The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Potential Munster pass for senior clubs
With the carrot of possibly getting into the Munster Club SFC, Paul Brennan says the County Senior Club Championship is all the better for that
SELDOM, if ever, regarded as a ‘blue chip’ competition in Kerry football, the Senior Club Championship has been somewhat of the unloved sibling of the Club Championships. If you were a Novice club you just wanted to go Junior; if you are a Junior club then winning the JFC and going Intermediate is the perennial goal. It is sometimes a little murkier for the Intermediate clubs because winning that could mean breaking away from a Divisional team and going it alone in the County SFC, but winning the Intermediate Championship is still the be all and end all for Intermediate ranked teams.
But the Senior Club Championship? What was the point of it or the reward for winning it, beyond some muted applause from the paltry attendance at the final and receiving the Micheal O’Connor Memorial Cup? Some years that’s about all it added up, which in itself was no bad thing, especially for past winners like Milltown/Castlemaine (2004), Glenflesk (2000), Annascaul (1989), Valentia (1986) and Gneeveguilla (1980) who wouldn’t be all that accustomed to winning county championship titles, never mind one with the word ‘senior’ in it.
Linking the Senior Club Championship to the Munster Club Championship – whereby the winner represents the county in Munster in a year where the County SFC is won by a District team (which are ineligible to go into the provincial club championships) – has helped to give the Senior Club Championship extra gravitas. In 2009, for example, South Kerry won the Bishop Moynihan Cup but it was the Senior Club champions, Kerins O’Rahillys, that went into that year’s Munster Club SFC.
After a few years of the ‘last club standing’ in the County SFC being the county’s representative in Munster, the current scenario again has the Senior Club Championship winners on standby for the provincial championship in the event of a District team winning the main event. And on that basis there has been and should continue to be a keenly contested competition at this grade, albeit among only eight clubs deemed to be of ‘senior’ status. It does seem quite the imbalance given that there are twice that number of second (Intermediate) and third (Premier Junior) tier clubs under the current system, and one wonders would this particular championship benefit from even an extra four clubs to make up a top tier of 12 senior teams?
We are where we are, however, and two groups of four play on a round-robin basis to send a group winner to the final on the last weekend of April. Reigning Senior Club champions, Dr Crokes
– who also possess the County SFC and County SFL titles right now – must be fancied to come out of Group1,but they face formidable challenges from reigning Munster Intermediate champions (and beaten Division 1 SFL finalists) An Ghaeltacht, the
2016 Senior Club winners Austin Stacks, and Kerins O’Rahillys, who have made an encouraging start to this year’s County League. As with the other grades, the group games sequence and venues could be quite significant, and it will take at least two wins to get into a position of topping the group. Dr Crokes will be fancied to beat An Ghaeltacht at Austin Stack Park this weekend, but the Tralee derby between Stacks and O’Rahillys at the same venue is a much harder one to call. Round 2 is even harder to call with Stacks hosting An Ghaeltacht and Crokes going to Strand Road, and it probably will come down to the final round of games where the group winner will probably come from the game in Lewis Road between the two Black and Amberteams.
Group 2 is equally hard to predict a winner from, if only because Dingle, Rathmore, Legion and Kenmare Shamrocks look pretty evenly matched. The availability of county players will be crucial to all eight clubs, but Dingle could be the team to get the biggest boost if they can integrate their Kerry players to good effect. Paul and Mikey Geaney, Barry O’Sullivan, Tom O’Sullivan and Matthew Flaherty will be a huge addition to Dingle, and even more so that Kenmare will be without Sean O’Shea for the first game or two, and Legion are unlikely to get the best out of James O’Donoghue even if he does play.
East Kerry champions, Rathmore, would have to be considered the form team in Group 2, even though they have won and lost a game in Division 1, the same as Legion. The first round meeting between Dingle and Rathmore in Tralee could turn out to be the defining game but it will be no surprise if it all comes down to the Round 3 games that sees Dingle host Legion and Kenmare go to Rathmore.
A prediction? Dr Crokes have won four of the last six of these Championships and they have a deep and talented enough panel to come through a condensed format to beat Dingle in the final.