Dingle set to end the year on a high

WEST KERRY SFC FINAL Annascaul v Dingle

Sunday, November 18 Páirc an Ághasaigh, Dingle

FOR Annascaul this is a pretty daunting assignment.

The travel further west on Sunday to the belly of the beast to face a side second only this year to a fearsome Dr Crokes combination. Dingle will be overwhelming favourites for this year’s West Kerry crown, of that there can be little doubt.

The thing about all that is though that Annascaul will travel without any burden of expectation. They’re perfectly placed to spring an upset. Waiting in the long grass is exactly where you’d want to be before this final remembering always that district championships and district finals exist in their own reality to a very large extent.

The fact that Annascaul are a junior club and Dingle are senior matters less here than you’d think. That Dingle are Division 1 and Annascaul Division 3 is interesting to note, but maybe not as relevant as some might imagine at first glance.

Especially so when Annascaul won promotion to Division 2. That’s positive momentum right there. The trouble is their last league game was in August, that’s a lot of time to be left clicking your heels.

Sure they played in the West Kerry championship since then, but their semi-final victory over Lispole will have been over a month ago by the time the ball is thrown in on Sunday afternoon in Páirc an Ághasaigh.

Since then Dingle have played twice against East Kerry, once against Dr Crokes and they had last weekend’s West Kerry semi-final victory over An Ghaeltacht to sustain them. That’s invaluable. It’s hard to see how Annascaul can be anywhere near as sharp as their neighbours.

Dingle too look to have the stronger panel of players at their disposal. That’s not to say Annascaul are without quality of their own, they obviously have quite a bit – guys like Jamie O’Driscoll, Shane Foley, Cathal Ferriter and James Crean stand out – they just don’t seem to have quite as much as Dingle do.

In Paul Geaney, Dingle have the county championship’s top scorer. In Mikey Geaney they’ve got a real asset and fulcrum at eleven. In Tom O’Sullivan they’ve got one of the most explosive half-backs in the game.

All the indications are that Dingle should have enough to win this game. The proviso has to be that in a district final things can happen that you otherwise might not expect – like Division 5 Valentia downing Division 3 Waterville in South Kerry a few weeks ago.

Whatever happens we can probably expect fireworks.

Dingle

Verdict: