The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Templenoe’s experience can win the day
Kilcummin v Templenoe Sunday, April 29 Direen (Legion), 2.30pm
THIS semi-final is delicately poised.
Certainly Templenoe are the favourites – that’s what being involved at the sharp end of every championship you’ve been involved in for the past four or five years will do for you – but absolutely nobody is saying that Kilcummin don’t have what it takes to win the day here.
The East Kerry men look a team really relishing their football at the moment. After a couple of years spent in fear of the drop from senior football, intermediate looks a blessed relief. Kilcummin can look forward, look up and not down. It seems to have liberated them.
“We were probably lucky to stay in Division 2 last year and that was a good bonus at the start of the year,” Kilcummin boss Willie Maher says.
“We had a relatively good start to the county league. The intermediate then, if we were offered where we are now, in a semi-final, we’d have taken it, but I suppose Sunday is the big test.”
It is. Templenoe have been in the semi-finals of this competition in each of the last three years, twice reaching the final before this year. They’ve got real pedigree and, unlike Kilcummin, have recent experience of competing for (and winning) big championships.
“They’ve a young team, the team which won the All Ireland junior championship was a young team so they’re basically coming into their peak now,” is Maher’s assessment.
“At the very start looking at The Kerryman going back three or four weeks ago they were the tournament favourites to win along with St Marys so it’s going to plan. If we can play to our full potential we’ve a chance, but the fact that they’ve been in the last two intermediate finals is a big plus to them, but I suppose the fact that we’ve been playing senior football for nearly twenty years is a plus in our favour.
“It should stand to us, but I can see them as an up and coming team with a lot of good players they’d have to be the favourites.”
Kilcummin have a few niggles coming into the game and rested a few players last weekend, but as of yet there’s nobody definitely out of the game. It’s a similar situation for Templenoe, niggles, but for the most part in good shape. Apart, obviously, from Gavin Crowley who’s rated at fifty / fifty by manager Mike Hussey.
“Gavin Crowley is just coming back from a serious hand injury so to be quite honest I don’t know,” he says.
They have been boosted by the return to action of Tadhg Morley over recent weeks and, while their group campaign was up and down, their defeat at the hands of Gneeveguilla in round two could turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
“If you could look for any kick in the arse without having serious consequences that was it. Maybe there was a bit of pressure going into the last game against Spa, but they put in a good performance which was great, but as you say the Gneeveguilla game was the proverbial perfect kick in the arse for them because even though we were beaten, it was still in our own hands whether we’d go through or not,” Hussey says.
Hussey is well aware of the threat Kilcummin pose – “they’ve had very good results in the championship so far putting up big scores so from what I’ve heard they’re a very balanced team,” he says – so there won’t be anything taken for granted this time around.
Nor should there be. Kilcummin are a serious side, a side playing with confidence and with a man in form – Kevin McCarthy – who could turn any game.
That said Templenoe would seem to have more match winners on their side.
It’ll be close and we’d be in no way surprised if Kilcummin did manage to win, but Templenoe retain our confidence having gotten over their blip against Gneeveguilla a couple of weeks ago.
Verdict: Templenoe