-final and final wins thus far in the campaign.
“Getting the right performance is the first thing and I would be confident that the consistency should follow through from there. We’re not worried about the players being motivated for this, they dream about playing for Kerry from the time they are seven or eight years old and Minor level is the first time they get a chance to play in such an environment so they are very eager for the opportunity.”