South Kerry’s place in the football world wasn’t always so sure

WHEN South Kerry won the County Senior Football Championship for the first time in 1955, it was considered a water-shed event in opening up opportunities for players from the area to play with Kerry. Prior to this, the appearance of players from the remote Iveragh Peninsula on Kerry teams was, while in existence, sparse enough in comparison to the Tralee area. The distance involved combined with poor roads and a paucity and poorer standard of cars in those days were, amongst other reasons, a contributory factor of course.

However, the divide caused it’s own rancour with a school of thought in existence that favouritism and bias occurred.

Whether or which, this is very much exemplified by The Kerryman Iveragh Notes column which was given to the scribe from neighbouring attic archives. The exact year is not available, but it contains evidence to show that it came into print some time after 1955. The writer (no name attached) takes issue with another writer, ’Valentia Gael’ (also unknown), who he says stated that it was ’bunkum’ to claim that residence in Tralee was ever an important qualification for would-be aspirants to the Kerry team.

The Iveragh correspondent writes thus: ’’His memory must be very short if he will not agree that until South Kerry won the Championship in 1955 we had very little say down here in the composition of county teams in any grade. As a matter of fact we haven’t got a selector from here this year and unless South Kerry can bring off another county title it seems that we will be back again behind the ’Leather Curtain’ before long.

“Old-timers in Valentia can tell him how Con ’’Darby’’ Murphy, one of the best men Valentia and South Kerry ever produced, was denied his chance of glory because he lived in the wrong part of the county. Danny Murt O’Connell and John O’Connell of Killalin, Over-The-Water, Pat Murphy, Ballycarbery and Mickey Griffin, Cahirsiveen, all had a tale to relate as to how Kerry teams were picked on their day.

“To come down to a later date, did Valentia Gael ever hear of the time John Griffin of Ballycarbery was left standing near the Croppy Memorial because the Tralee boys did not consider him good enough to play for Kerry after he had been selected? Who got the medal that was rightfully Mike Kennedy’s of Lative after the Junior All-Ireland win of 1941? ( Islandman’s note: Mike Kennedy was a grand uncle of the current Kerry full back Mark Griffin, being an uncle of Mark’s mother Joan of The Glen and was the father of Mary Kennedy of Portmagee).

“Why did Eamon O’Neill of Renard not get on as even a sub on the Kerry Juniors of 1956, although men he had blotted out around mid-field in the 1955 Championship were picked wholesale and some were even brought to America with the seniors that year? Can Valentia Gael answer these questions and still say that the matter of a ’’residential qualification’’ was all ‘bunkum’?”

The Iveragh correspondent also mentions three Valentia footballers: ‘Mago’. ‘Pluggy’ , ‘Curse’, and ’’Loner’’ Jones stating that they were only a small portion of great players produced by the Island.