Taking the front door to

Paul Brennan looks at the broader Football Championship and sees the importance more than ever of Kerry winning the Munster title and going to the Super 8s and champions

YOU’D like to believe it’s a case of keeping the best until last, but whatever your genuine view on Kerry’s chances of winning the All-Ireland title on September 2, it is the case that the Kingdom is the 33rd and last county to kick into action in this year’s Football Championship. It’s one of the long-standing oddities of the Championship that there are already 16 counties out of the running for provincial honours before Kerry have kicked a ball in Munster, with those 16 teams facing their ‘last chance saloon’ Qualifier game just six days after Kerry go into action. Results around the country over the last couple of weekends have really thrown the Championship wide open, not least the defeats of Mayo and Tyrone by Galway and Monaghan respectively. It’s not that those results were a huge surprise in their own right, but it does send two of last year’s four All-Ireland semi-finalists into the first round of the Qualifiers, which take place the weekend after next.

For their sins Mayo have to travel to the Gaelic Grounds to play Limerick, while Tyrone have a slightly trickier trip to Navan to face Meath, but both will be expected to negotiate that first Qualifier hurdle at least. Thereafter it will be a case of hoping to avoid each other in subsequent rounds until - and if - they can make it to the All-Ireland Quarter-finals Group Phase, or the ‘Super 8s’ to you and me.

The presence of Mayo and Tyrone in the Qualifiers makes it even more imperative than ever that Kerry retain their Munster title and head to the Super 8s as provincial champions. Firstly, you don’t really want to be running into either one of them in a Round 4 Qualifier when they’ll be coming through with a bit of winning momentum that can be an advantage at that stage.

Cork’s somewhat unexpected demolition of Tipperary in last weekend’s Munster semi-final has surely raised a few eyebrows around the Kingdom, and while minds within the Kerry camp will remain focussed on Clare this Sunday, it won’t have gone unnoticed that Cork might have a real say in this Munster Championship yet. After a poor League

campaign, Cork have certainly put the hiatus to some good use in coming up with a team and a plan that completely stymied a fancied Tipperary team that plenty of people thought could really rattle Kerry in Thurles on June 23. Instead, it will be a first trip to Pairc Ui Chaoimh for Kerry in a Munster Final since 2014 when the Kingdom beat the Rebels by double scores, 0-24 to 0-12.

As bad as losing the Munster Final to Cork would be and sending Kerry into a potential Qualifier against Mayo or Tyrone, it would also mean that assuming Kerry came through that Qualifier they would then go into Group 2 of the Super 8s alongside the Leinster and Ulster champions, or Dublin and either Monaghan or Donegal to put it another way.

As Munster champions, Kerry would be looking at a Croke Park date with either Galway or Roscommon (as Connacht champions), before a trip to either Carlow or Laois (beaten Leinster finalists) or probably the team that beats them in the Qualifiers, and then finishing with the visit of the beaten Ulster finalists (or team that beats them) to Killarney on the August bank holiday weekend. You’d have to fancy Kerry to be winning those three games, or at the very least two of them to qualify.

The alternative, going in as a Qualifier into Group 2, would mean starting off against the beaten Connacht finalist (or team that beats them) in Croke Park, followed by hosting Dublin in Killarney and finally heading north to play the Ulster champions. Killarney might be as good a place as any to play and beat the Dubs, but in the event that Kerry lost, it could mean heading to Clones or Ballybofey needing to win to qualify for an All-Ireland semi-final.

It is, of course, all hypothetical right now, and we’ll know more about how Kerry will be shaping up to take on Cork after Sunday’s game with Clare. Even Eamonn Fitzmaurice can’t be certain how he and his team perform until the ball is throw in at 3.30 next Sunday.

“There is always going to be a thing with Kerry that you never know,” he said this week. “Externally there is always going to be that ‘sure you’ll never know what they are going to come up with’. After next Sunday we’ll either be one way or the other, either people will start talking about us again or people will say that they really are a couple of years away from this thing.”

Except no one is looking a couple of years down the track. Everyone is looking at the here and now and no further than September.

The Championship train has long left the station and Kerry are about to jump onto the last carriage. Hold on to your hats!

ALL-IRELAND SFC ROUND 1 QUALIFIERS Saturday, June 9

(extra-time and winner on the day) Meath v Tyrone in Navan Wexford v Waterford in Wexford town Derry v Kildare in Owenbeg Wicklow v Cavan in Aughrim Offaly v Antrim in Tullamore Limerick v Mayo in the

Gaelic Grounds Westmeath v Armagh in Mullingar

Sunday, June 10

London v Louth in Ruislip