Celebrating our seventh Croke Park double day

Well here we are again. Back in the big time. Back in Croke Park. Back with two Kerry teams forming part of a double-header of All Ireland club football championship finals.

We suppose we’ve become somewhat used to them in the Kingdom at this stage – in the past thirteen years we’ve had seven of these double days at Headquarters – but we should never become complacent about them, we should never lose sight of just how special they are and what they say about football in this part of the world.

Kerry club football is unquestionably the strongest in all of the thirty two counties. The structures for our domestic game work brilliantly well and have allowed Kerry clubs to flourish once they’ve gone beyond our borders.

That’s bred a certain amount of resentment in other quarters – there’s a feeling that Kerry doesn’t have enough senior clubs and it skews the competitive order beneath the senior championship – but you could easily flip that and ask others why they aren’t following the Kerry model more closely?

No matter that’s for others to worry about. For Kerry football folk these days have become days of celebration and communion, up there with big inter-county days for people with connections to the clubs, beyond them even let’s be honest.

Club – as the advertising slogan goes – is family. It means everything to the people of these communities. It meant everything to the all the clubs who’ve experienced it before. It will mean everything to Beaufort and to Kilcummin.

Primrose and blue and green and red will take over certain sections of Croke Park next Saturday afternoon. It’s their day, but the entire county will be behind them as they approach the final frontier.

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