The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Crokes still the team to beat
Paul Brennan looks ahead to the County SFC that in its new compact schedule will hopefully produce an autumn of football to lift the spirits after a disappointing summer
IT might be a stretch to package this year’s County Senior Football Championship as veering into ‘brave new world’ territory but for the first time in forever the county’s blue ribbon football competition will start in August, and late August at that. Furthermore, it promises to be the most compacted running of the Championship for the best part of a century, with a county champion to be crowned either eight or nine weeks (final scheduled for either October 21 or 28) after the first game is played. It’s a novel and welcome departure for the championship, which promises to keep the competition running along on an almost weekly basis, far removed from the elongated and fractured structure that’s been in place for as long as most can remember.
With the Club Championship already played to their conclusions, and the County Leagues finished but for two matches, the next two months are all but clear for the County SFC and the hope is that the competition will be the better for that.
We would argue that a further improvement would be a full draw being done in advance, which would show a clear pathway of fixtures and the teams that would fill those fixtures depending on their progress. In the absence of that we are left with the familiar format of the last few years with eight first round pairings giving rise to a second round of the eight winners playing each other (2A) and the the eight losing teams playing each other (2B). The four winners of Round 2A go into the quarter-finals, the four losers of Round 2B go out of the competition, and the four 2A losers play the four 2B winners in Round 3 to produce the other four quarter-finalists and then on we go.
It’s a decent format that gives every team at least two matches, and the new compressed schedule means Round 1 winners and losers alike are back in action pretty quickly, as opposed to the often interminable wait between some rounds when the Championship started in May, took a break until July (maybe) and didn’t crank up again until late September / early October when it was for all intents and purposes a whole new competition.
Quite what the new scheduling means for the 17 teams taking part is another matter, but it’s reasonable to assume that the competition remains slightly tilted in favour of the club teams. Those eight clubs now have the benefit of an entire 11-game county league programme behind them, and whether that competition has been good to them or not, that’s still a playing momentum the nine district board teams simply don’t have.
The old argument about the May start for the Championship giving the district teams little or no time to prepare themselves is probably as relevant this year as it was last year, and it likely that several of them have little preparatory work done in the run up to this weekend when five of the nine divisional teams are in action. That’s not to say that all club versus divisional team first round fixtures will go the way of the former, but a quick glance at those fixtures would suggest that Round 2B will be heavy on divisional teams. Reigning champions Dr Crokes - looking for a third consecutive title - get their title defence off the ground at home to St Kierans and it’s nigh on impossible to see anything other than a comfortable Crokes win. The pressure on this group of players to win that All-Ireland Club title might be released after last year’s St Patrick’s Day victory over Slaughtneil, but their subsequent defeat in the Munster Club Championship last November to Nemo Rangers will have them still smarting on Lewis Road and as determined as ever to get back to Croke Park next March.
As far as the bookmakers are concerned everyone else is playing for second place after Crokes (4/5), with Dingle and East Kerry next best (5/1 each), South Kerry and Kerins O’Rahillys available at 10/1 ech and it’s 14/1 bar those. One can readily assume it’s the presence of Paul Geaney and David Clifford respectively in the Dingle and East Kerry teams that has them regarded as Dr Crokes’ biggest threat, and it will be fascinating to see how teams can cope with the Fossa teenager who ran amok for Kerry in the ill-fated Super 8 games last month. First up for East Kerry is the winner if the Qualifier match between St Brendans and West Kerry, and with neither of them having call on a Kerry defender it’s easy to see how Clifford can be the match winner on his first outing.
Without diving in too deep into the first round fixtures it wouldn’t be too wide of the mark to predict wins for Dr Crokes (v St Kierans), Rathmore (v Legion), An Ghaeltacht (v Mid Kerry), South Kerry (v Kenmare Shamrocks), East Kerry (v Qualifier winner), Kerins O’Rahillys (v Feale Rangers), Austin Stacks (v Kenmare District) and Dingle (v Shannon Rangers) but Legion will give Rathmore plenty of it, as will Kenmare District to Stacks, Mid Kerry at home to An Ghaeltacht, and Feale Rangers, potentially to O’Rahillys out in Listowel.
The beauty of the Kerry county championship with its divisional teams is that one never really knows what you’re going to get from those teams until the starting gun is fired...and then in some cases their race is already run.
For the rest the next eight weeks is an opportunity to lay claim to the Bishop Moynihan Cup for the first time in a short time, a long time or ever.
Not unusally it’s the defending champions who are favourites to take the honours but there’s at least one or two teams that can and will take advantage of a bad day for the Crokes.
Whether that will be the genius of Clifford or the culminative talents of Dingle or the always resolute and organised South Kerry or some slightly less fancied team like O’Rahillys or An Ghaeltacht is anyone’s guess, but it will be hell for leather for the next 8 or 9 weeks until the 2018 Kerry County SFC champion is crowned.
Shorter and sweeter, hopefully.