The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Greater experience should be telling for the Kingdom
MUNSTER UNDER 20 FC FINAL Kerry v Cork Friday, June 29 Austin Stack Park, 7.30pm
THERE’S a danger with this Under 20 championship that we talk more about who’s not there than who is.
In a way it’s almost a good thing – or at least not too bad a thing – that Seán O’Shea and David Clifford aren’t available for this competition. By their absence they’ve given two more Kerry footballers the opportunity to shine and to develop and, when it comes down to it, that’s what it’s all about.
Silverware is nice and it reflects a job well done, but the main job at hand in underage football is developmental. O’Shea and Clifford have been developed, it’s job done and done well with those two.
Besides, the talent Kerry have been producing at underage level is such that Kerry should be able to compete without them. You wouldn’t want to be setting too much store by what the Kingdom did in games against Limerick and Waterford, but Jack O’Connor has some serious talent at his disposal up front.
All six starting forwards from last week would probably be in the shake-up for a starting place regardless. Are Kerry weaker than they might have been? Obviously they are, but by the same token they’re not exactly weak now are they?
From one to fifteen – and we’ve not quite sure which way they’ll go for the number one shirt on Friday evening, both Brian Lonergan and Deividas Uosis make strong claims – Kerry are stocked with quality.
The six backs are all quality – and particular attention will be paid to how Stefan Okunbar fares at full-back – and the midfield looks pretty damned tasty too, both Mark Ryan and Diarmuid O’Connor are highly regarded and considered potential future seniors.
Kerry would seem to have a greater depth of talent at their disposal than Cork, but even more significantly than that they’re a vastly more experienced side, simply by dint of their success.
Pretty much all these Kerry players have at least one
All Ireland minor winner’s medal and months of extra training in comparison with Cork minor teams who’ve lost out to the Kingdom in provincial competition.
“We have loads of experience,” Kerry selector Eamon Whelan admits.
“The vast majority of those guys have all played and won national titles, be it schools, minor, whatever, so there’s loads of experience there. We’re very happy with the group. They train exceptionally hard and they soak up information, they soak up coaching. They seem to be really anxious to improve all the time.
“I would say the game time is invaluable, but even more invaluable is the amount of time that they are training in each other’s company. If you lose the first or second round in your provincial campaign, you’re together for a short period of time, whereas if you go all the way to an All Ireland final it means that you’re training collectively for a long period of time.
“You’re getting to know people’s playing habits plus you’re getting a lot more exposure to good coaching.”
All looks positive for this Kerry Under 20 side. The only real fly in the ointment is the lack of a meaningful game over the past couple of weekends. Cork at least got a stern enough test from Clare.
“If you were talking about it of being of benefit, I suppose every time a player puts on a Kerry jersey, especially when they’re young players, it should benefit them in terms of confidence and just getting game time in the Kerry jersey and being used to playing in it,” Whelan says.
“In terms of competitive point of view, I can’t say we learned a huge amount. We learned a few bits and pieces. Believe it or not we learned quite a bit in the Limerick game, we got quite a bit of video footage from it that helped us when we were going back into training afterwards, but we certainly would have preferred a much more competitive game in one of the two games than what we got.
“We would have expected more of a challenge in both, especially against Limerick. We knew that Limerick had a lot of work done, we’d been told they’d a lot of work done, we felt that they were being trained by quite experienced people, but for some reason Limerick just didn’t perform on the night.
“I’m convinced that they’re a much better outfit than what they showed against us, but I just think that they didn’t perform on the night. We probably caught them in a little bit of a whirlwind at the very start and that might have caught them short at the time.”
The entire Kerry squad and back-room team is more than cognisant that the challenge Cork pose this Friday evening will be “totally different”.
“Of all the age-groups of recent years, Under 20 or Under 21 has been Cork’s most successful,” Whelan explains.
“Our record against Cork at this age level is actually quite poor. You’ve to go back to 1999 since Kerry beat Cork in a Munster final here in Tralee. Now that’s in a Munster final, they have beaten them in a couple of other games, but over the last nine years Kerry have only beaten them once before last year.
“Our record at Under 20 level has been quite poor, certainly in the last couple of years that has started to turn a little bit. We had a very good result against them last year in Páirc Uí Rinn and we’d be hoping to bring that into play a little bit, because they’ve the same management team.
“There’s no cross over of personnel between the two games.” Verdict:
Kerry