Munster journey starts at home for Templenoe
Damian Stack Templenoe manager John Rice is eagerly looking forward to the Munster championship campaign
IT works really well, having the club championship in the month of April (and into the first weekend of May).
For one thing it gives you a properly condensed championship with games coming thick and fast and with a form-line you can follow from start to last. It just makes more sense than the way it used to be: a spurt for a couple of weeks early in the season followed by a scramble late in the year to find suitable dates for semi-finals and finals.
The change to the club championships has made for a better senior county championship too. Teams and districts, by and large, have just one thing to focus their energies on. Just about the only drawback we can see is that it leaves county club champions (intermediate and premier junior principally) in a little bit of limbo.
Na Gaeil and Templenoe won their county titles on May 5. That’s six months ago now. In football terms a lifetime. Potentially it could put the Kerry clubs at a disadvantage compared to the Munster brethren, but given that both Beaufort and Kilcummin won All Ireland titles in the first year of this new format we probably shouldn’t overstate that difficulty either.
It does, however, present a unique set of circumstances.
“It’s like two different seasons to be honest with you,” Templenoe boss John Rice said this week.
“You put so much effort into winning the county at the start and that finished in the first of May. We’ve had no competitive game with the Kerry lads since. We’ve basically been fielding a different team for the county league and we’re back in, integrating the boys again and trying to start again.
“You can see that the championships in Cork and in Waterford are just finished last week, it’s a different set up, but then again it probably suits us having county players to do it in one month in April because we wouldn’t have had the county fellas anyway. It’s horses for courses.”
Even aside from the absence of their county stars – more of which anon – Temple haven’t played a competitive game of any description in quite a while.
“We played the last round of the county league, we played it in between the two All Irelands. We were already relegated so the game didn’t matter to us so we just played the league and got it out of the way,” Rice explains.
Given that Kilcummin – and Beaufort too – navigated these very same waters last year we do wonder whether Rice sought advice from former Kilcummin boss Willie Maher on how he and his management team approached it?
“I met Willie shortly after they won the All Ireland,” Rice says.
“But that wasn’t the conversation I had with him because every club is different. They only had one county player involved and we’ve had four so it’s been a bit different.”
That’s very true. Not every club has four players on the senior football panel, not every club has four starters as Templenoe did on occasion this summer, notably the All Ireland semi-final against Tyrone with Tadhg Morley, Gavin Crowley and the Spillane brothers Killian and Adrian were all named to start.
For any club that’s exceptional, but for a club the size of Templenoe it’s other level stuff. They must have been bursting with pride down there on Kenmare Bay throughout the summer months.
“Absolutely and the experience that they have gained in their football has been tremendous for themselves,” Rice says.
“You’d find a lot of senior clubs who wouldn’t have four players involved in the senior championship, but look we’ve got a great bunch of lads they’re top of their game and it’s great for us to see them that way.
“It’s been great [to have them back]. A week after the All Ireland the lads were back in with us and it was like they were never away. It is of course and you have Killian Spillane in and
Gavin Crowley in and involved with their colleges straight away as well, so you don’t get much time and often it’s get up on the bike again for those guys too and it’s good for them.”
A challenge for a club team preparing for Munster championship at this time of year is that a lot of the teams they’d be interested in having challenge matches with are themselves in the thick of championship action. Rice, though, says Templenoe have worked the situation quite well.
“No problem [getting games],” he says.
“We played Beaufort last week and this weekend then we’re actually playing Na Gaeil. Both ourselves and Na Gaeil are preparing for championship as well so from that point of view it’s been going well. We were out of the county championship so we didn’t have that conflicting with the club so we were able to have full focus on our own thing.”
Those county championship matches with Kenmare District were probably of some benefit to Templenoe given that they were the bulk suppliers to the district side.
“It was,” Rice confirms. “Because we got two very good games that we just lost by a point, one after extra-time. It was two games that we probably hadn’t had at that level since the intermediate final. It was anywhere from ten and I think at one stage we had thirteen of the fifteen playing on the field.”
Their opponents this weekend – Déise kingpins St Saviours – shouldn’t put up too much of a challenge to this mighty Templenoe combination, but as always with this championship you just never know 100%. There are a lot of known unknowns.
“Very little,” Rice replies when asked about what he knows about Saviours.
“I think they were a senior club up until a couple of years ago and after winning now they’re gone up senior again. They’re a Waterford city club, a young club team so other than that we wouldn’t know much about them.
“You’d expect with the level of football that they’re at, but you can’t take anything for granted it’s the first hurdle, we’re not looking beyond that so next Saturday now is the challenge.”
Saturday of course is going to be a big day for Templenoe. Munster championship is nothing new to the 2016 All Ireland junior club champions, but hosting a provincial championship match on their home patch is.
“It’s great because with the junior before we didn’t have any home games. Having a home game is a massive plus and all the community are rowing in together and I’m sure it’s going to be a big occasion for everybody.”
No doubt it will be. Given the scale of what’s already been achieved they deserve to enjoy it too down there.
It’s great because with the junior before we didn’t have any home games. Having a home game is a massive plus