League bits and bobs

Money talks but football screams

IN the week that the GAA increased ticket prices for National League games (up €5 on the day and €3 for pre-paid ones for Division 1 and 2 (football) and 1A and 1B (hurling)) it was interesting to see the big numbers going through the turnstiles last weekend.

By a distance Killarney drew the biggest crowd across football and hurling with 12,921 turning up to watch Kerry and Tyrone.

Certainly there was a strong curiosity in seeing how the new Kerry management fared, even if the named starting team had only one debutant compared to the seven that started the first League game 12 months ago.

A first chance for Kerry folk to see the new experimental rules might also have been a factor, even on a rough day weather-wise, but quite how much value those in attendance felt they got for their money is another question with just eight points scored from play.

Unsurprisingly the Kerry v Dublin game in Tralee is already a sell-out but it will be interesting to see how many turn up in Breffni Park this Sunday and how many from Kerry travel.

Murphy worships at the altar of Dufresne

ANYONE under the age of 40 who enjoys listening to, say, The Beatles can appreciate that one doesn’t have to have been alive at the time great art was made to like that art, but it remains a curious oddity that so many present day players cite The Shawshank

Redemption as their favourite film. It was the choice of Paul Murphy in Sunday’s match programme even though the Frank Darabont directed classic was released in cinemas back in 1994 when the Rathmore man had just celebrated his third birthday.

We don’t know how many times Murphy has watched the film, or what it’s particular appeal is, when he has surely seen many other movies either in the cinema or streamed online, but there is obviously something in it that appealed and struck a cord.

Maybe a few of the lines resonate for an inter-county footballer such as ‘Andy Dufresne, the man who crawled through 500 yards of shit and came out clean the other end’, or ‘Get busy living or get busy dying’ or ‘Hope is a good thing, may be best of things and no good thing ever dies’.

Or maybe there’s an ‘in joke’ at play here among the GAA brotherhood that we’re not privy to.

Two out of three ain’t bad for exiles

WHILE every Kerry supporter was firmly focused on Peter Keane as he took his first steps with the Kerry senior team, three other Kerry men were delving back into team management across the divisions.

Liam Kearns didn’t have a good start with Tipperary as they went down to Meath in Navan by 0-15 to 1-8 in Division 2, but there was better fortunes for John Sugrue and John Evans in the lower ranks.

Sugrue (below) guided Laois to an away win, 2-15 to 1-12, over Down in Division 3 while Evans saw his Wicklow team squeeze past Waterford by 1-7 to 0-9 in Dungarvan.

Former Kerry and Kildare footballer, Karl O’Dwyer, is now part of Cian O’Neill’s management team with Kildare, and the Lilywhites rescued a late draw against Armagh in Division

2.