The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Is there anything to be said for having a second captain?
IN the vernacular, there won’t be a kick or a puck of a ball in it. That’s how tight it is going to be when the hands go in the air on Monday night to vote on the issue of the Kerry captaincy.
The Beaufort club motion asking that the captain of the Kerry senior hurling and football teams shall be selected by the team management in consultation with the chairman of the County Committee is a contentious one, and one that has certainly divided opinion. According to a telephone poll conducted by The Kerryman on Tuesday the matter is far from clear-cut, and in keeping with mood of the general election enveloping the country, don’t be surprised if this one goes to a recount. It’s a vote that will probably keep the tally men in the dark until the final declaration.
Players play and administers administer, goes the old saying, but in an odd way this motion might well live or die by what happens out on football field. Forty-eight hours before Monday evening’s vote in The Pavillion, Kerry will host the Galway footballers outside the glass in Austin Stack Park. David Clifford will play. And David Clifford will most likely torment the Tribesmen and shoot the lights out. David Clifford is the newly appointed football team captain. And David Clifford will be just 21 years of age and 12 days when the vote takes place.
It could be that, somewhat inadvertently, the Fossa wonder-kid will, by virtue of his performance against Galway, as well as he masterclass against Dublin last weekend, copper-fasten the minds of those who want to keep the status quo - vis-á-vis allowing the county champions nominate the Kerry captain - and, more importantly, persuade the ‘don’t know’s and ‘undecided’s to oppose the Beaufort motion.
It will, after all, take a two-thirds majority to carry the motion, and even with the Committee Executive expected to all support the motion in block, getting that required 67% looks like it could be a hard sell.
Clifford did the lobby for change no help at all last Saturday in Croke Park, with the prevailing attitude after Kerry’s draw with Dublin going along the lines that the captaincy was no weight at all for the young man to bear. Some even went so far as to suggest that in scoring one of his trademark solo goals, icing that last minute free kick to draw the game, and then walking off the field with that big grin of his, despite his jersey being ripped to tatters after the final whistle, the captaincy brought even more of the best out of him. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, some say, but in Clifford’s case he could probably place the crown into the top corner of the goal from 25 metres out.
If clubs delegates are going to be swayed by Clifford’s apparent nonchalance with having the captaincy (and we have only seen him in one game in that capacity) then it might serve them well to go back just a little bit further and consider the less straight-forward cases in recent years. Last year Gavin White got the captaincy by virtue of Dr Crokes county championship win in 2018, but on different days his team mates Shane Murphy and Micheal Burns had to deputise when their club mate didn’t make the starting team because of injury or simply not been selected. None of the three players in question had 10 Championship appearances to the name.
Even in 2015 when Kieran Donaghy got the captaincy after his club’s county championship success the previous autumn, the Austin Stacks man - then 32 years of age that summer - couldn’t hold down a guaranteed starting place on the Kerry team and didn’t start the All-Ireland Final, with David Moran assuming captain’s duties that day against Dublin.
This history of the Kerry football team captaincy is littered with stories - many of them good and positive - but many tarnished with controversy and acrimony. The corollary of those bitter tales is, of course, the unforgettable ‘Captain’s Tuesdays’ in small clubs like Finuge and Annascaul and Dromid and Glenbeigh when the Sam Maguire Cup - and their local hero - was carried shoulder high into and through those small but proud villages.
That’s the hold history and tradition has on this vote. One delegate canvassed by this newspaper on Tuesday said: “We have great memories and history of captains of the club bringing the Sam Maguire back to this part of the county. The first thing that people talk about when they leave the ground after the county final is ‘who will be Kerry captain next year?’ It’s also a great chance for small, rural clubs to have the Kerry captain. As well as that, democracy is almost gone out of it. If this motion is passed, it will be another step in that direction. The County Board will end up deciding everything for us.”
From Moyvane’s Con Brosnan to Donie O’Sullivan from Spa, and Seamus Moynihan in Gleflesk to Dara Ó Cinnéide back in An Ghaeltacht, it’s that knowledge that the Kerry team captain can, potentially come from any corner of the county, that glues many people to the status quo.
But we live and play in different times now, and in a multi-million euro industry where inter-county teams seek marginal gains through everything from specialised training gear to isotonic drinks and monitoring sleep patterns to in-game statistics, it seems - to the sports scientists at least - that leaving the choice of captain to an archaic, if noble, method, is quite simply poking oneself in the eye.
As another delegate canvassed this week said: “Any successful group that is together for a while, the strong characters always come to the fore. A natural leader will rise to the top and that’s why the manager should select that person.”
Or this: “In all fairness, why would you have a captain sitting on the bench? That has basically been the case in Kerry for the last ten years. It shouldn’t be a Ryder Cup situation where the captain doesn’t even play. If you’re not good enough to get on the team, how can you be the captain?”
IN a county where the issue of nominating one team captain is so divisive, there probably isn’t much point in suggesting we go with two, but would that be such a mad or bad or fanciful notion?
There’s already myriad situations where the nominated captain hasn’t started games and so either a club mate deputises or the county champions nominate some other player in his stead.
What about the county champions nominating their man, as is presently their right and honour under the current system, and the management team also selecting a co-captain.
What, essentially, is the role of the captain after all? Going in for the toss of the coin at the start of matches: surely if any sort of weather conditions prevail that could affect the play then a decision is arrived at before the team goes out anyway (remember those marginal gains).
Accepting the silverware? Either both captains go up and do the necessary or it’s agreed in advance that the manager’s captain accepts, say, McGrath Cup and Munster Championship trophies, and the county champion’s captain does up for national silverware. Or whatever.
We’ve have it before with Kerry where (captain) Declan O’Sullivan and (stand-in captain) Colm Cooper climbing the steps of the Hogan Stand in 2006 to lift the Sam Maguire together, and again in 2014 when Dr Crokes team mates Fionn Fitzgerald and Kieran O’Leary accepted the Sam Maguire after sharing the captaincy duties throughout the year.
Both were examples of simple magnanimity and we didn’t hear much, if any, dissension for the gesture.
Could we have it that our silverware is always hoisted skyward by co-captains?
That Sam Maguire Cup is, after all, a fairly large piece of hardware.