Decimated Leitrim team will struggle to compete with Kerry

WHAT they giveth with one hand they take away with the other.

Every football in Leitrim is eligible to play with the county’s second string football team - the Juniors. That is until they play senior Championship football with the county. Then they are ineligible from playing with the Juniors.

Last May Leitrim Junior team manager Seamus Quinn drew widely and without restriction from the county’s 24 football clubs, half of which are ranked as senior teams for the purpose of the county championship.

Quinn picked a panel and a team for the Connacht championship that contained lots of excellent players, who were not on the Leitrim senior team that played in the National League but who weren’t far off the senior team. As a result they beat Galway by four points in Carrick-on-Shannon before seeing off Mayo in the provincial final by 1-16 to 0-6 in Charlestown.

All in all, Quinn would have felt his team had at least a puncher’s chance in the All-Ireland semi-final, even if that was against the might of Kerry.

Then, along came the senior Connacht Championship, and the purging of the Junior panel for the games against London and Roscommon, and the recent Qualifier defeat to Carlow. It has left Quinn’s panel decimated to the tune of about half of the starting team that won the Connacht final eight weeks ago.

Players such as Keith Beirne, Oisin Madden, Dean and Niall McGovern, Gerry Plunkett, Wayne McKeon and Keith Keegan who collected a Connacht Junior medal in May have paid a price for playing their way into the senior team, and the reality is that any expectation Leitrim would have had of beating Kerry has been severely diminished by this.

Quinn will still call on experienced players such as Alan Armstrong, James Mitchel, Jack Heslin, Philip Farrelly, Cathal McCrann, Nicholas McWeeney and James Campbell - some of whom were senior panellists this year but overall it’s a Leitrim team that simply cannot match up with the quality and inter-county experience of Kerry.

The focus in Leitrim at the moment is very much on the county SFC, which was due to start this weekend but has been postponed for a week because of this fixture.

Quite where this All-Ireland semi-final ranks among the county’s priorities in unclear but there is little expectation above there that a depleted panel can get enough out of themselves against a Kerry team that has players who would easily make the Leitrim senior team.