Short-list is announced for East Kerry All Stars

FRIDAY night week brings together the best footballers from the 2017 East Kerry Senior Football Championship O’Donoghue Cup when the All Star Team of the Championship will be announced. This year sees the eighth East Kerry GAA All Star team being selected is what is now a well established, widely recognised and hugely coveted honours ceremony, which rewards the best individual performances of that year’s O’Donoghue Cup.

The East Kerry Championship just past, which saw Rathmore retain the Dr Paddy O’Donoghue Memorial Cup for a third time and make it a remarkable four-in-a-row of titles for the club, was another keenly contested and competitive competition, culminating in Rathmore’s one-point win over Legion is a terrific final in Fitzgerald Stadium.

It must be said that two unfulfilled fixtures - Firies failing to field against Legion in the quarter-final, and then Dr Crokes not playing Legion in the semi-final - skewed the balance of the Championship in 2017, not least for the fact that Legion ended up in the final without playing a match to get there. It was a far from ideal scenario but it certainly made for a more interesting All Star team selection debate. It’s usual that the O’Donoghue Cup finalists command the majority of places on the All Star team, if only because they’ve normally played the most games in getting there. It was, therefore, quite unprecedented to be judging one team of finalists on the basis of just one game, the same as those teams that exited the Championship at the preliminary round or quarter-final phase, also having played just one match.

If nothing else, that has made for short-list of 24 nominations drawn from a wider number of clubs - nine clubs are represented on the short-list - and time will tell how that might impact on the final All Star team. Once again, the judging panel came to the selection process well-informed, open-minded and dedicated to picking the best representative team of the 2017 O’Donoghue Cup. Strong cases were made, hard calls were made and in the end the judges agreed on an All Star team that will stand the test of time and stand as an equal to any of those that have gone before it all the way back to 2010.

The short-list of 24 contains the usual mix of established names and nascent

talent. The eye-catching performances of a few Kerry minors was a feature of this year’s championship, as was the solid displays by a few All-Ireland senior winners in Brendan Kealy, Aidan O’Mahony, Seamus Scanlon and James O’Donoghue.

In next week’s The Kerryman we will take a close look at all the nominees and look back on the previous All Star teams.

For now, however, here are the 24 footballers vying for one of those 15 coveted All Star awards, some of whom will be seeking their first All Star while others will be hoping to follow up on and add to previous awards.

The three-man short-list for the Player of the Intermediate Championship (Fr Galvin Cup) is also being revealed, with the three names up for the award all from champions Fossa, including brothers Paudie and David Clifford. In fact, Paudie Clifford won the award last year and will be looking to win back to back Intermediate Championship Player of the Year awards.

2017 EAST KERRY GAA ALL STAR NOMINATIONS Goalkeepers Brendan Kealy (Kilcummin) Sean Óg Ó Ciardubhain (Cordal) Defenders Cian Gammell (Legion) Michael Joe Kelliher (Rathmore) Cathal Murphy (Rathmore) DJ Murphy (Gneeveguilla) Chris O’Donoghue (Glenflesk) Dan O’Donoghue (Spa) Aidan O’Mahony (Rathmore) Conor O’Sullivan (Rathmore) Patrick Warren (Gneeveguilla) Midfielders Kevin Gorman (Kilcummin) Donal O’Sullivan (Rathmore) Mark Ryan (Rathmore) Seamus Scanlon (Currow) Forwards

Derry Ahern (Listry) Tony Brosnan (Dr Crokes) Evan Cronin (Spa) Brian Friel (Rathmore) Eoin Lawlor (Rathmore) DJ O’Connor (Gneeveguilla) James O’Donoghue (Legion) Dara Roche (Glenflesk) Shane Ryan (Rathmore)

FR GALVIN CUP (INTERMEDIATE CHAMPIONSHIP) PLAYER OF THE YEAR NOMINATIONS

David Clifford (Fossa) Paudie Clifford (Fossa) Derry O’Sullivan (Fossa)

The 2016 East Kerry SFC All Star team that was announced and honoured at a gala dinner and ceremony in The Brehon Hotel, Killarney lst January. This year the 2017 All Star team will be named at a function in The Gleneagle Hotel, Killarney on Friday,...