Shanahan: we need to re-energise the district championships

SOUTH Kerry manager John Shanahan believes that better, more competitive district board championships would make for a better county championship and says the County Board should do all they can to help the Districts to re-boot their local competitions.

“I still think the district boards keep this championship what it is. I definitely believe that,” Shanahan said. I’d strongly ask the county board to see if they can re-energise the district boards because what makes us stand out in South Kerry is our local championship, and if the local championships can get right, for the likes of St Kierans and Shannon Rangers and Feale Rangers I think we’d have a better (county) championship going forward.”

On last Sunday’s semi-final replay loss to Crokes, Shanahan said: “I just felt Crokes got to the pitch of the game very early on, and we were always chasing the game. Obviously, Bryan (Sheehan) got a big, big hit there very early in the game and it did affect us a small bit.

“They have been here before in these situations, they’re a very determined team, and you could see that out there. They learned more than us, and I think their bodies recovered better than ours in the week.

Meanwhile, Dr Crokes selector Niall O’Callaghan felt the champions managed their game better last Sunday.

“We managed the game better today when we went up four or five points. The last day we didn’t manage the game very well and they got us into extra-time. We didn’t start playing until we were four points down,” he said.

“We had to get the message into fellas this week that we can’t afford to do that again. If that happens again we are gone, we’re beaten.

“I think a lot of things didn’t go South Kerry’s way, in terms of Bryan (Sheehan) I think he picked up a knock early and that didn’t help them. From our point of view we were hungry today and we had our homework done and we tried to bottle up the middle really. I think we did a really good job at that. Even when they did run at us they didn’t hurt us because they didn’t break through. The (South Kerry) goal was very disappointing from our point of view because we were comfortable at the time, six points up.

“We knew where we could build and we worked on that all week. The group of players we have here, they’re going for their eighth (county title) in ten years, it’s a phenomenal record in anybody’s books. There are serious leaders in our dressing room. They questioned us as a management team to get our stuff right, and that’s why it’s so good to coach these fellas.”