Pobalscoil claim a poignant victory

Recent events put football in its proper context for all of us, but football remains life-affirming, writes Tadhg Evans

THE teenage years form the bumpiest stretch of the typical lifetime – and it’s assumable that this inconsistency is the major contributor to making the task of predicting college football games a challenge frequently beyond prophets and pundits alike.

Even more taxing than forecasting winners of schools matches is the challenge of uncovering a cause for the statistic that has vexed Tralee town for decades.

Among the most respected schools in Ireland where Gaelic football is concerned, the Green’s 15 previous Munster Championship-winning teams never ended an academic year with a Hogan Cup for company; it’s a trophy maddeningly conspicuous in its absence from such an ornately decorated football town.

And it need only turn westward to its most recent conquerors to source further aggravating material. Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne has existed barely a decade, but the Dingle school, a mere five-time champion of Munster, houses reminders of two wins in the championship most thirstily sought by the county capital.

Saturday’s win by the Pobalscoil retained west Kerry’s hopes of a third All-Ireland at the earliest convenience and extended Tralee’s anguished search by another year. But however hurt ‘The Green’ boys felt at losing a second successive Munster final, and whatever embellished importance we all attach to Gaelic football, the respect that moved 900 people in Fitzgerald Stadium to silence ahead of Amhrán na bhFiann served to underline the truth that sport is but a triviality.

The pain inflicted by the passing of Aodhán Ó Conchúir on February 24 from the head injury he sustained representing Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne in a Russell Cup game had not dulled in the fortnight since gone. For his family, the agony of losing their boy weeks short of his 15th birthday is one that will permeate into future generations. For his fellow students, it would have been utterly forgivable if that tragedy had undermined their capacity to perform with the vigour necessary to win. Éamonn Fitzmaurice was rightly impressed at the collective character on Saturday that belied the intensity of memories still warm.

“I don’t think there’s any roadmap on how to deal with those situations,” he said.

“Franz [Sauerland] spoke very well in his speech afterwards about Aodhán. It’s great to win a Corn Uí Mhuirí, but all these things are put in perspective, and our thoughts are just

with Aodhán’s family – and that’s the way it’s going to be going forward.”

If that imminent pursuit of a Hogan Cup is to be successful, the Pobalscoil must next eclipse the victors of March 19’s MacRory final, a match up of St Mary’s Grammar, Magherafelt (Derry), and St Ronan’s College, Lurgan (Armagh) – possessors of just one Ulster championship between them, but myriad players with inter-county educations.

Kerry is Gaelic football’s most successful county, but also its most paranoid. We have yet to twig that being masters of a sport is sufficient to wreck any hope of being loved, and it’s habitually assumed that hostility towards our kingdom is especially keen in Ulster.

It’s possible this persecution complex stems not from what’s factual, but from our annoyance that the ilk of Tyrone, Donegal and Armagh had the nerve to strip us of Sam Maguire with regularity during the noughties. It was, perhaps, more comfortable to depict them as snide than to accept we’d been bettered.

Within the personalities of the affable Mickey Donnelly – one part of a trio managing St Ronan’s – and the similarly friendly St Mary’s Games Development Officer Ronan Devlin, nothing exists to harden the sense that Ulster has an especially cold perception of Kerry.

What is identifiable from their words is that both schools draw from an unusually broad range of counties by way of their respective locations on the fringes of Armagh and Derry.

“We would have about a dozen lads who’ve played county minor, either with Armagh or Antrim,” Donnelly said. “There would be a big strain of county experience there, and Magherafelt would be similar. They’ve a number of lads who would have played in last year’s All-Ireland Minor Final with Derry.”

That St Marys’ Devlin feels sufficiently comfortable to assert that Derry’s Simon McErlain and Antrim minor Tiernan McAteer “would probably be our two main fellas” leads one to fascination.

If they’ve impressed to the point of being name-checked from a selection containing contributors to the inter-county panels of Antrim, Tyrone, and All-Ireland finalists Derry, their talents can only be special, but not adequately so to compel Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne’s Franz Sauerland to abandon thoughts of greater success.

“That [to win the Hogan Cup] was kind of the goal at the start of the year,” the An Ghaeltacht club man shared confidently in the minutes after captaining Pobalscoil Chorca Dhuibhne to its fifth Munster title.

“Kerry teams always have an advantage over other teams just because of our style of play – so I think we’ve a massive chance of reaching Croke Park. That’s the aim, anyway.”

Related to German international Jérôme Boateng, if Sauerland is to add a Hogan Cup to a family history already beautified by a World Cup winner’s medal, his team needs play to a level that contradicts its youthful age profile.

In its favour, the school is bolstered by the presence of seven players still occupying spaces in the mind of Kerry Under 17 manager Peter Keane and is steeled further by Kerry Under 20 Deividas Uosis; four others that were part of either Kerry’s minor or under-17 panels in 2017; and a spine built from memories of a successful Paul McGirr Cup campaign.

Whether or not the equivalent achievement at this advanced grade is forthcoming remains unclear. It would require arrogance to claim to be sure of the champion of a post-primary competition.

The pain inflicted by the passing of Aodhán Ó Conchúir had not dulled in the fortnight since gone