Adare up against it with Kenmare

IT’D be fair to say not many saw Adare coming in this championship this year.

It wasn’t altogether unsurprising that they won the Limerick championship – they were a senior football club as recently as twelve months ago – what was a surprise was the seeming ease with which they put to the sword the Cork champions.

Adare saw off Kiskeam in Mallow by three points, but their victory was relatively comfortable. Writing in our sister publication, The Corkman, Noel Horgan offered the following assessment of their performance that day.

“They had outstanding individual contributions from such as Shane Costello and Limerick senior panellist Hugh Bourke up front, Jack English at midfield and Diarmuid Sexton at wing back, while centre back David Connolly and hard-working wing forward Davy Lyons – who was surprisingly called ashore approaching the last ten minutes – were others to make a particularly telling input to what, in essence, was a vibrant team display.

“It would be fair to say Adare held most of the aces [...] with the impact made by midfielder English and Costello at full-forward especially significant in terms of undermining Kiskeam’s aspirations overall.”

Adare would, of course, be better known as a hurling club and quite a number of the players on this football side would be better known as hurlers. Others like, Shane Costello who also plays with Limerick FC, dabble in other sports like soccer and rugby.

Their star player and name for the future is Hugh Bourke at corner-forward. He was a senior panellist this summer with Limerick for the Munster championship and should be in a position to step up to the starting fifteen before long. He has also played rugby with UL Bohs.

The bookies give Kenmare a 1/7 chance of victory this weekend and the word from Limerick is that such odds are more than likely justified.

A word of caution, however, an unfancied Limerick Under 21 side arguably should have beaten Jack O’Connor’s Kerry in the Munster semi-final this year and this Adare team have already shown a healthy disregard for the favourites – Kiskeam might be a little parish, but they’re now a senior club in the most powerful GAA county.

Kenmare beware.