Four things we learned...
Keane is ready to move on up
At minor level there’s nothing left for Peter Keane to prove or to achieve. He’s done it all and done it in style. He’s won victories in a hard-fought battles – the 2016 final with Galway – he’s won them by shock and awe – the 2017 final against Derry – and he’s won them coming from behind – this year.
He’s taken on the baton from a previous management team and kept on winning. He’s carried that momentum with him for a second season (winning four titles on-the-trot for his county) and he’s helped create an entirely new team at a new age grade to win an historic five All Ireland titles in-a-row.
We don’t doubt that if he was to continue as minor boss he’d keep on doing a fantastic job, but the time has come for him to move on. In our view he’s proven himself to be the outstanding candidate for the Kerry senior job and that’s the obvious next move for him.
With his self-evident ability to get the best out of young players, his knowledge of the talent that’s in the county and his style of play he’s got a tailor-made CV for one of the hottest seats in Irish sport.
Daly’s work paying massive dividends
After winning a fifth All Ireland minor title in succession it’s easy to become a little complacent, to think that underage success is the natural order of things for bluebloods such as the Kingdom undoubtedly are.
What we shouldn’t forget is that it wasn’t so long ago that people were wondering about and worrying about the Kerry production line (and, no, it wasn’t just Joe Brolly). Kerry hadn’t won a minor title in twenty years (1994) and had just one Under 21 title to their name in twenty years (2008).
We can attribute this turnaround to hard work and good planning, to work done by the County Board, to the structures they put in place with Donal Daly overseeing the whole thing, to development coaches like Vince Cooper, Micheál Quirke, John Dillon, PJ Reidy, Éamonn Fitzgerald and Tomás Ó Muircheartaigh as well as many other volunteers and coaches at club level and people who have given time to development squads over the years – including Seán O’Sullivan of this parish and several other former Kerry players.
It really does take a village. The Kerry success story has many fathers and mothers. They all deserve credit for it.
This team has stars of the future
It’s going to take a while, but we’d be fairly certain there’s going to be at least a couple of stars of the future out of this Kerry minor team.
We’re not going to have a situation like last year where David Clifford was able to step up straight away – they wouldn’t be old enough – nor are we going to have a situation whereby they come on stream within a year of two like Seán O’Shea. No it’s going to take a little more time than that. Give them at least three years to make a panel and possibly even a fourth year before they start getting regular game time – a lot of these players won’t be older than nineteen or twenty years of age in three years time.
Some of these players will have a second year at minor level. Given their tender years it probably wouldn’t be fair to name names of who we’d expect to step up in the years ahead, but it’s probably fairly obvious to anybody who was in Croke Park on Sunday who’s got the potential to do so (remembering that potential is just that, nothing is certain or can be taken for granted).
The county loves its young stars
There was a very healthy attendance from the Kingdom in Croker on Sunday afternoon and there was an even bigger attendance in Kilcummin on Monday evening to welcome these young stars back to the county. Clearly the love affair the county has with its underage teams and stars hasn’t been diminished by continued success. The county has really got behind these teams this past five years, the county’s desire for success has by no means been stated.