Firies can blaze a trail to title if Dromid are without O’Shea
COUNTY PREMIER JUNIOR FOOTBALL FINAL Dromid Pearses v Firies SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28 at 4pm in JP O’Sullivan Park, Killorglin
SATURDAY’S County Junior football final brings together two clubs not accustomed to a whole lot of major success in recent times but who will both contribute to what should be an engaging and keenly contested title decider.
Dromid Pearses, under the management of native son Declan O’Sullivan, are a small South Kerry club with big ambitions and they are on the rise. The last contested this final in 2014, when they lost out to Brosna, but they have stuck with it and winning promotion to Division Two of the County League this season points to a team on the up, in every sense.
Their path to Saturday’s final hasn’t been all that smooth but this Dromid team never shirks a challenge and they have navigated three character building tests, including two South Kerry derbies. They had three points to spare over neighbours Renard before Fossa pushed them to the brink in a fascinating quarter-final. It was another derby for the semi-final - a more comfortable nine-point win over Skellig Rangers in Cahersiveen, but on a tough afternoon weather-wise O’Sullivan’s team had to smartly game manage their way to victory.
Fresh from their exploits with the Southn Kerry divisional team last Sunday, Dromid welcome back
Graham O’Sullivan, Niall O’Shea, Chris Farley, Shane O’Connor and Dilan O’Donoghue, and they will look to that quintet to anchor the team and drive on their challenge. Further experience comes in the form of Denis ‘Shine’ O’Sullivan, Aidan’ Shine’ O’Sullivan and Thomas Curran, and the management will be working on getting a complete performance out of the team. Dromid have averaged 17 points in their three championship matches and the belief is that they will have to hit that number again - at least - if they’re to prevail on Saturday.
The reason is that Firies have been shooting the lights out in their Championship run, averaging 23 points in their three games. Manager Jerry O’Sullivan can’t, or won’t downplay that sort of Championship form and it’s precisely what he’s looking for again on Saturday.
“To be honest, out League form hasn’t been great. We’re still stuck in Division Four after the year, but there are days when the team will score very well for you and it just so happens we’ve hit form in that bregard in our three Championship matches. Of course we’d be hoping that form continues the next day.
“Dromid have just got promoted to Division Two so there’s no doubt we’re up against a quality team in them. They’re going to a totally different challenge to anything we’ve met so far,” O’Sullivan, who also managed East Kerry this year, said.
Many people might have expected Dromid to be taking on Na Gaeil in the final such was the weight of expectation on the Tralee club to come through their semi-final with Firies in Castleisland, but the East Kerry club stung Na Gaeil for three goals and 12 points to win by three point.
“Look, semi-finals are for winning, simple as that,” Jerry O’Sullivan says. “They’re not for doing anything fancy. Get the job done, that’s all. The focus is all about playing Dromid now, but we’re just concentrating on ourselves now. At this level you’d know a bit in general about the opposition, and you’d be aware of a few players to watch, but there wouldn’t be the level of opposition analysis that you’d have higher up the grades or at inter-county level. I didn’t see Dromid’s semi-final (played before Firies semi-final) and you just wouldn’t have the video coverage to do any real in-depth analysis,” O’Sullivan says.
“We’re in a county final against a very good team. It’s all about confidence in yourself and what you’re doing. We’ve to make sure we’re prepared well, that fellas are fit and they know what they’re about and what job they have to do. After that there’s a game of football to be played, you hope you do enough things right and that you come out on the right side of the result.”
Firies have slight injury concerns with Liam Brosnan (rated 75% by his manager to be available) and Mike Daly (rated 50/50 by O’Sullivan). Outside of that they will look to Jack Sherwood (black carded very early in the semi-final win ove Na Gaeil) as well as Easy Kerry panellists Stephen Foley, Padraig De Brúin and Josh Flynn. The addition of All-Ireland minor winners Donnacadh O’Sullivan and Niall Donohue has bolstered them further.
Dromid Pearses manager Declan O’Sullivan has hard a long lead into this final, with that semi-final win over Skellig Rangers going all the way back to September 9.
Niall O’Shea is the main injury concern, after he limped off with a leg injury playing for South Kerry in last Sunday’s county final. As far as his participation in next Saturday’s final goes, O’Sullivan says it’s a ‘wait and see’ game until much closer to the weekend.
“A six-day turnaround with any sort of injury is a short time for a player, so we’ll just see how Niall responds to treatment and give him as much time as possible, probably up to Saturday morning.
“As for our preparations it’s been difficult enough. We’ve had no competitive game since the semi-final, we had five guys in with South Kerry and we’ve four guys away in Dublin so we don’t see them during the week,” O’Sullivan explained. “We’ve worked as well as we could with the South Kerry management. Obviously we all wanted them to do as well as possible and give the five lads the opportunity with that, so we’ve just been trying to tick over ourselves and prepare as best as we can.
“We’ve had a good league campaign, but league and championship are completely different animals. We’ve had a couple of really tough tests in the championship to reach this final, but it’s so spread out that we’re not sure if we’re bringing any of that form with us. We’re into winter football now and a lot will depend on the conditions and how players perform on the day.”
On Saturday’s opposition O’Sullivan has been impressed by what he’s seen.
“I’ve seen them play twice recently and they’ve been very impressive. They beat a very good Na Gaeil team (in semi-final) that had beaten us well in the county league. And they lost Jack Sherwood to a very early black card that day. They’re a young, driven team that shows great togetherness.
“A lot of things come into a final. The preparations, obviously, and they haven’t had the distraction of having players in the county championship over the last few weeks, and they had a three-week run-in from their semi-final, which is fairly ideal.
“Still, we’re in a county final, and we’d be happy enough with the way were fixed. We’ve a fairly experience side, a good few of our lads would have been in finals like this, but at this time of year a lot of it comes down to the day itself,” the Dromid manager added.
For all the reasons the two O’Sullivan managers have outlined this is a difficult game to predict a winner from. Niall O’Shea’s participation will be vital for Dromid, but the form suggests Firies might just have a bit too much scoring power.