All the reasons why The Nire might beat Dr Crokes in Munster Final but won’t

Dr Crokes v The Nire (Waterford) Sunday, November 27 Mallow Co Cork at 3.30pm

IF you’re short on time here we’ll give you the synopsis right now. We’ve six hundred words to fill on a Munster Club football final between the Kerry champions and the Waterford champions so it goes like this: we give all the reasons why the latter will make it tough, very tough, for the former and how the latter cannot be underestimated, but then we’ll plump for the former to shade it. So, Dr Crokes to win then.

That simple? Perhaps not. On the opposite page Crokes selector Harry O’Neill makes a compelling case for why his team will be taking nothing for granted. And as a team preparing as professionally as possible only without the pay packet at the end of the week, that’s a good starting place for the Kerry champions.

After all, until one or the other of Dr Crokes or The Nire claim victory in Mallow next Sunday, the reigning Munster champions remain Clonmel Commercials. It tells you all you need to know about the Munster Club Championship.

There was plenty of introspection in Lewis Road following a subdued semi-final win over Loughmore-Castleiney, and last Saturday’s County League final win over Dr Crokes wasn’t much use over than to keep the winning momentum going.

The positives were that Tony Brosnan, Jordan Kiely and Micheal Burns all started and played well enough to give the team selectors a headache this week.

One view might be that The Nire are an ageing team but with a lot of experience among their ranks, therefore Crokes should stick with the older guard to begin with and keep the young cubs in reserve.

As always, the contributions of Colm Cooper, Kieran O’Leary, Johnny Buckley and Fionn Fitzgerald will be critical to Crokes performance, but this game might well hinge on what Ambrose O’Donovan, Alan O’Sullivan, Mike Moloney, Brian Looney and Eoin Brosnan can wring out of themselves.

Word from Waterford is that The Nire’s high-energy and attack-minded style belies their age profile, and that between losing Munster Finals to Stacks two years ago and Crokes a decade ago, there’s a significant itch there they feel they can successfully scratch this time around.

They went to Clonakilty a couple of weeks ago and confounded expectations against Carbery Rangers, so they won’t mind facing Crokes in Mallow.

So there you go: plenty of reasons why The Nire could upset the odds and why Dr Crokes might be caught. But they won’t.

Verdict: Dr Crokes