Four in-a-row for Juniors

THEY couldn’t keep the record going could they? Not after three years of provincial dominance. Not after claiming back-to-back All Ireland titles? The system is pretty much designed to stop such a thing from happening.

An All Ireland winning team cannot go back in an attempt to retain their title. A new bunch of footballers needs to be assembled and this year the Kerry juniors would do so without the man who led them so successfully over the previous three campaigns – Stephen Wallace.

In his place All Ireland junior club championship winning manager with Brosna Jimmy Keane assumed the reins. Big boots to fill, but perhaps, the Brosna man would have the benefit of not having such high expectations.

Nobody had much right to expect the run could keep on going as it had been. Then again this is Kerry and the Kingdom expects. The underage success mean that even having been tasked with finding a completely new team from the year before, there was still plenty of talent available to him and his management team.

They got their campaign underway with a Munster championship semi-final victory over Limerick (who had pushed them so hard the year before) in Ennis – as the undercard to the seniors. It was hugely impressive performance from Keane’s men straight out of the box.

They ran out twenty point winners – 0-26 to 0-6 – with underage stars Killian Spillane, Éanna Ó Conchúir, Jack Maguire and Tomás Ó Sé all excelling. Another man to impress was Kerry senior star Brendan O’Sullivan who gave a brilliant display scoring two points from play.

It set Kerry up for a tilt at a fourth Munster title in-a-row. In Pairc Uí Rinn they faced a Cork side clearly fed up with being whipping boys to Kerry and determined to regain momentum for themsleves at this level.

What transpired on a Tuesday night at the end of the month was one of the games of the season. Kerry won it, but boy were they made to work hard for it. Cork pushed them all the way, all the way to extra-time as a matter of fact. Kerry ran out 4-24 to 3-20 winners over the Rebels.

Tomás Ó Sé was the game’s star performer and the An Ghaeltacht star helped himself to 2-4 from play just pipping Philip O’Connor’s

2-3.