The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Wallace praises young, ambitious players for effort
KERRY’S Junior team manager Stephen Wallace was full of credit for his players after they made it three Munster titles on the bounce for Kerry with a tough one-point win over a very commendable Cork team.
“We were wrote off by everybody, we had to build a whole new team and it’s a credit to those guys who had to work very hard the last couple of weeks,” Wallace said. “We were lucky to get over Limerick, to be honest, and that was a damn good Cork team there, laced with under-21s who were in an All-Ireland final not so long ago. It is so hard to rebuild a team, and I can’t give them enough credit.
“And it’s not just about these 24 lads. We had to give another ten players bad news last week that they weren’t on the match day squad, but I know those guys will be back in with us as eager as ever next week when we get back to work.
“These players are young, they’re ambitious, they want to move on with their careers. It’s more about this 26, we probably have an extended panel of nearly forty players. They work hard, there’s a great bond between them, they get on well off the field, which I think is very important too.
“I thought we were comfortable. We went five up, had the chance to go six. We were four up, and had the chance of a goal and could have gone seven. We looked comfortable but Cork were never going to go away, and then they completely took over in the middle of the field. A couple of our guys maybe the legs went a bit and that’s something we got to look at. I must say, our guys stuck to the task, they battled hard, and I’d have to say Cork never threatened for a goal. When you’re two and three up the worry is you’ll concede a goal but we never looked like conceding one.”
Looking ahead to the All-Ireland semi-final Wallace said: “We’ve Lancashire now, I think, in a semi-final. I don’t know anything about them and it’s unknown territory for us. The one thing I do know is that in 2014 the Cavan team that beat us in the All-Ireland Final got the fright of their lives over in Scotland in the semi-final and they beat us afterwards.
“We have to keep our eye on the ball, you respect everybody, you don’t know what class of an animal is coming up against you. We will respect everyone we come up against and you can be sure they will have damn good footballers and they’ll relish the opportunity to play Kerry.
Meanwhile, the consensus man of the match winner, Adrian Spillane, was relieved to have beaten Cork.
“Beating Cork in Stack Park is always a massive achievement so we’ll enjoy this. We came out with a ferocious pace at the start and we got a good run on them. I suppose that dented their pride a small bit and they were always going to come out fighting in the second half and they put in a massive second half.
“I know a few of the Cork lads from college and they’re big physical players, good footballers, and they gave us a tough but fine clean game of football.
“The win over Limerick was a game under our belt and we gained confidence from that, but then we put in two massive weeks of training after that and that brought us one even further.
“It was a great team performance from us. Everyone put in a huge effort,” the Templenoe club man said.