The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Kerry hurlers hoping for early Christmas present
MUNSTER SHL GROUP B ROUND 1
Cork v Kerry Friday, December 20 Páirc Uí Rinn, 7.30pm
IT’S not the first time it’s happened, as a matter of fact it’ll be precisely a year to the day that Kerry played Limerick in Austin Stack Park, but that doesn’t seem to make it feel any less weird that we’re getting the 2020 season underway in 2019. Before Christmas. Before the Turkey. Before Aul Lang’s Syne.
Still though we are where we are as they say days away from the Kingdom’s first game in the Munster senior hurling league and a far from easy start it is too. Away from home against a Cork team who must harbour ambitions of getting their revenge on the Kingdom after their January of 2018 humbling in Tralee.
Add to that the appointment (reappointment actually) of Kieran Kingston as manager replacing the out-going John Meyler and you can see a fresh impetus for the Rebel County causing troubles for the Kingdom early doors.
“Originally the idea was that it would put less pressure on the fellas playing in the Fitzgibbon,” Kerry boss Fintan O’Connor explains.
“Which wouldn’t really affect us I suppose apart from Shane Conway maybe and maybe Barry Mahony, but he’s obviously gone playing football now. Originally the thinking for Cork especially, they’ve fifteen or sixteen fellas playing in Fitzgibbon with UCC and it takes a bit of pressure off them playing before Christmas so you could see the merit of it.”
That the game is so early isn’t really helpful to O’Connor and his men either.
“It’s not as handy,” he says.
“The North Kerry football final is on this weekend so I haven’t seen them fellas and I won’t see them until afterwards and Ballyduff were involved in that until I suppose last weekend so they haven’t been in with us at all either, from that point of view preparation-wise for Cork we won’t be prepared for the Cork match 100% the way you’d like to be, but there’s no point cribbing about that this time of the year, we’ll just take the match and try take as much out of it as we can.”
Kerry have suffered a few early set-backs as regards player availability for the new season. Jack Goulding is ruled out with work commitments, while any hopes that Barry Mahony might return to the fold following his season with Jack O’Connor’s Under 20 footballers have been dashed with the news that Peter Keane has called him up for the senior footballers.
“I’d say he probably would have hurled if he was involved with the footballers, or you’d like to think he would have done anyway, but look Barry is a super talented lad. We’ll wish him the best of luck and see how he gets on and I suppose our door will always be open for Barry and Barry knows that too,” O’Connor continues.
“We’ve lost Jack Goulding. Jack’s gone to London working as a physio so he won’t be able to commute, we were kind of hoping he might be, but it’s just where he’s working in London and the commute would be too long for him to get training and playing.
“Arrive in Kerry on a Friday and train and play a match it’s not going to be feasible for him, it’s disappointing to lose Jack as well as he had a very good year for us last year.”
Kerry will have some fresh blood for the new season though with the Under 20s, who are due to contest the Munster championship this year, training with the seniors in preparation for the A championship bow in July.
It means that there’s a certain amount of flux in the panel at present as O’Connor explains.
“I haven’t really finalised the panel we’ve a lot of the younger fellas mixed in because the Under 20s are playing Cork in the first round of the A Under 20 so they’re up and running now and they’ll be playing matches to mirror what Cork and Tipp are doing at that age grade, which means that we have a huge body of players that are in training and trying to get them and we’ll have to finalise a senior panel at some stage and finalise that because a lot of the Under 20 lads have been playing the games we’ve been playing and doing a lot of the training.”
The decision to give the Munster Under 20 Championship a crack seems a positive one for Kerry hurling, even if it promises to be a most difficult assignment against the Rebels.
“In fairness to the lads they’ve won three in-a-row Under 20 B and there comes a time when fellas start saying are we really getting anything out of it without being disrespectful to the Under 20 B,” O’Connor says.
“It provided us with a huge platform for the lads Jason Diggins and them fellas to come through to the senior panel following on from winning an Under 20 B so we don’t want to lose that either, but having said that to get lads fellas to get read to play the likes of Westmeath and them they’re playing A Leinster championship, Westmeath, Laois, Carlow they’re all playing A in Leinster so I suppose looking at that we felt we had to have a go at playing in A and we’ll see where that takes us.
“Look it’s not going to be easy. Cork are probably favourites to win the All Ireland so we know what we’re up against, but having said that playing an hour against Cork might be worth three hours in the Under 20 B last summer.”
There remains a chance that Kerry can still contest the Under 21 B championship with a panel of players who haven’t taken part in the Munster championship.
In the meantime though there’s the trip to Páirc Uí Rinn to face the might of the Rebel army. In these pre-season matches when information is scarce it’s hard to know what sort of sides either county will field, we’d have to imagine that Cork will be stronger, but as we learned last time these two counties played anything is possible.
To be honest the result isn’t hugely important here for Kerry. How they perform and what they learn is of much more importance.
Verdict: Cork