Moran to sit out League

Na Gaeil duo unavailable for opener against Dubs

KERRY’S longest serving senior footballer, David Moran, is expected to sit out most, if not all, of the National League, with manager Peter Keane confirming that “you mightn’t see a whole pile of David Moran for the League”.

Moran, who turned 31 last June, is preparing for his 13th season of inter-county football, but it would seem the Kerins O’Rahillys club man’s training and playing time will be managed with a view to being in the best shape possible for the Championship later in the year.

Moran also played limited League football last year, but while that was down to his rehabilitation from injury, this time around it appears that the veteran midfielder is simply taking an extended spring break.

Apart from the usual few players currently on the treatment table - including cruciate ligament victim Peter Crowley, Dara Moynihan, David Shaw, and newcomer to the panel, Paudie Clifford - Moran looks to be the only player sitting out a prolonged period of the National League, which starts this Saturday with Kerry’s rematch against Dublin in Croke Park.

Quite what panel of players will head to Dublin on Saturday - much less what team will start against Dessie Farrell’s side - is anyone’s guess, with Keane himself seeming uncertain of who he will select to travel to the capital at the weekend.

For certain Jack Barry and Diarmuid O’Connor won’t be playing in a Kerry jersey on Saturday, but they will be in action in Croke Park that day as they line out with Na Gaeil in the All-Ireland Club JFC Final against Wexford’s Rathgarogue-Cushinstown.

Keane admitted that he expected to also be without the Templenoe quartet of Tadhg Morley, Adrian and Killian Spillane and Gavin Crowley, but their surprise loss to Oughterard in the All-Ireland IFC semi-final frees them up to play with Kerry instead.

UCC’s shock defeat to Carlow IT in the Sigerson Cup last weekend also unexpectedly frees up some players to Kerry, including Sean O’Shea, which means Kerry will have a reasonably strong squad of players to call on.

“Again, it’s a number game really,” Keane explained on Monday. “Sometimes you have a big panel but as it happens in a League there’s games, I know last year we had games where you have 26 fellas in a panel for a particular game and you might have only 24 fellas capable of playing because it just happens with the intensity of the League and the way it goes.

“We’ve obviously started much later this year than last year. We’ve a lot less done than we would have at this stage last year so there are changes. There are things that are different. We brought in a few, a few left, and I suppose that’s the natural ebb and flow of any kind of a group. There are lots of fellas we’re looking at. The thing is fairly fluid, and I’m slow to specifically name names. You’re always looking and you’ll pick up a fella and have him in fore a while and it mightn’t just work.”

THE last time these two sides clashed at Headquarters we were awash with information.

We had data points and statistics. We had trend lines and form lines. We had head-to-heads. We had well-defined panels. We’d an idea of who’d come off the bench and when. We’d an idea of how each team would play and what tweaks might be attempted by both sets of managers – some of which we anticipated, others which we didn’t.

This time around it couldn’t be more different. We’re left shouting into a void a little bit. What sort of teams will both sets of management teams come up with for this weekend? We can speculate, but compared to last September we’re in a little bit of an information vacuum.

Pre-season matches for both counties tell us next to nothing. New Dublin boss Dessie Farrell took a third or a fourth strength side to face Longford in the O’Byrne Cup, while Peter Keane didn’t even take a side in the McGrath Cup, instead allowing John Sugure to take the games with his Under 20s, supplemented by a handful of potential seniors.

With Keane playing a watching brief for the first game against Cork just after Christmas – and he had a representative at the second match against Tipperary a week later – there was the chance for those guys to impress and force their way into the manager’s plans for the league.

Guys like Pa Kilkenny, Barry Mahony, Cormac Coffey, Seán T Dillon, Donal O’Sullivan and Ronan Buckley and of those probably the two stand outs were Barry Mahony and Donal O’Sullivan.

Might they have a role to play this weekend? They might. Just how much of a role we won’t know until the weekend. Mahony might stand a half decent chance of starting the game given Kerry’s relative shortage of players for the middle two positions.

With Na Gaeil in action at 3.15 that rules out both Diarmuid O’Connor and Jack Barry and, with David Moran ruled out for much of the league, that leaves just Adrian Spillane in situ as a recognised starting midfielder for the Kingdom and had Templenoe reached their All Ireland club final Kerry wouldn’t even have been able to call upon him.

It’s a little bit of a boost for Peter Keane – not that he would have wanted it to turn out this way – that Templenoe aren’t in action as it frees up four additional players for this trip to the capital to take on the five in-a-row winners.

That said we’re not 100% certain that Gavin Crowley will be in a position to start as he was carrying an injury into the game with Oughterard the other week, but even so to have both Tadhg Morley and Killian Spillane at the ready along with Spillane is helpful to say the least.

We’d assume, given the high-profile nature of the fixture and the history and even just the need to lay down an early season marker, that both managers will go as strong as they possibly can, leaving experimentation until another day unless forced into it like Kerry might be at midfield where either Mahony or Liam Kearney could get a nod.

We won’t be seeing Paudie Clifford as the Fossa man is presently injured, we probably won’t see David Shaw who’s just back from injury either, but we might get a look at Michael Potts and Tony Brosnan.

Even aside from the relative strength of the sides both managers choose to name, it’s not quite clear how match sharp either combination will be given that they were both away on holiday – we stress not together! – until a couple of weeks ago.

We suspect Kerry won’t be in a position to hit the ground running quite as well as they did last year given this, while Dublin struggled somewhat under similar circumstances last year. Throw into that a change of manager with Farrell replacing Gavin and Dublin are perhaps a little bit more of an unknown quantity than they’ve been at any time in the last five years.

Farrell only started collective training with Dublin last Tuesday week – having met his panel of players before Christmas having taken on the role in early December – and has still to announce his full back-room team (Shane O’Hanlon and Mick Galvin will be involved).

Dublin too have a few injuries to key players. Stephen Cluxton is out for the league and will probably be replaced by Evan Comerford, with Michael Shiel (who played in Longford) providing cover. Con O’Callaghan, meanwhile, is set to miss the opening month or so of the league, while Micheal Darragh MacAuley might be rested for a time.

With all that considered do Kerry have a chance to turn over the All Ireland champions on their home patch? Yeah, absolutely they do. Would we be putting money on it? No, there’s too much up in the air at this stage, but it’s a definite possibility.

Given that it’s early season and given that neither side has a huge amount done it’s hard to know what sort of a game we might get. We suspect it’s likely to be quite an open game, much less tactical than what you might expect later in the season when management teams have time to put plans in place and if that is the case fans and neutrals alike could be in for a treat. Would you back against the Dubs in a shoot-out? Probably not, but Kerry have some serious firepower at their disposal as we know, even if they need to deliver on more of their chances, especially from goal-scoring opportunities.

Kerry and Keane would be relatively happy to leave Croke Park having bagged a couple of goals and if they do then a couple of points might be coming back down the M7 with them. The odds, however, suggest that Dublin should have enough for Kerry on this occasion, but as we say this time around there are far more unknowns (both known and unknown) than knowns, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld.

Verdict: Dublin