The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
When will we see some more new Kerry faces?
Paul Brennan wonders when will be see what will be only the second player, after Liam Kearney, to make his senior Kerry debut this year
IN Edendork last Sunday week Peter Keane was asked about James O’Donoghue and, specifically, if the Legion man would be available to play against Meath next Sunday. The Kerry manager said he hoped to have O’Donoghue “in the next game or maybe the game after” before confirming, twice, that O’Donoghue wasn’t injured.
The question was asked because O’Donoghue had played extremely well in the first League game against Dublin, scoring three first half points from play before being substituted off after 50 minutes. That encouraging form continued a week later in Tralee against Galway, with O’Donoghue coming up with two fine scores in the opening half. However, he never made it back on to the pitch for the second and didn’t travel with the team to Tyrone the weekend before last.
It was assumed that O’Donoghue had suffered some injury in that first half against Galway, and his no show in Edendork seemed to confirm those suspicions, yet Keane was insistent that the player is injury free.
By way of explaining O’Donoghue’s total absence for the last game and a half – without directly addressing it – Keane said: “Yeah, we’d hope to have him in the next game or maybe the game after that. He’s played two games, he probably hadn’t played two games for us last year so, look, we’re juggling I suppose. You’ve lots of talent there. Killian Spillane came on in Croke Park, (it) didn’t go great for him, came on against Galway, did well, so he was getting his opportunity to start today. Ye keep telling me we’ve great forwards, sure how can I find out how good they are if I’m not prepared to play them.”
Three games into the National League and Keane has started just eight different forwards (nine if you include Tommy Walsh’s midfield start against Dublin) so one wonders if the Kerry manager will be
prepared to start one or two new ones this Sunday against Meath?
In those first three games Kerry have started 21 different players in all 25 players have seen some game time - so the management can hardly be accused of not working through their playing squad, but a closer inspection of the team sheets from the Dublin, Galway and Tyrone games suggests a reluctance to fish beyond familiar waters.
Only one player – Liam Kearney – has made his senior debut so far this year; all 24 other players used so far in the League have worn the green and gold jersey at senior level before.
Kerry’s opening round game away to Dublin was always going to see the visitors fielding their strongest possible team against the All-Ireland champions, but one might have expected some new faces the next day against Galway in Tralee. As it turned out Kearney was the only senior debutant to feature against the Tribesmen, and even then one could legitimately wonder if the Spa club man would have started had Adrian Spillane not been injured. Kearney had come on for Spillane early in the Dublin match and did very well, but with David Moran, Jack Barry and Diarmuid O’Connor unavailable in Croke Park it might have been more a case of the management being somewhat forced into deploying Kearney.
Whether or which, Kearney did enough against Dublin to warrant his start against Galway, and again above in Tyrone, but where are the rest of the newcomers to the panel who were drafted in over the winter?
Of the three match-day 26-man panels thus far, only Kearney, Adam Donoghue from Castleisland Desmonds, and David Shaw from Dr Crokes, were listed who had yet to play senior League or
Championship football, with the last two still to make their debuts. (Shaw was just about to step on to the pitch as a 75th minute substitute against Galway but never made it across the whitewash.)
The management has never disclosed a complete list of the new players drafted in over the winter, but as far as we know, Paudie Clifford (pictured) is still rehabbing from injury, while others such as Cormac Coffey, Seán T Dillon, Barry Mahony, Eoghan O’Brien and Ronan Buckley are in there but yet to get on the bus for a League game. It goes without saying that it takes time for new players to get up to speed with the demands of the senior inter-county game, but if ever there was the ideal game to break in one or two new faces Sunday’s visit of Meath is surely that game. The Royals are pointless after three games, and while that makes them potentially desperate and therefore dangerous opponents in Killarney on Sunday, Keane and his selectors could hardly pick a better opportunity to, in Keane’s words “find out how good they are”.
Aside from those players completely untried at this level, there are others like Shaw, Brosnan and their Crokes team mate Michael Potts, as well as Pa Kilkenny, who was brought back in from the wilderness by Keane after some three years away from the Kerry squad, who have yet to play this year.
(Brosnan did come on for the last two minutes against Tyrone, and Kilkenny, Coffey, Dillon, Mahony and Buckley did feature in Kerry’s two McGrath Cup matches, which the senior team management didn’t preside over.)
Perhaps it all simply shows just how much weight managers now place on the National League, even if plenty – Keane included – are happy to shrug their shoulders at it publicly, and pass it off as not being that important to them at all. Certainly, it seems, plenty of Division One team managers are less inclined to use the League for the ‘experimentation’ it was once renowned for, with most going all out to win every game.
And maybe with good reason. It might be a crude enough yardstick, but it’s also a fact that of the 20 counties relegated from Division One between 2010 and 2019, only one of those teams has, in the same year, gone on to reach an All-Ireland semi-final; that was Tyrone in 2015, who lost their preliminary game in the Ulster Championship and had to go through the Qualifiers.
Of those 20 relegated teams over the last 10 years, just four managed to recover and bounce back to win their provincial championship title within a couple of months. Perhaps this explains why Division One managers are less inclined to play around with too many new players in the League, or at least unless their top-flight status has been secured.
After just one full season in charge of Kerry, it’s far too soon to make any clear pronouncements on what type of manager Peter Keane is, but last year’s League campaign saw Kerry use 31 players, with 24 different starters. Twenty players started two or more games, while 11 players started five League games or more.
What that tells us is that, like most managers, Peter Keane has a core of players he is happy to build a team around, and then fill in the gaps around that core in a horses for courses approach. Others factors, of course – injuries being the main one – will always determine who gets on the team bus and then who does or doesn’t get game time on any given weekend.
With 25 players used so far after just three games, it’s fair to assume Kerry will employ over 30 players by the end of their Round 7 game against Donegal, and while a Nationa League final appearance, even the title itself, would be most welcome in the Kingdom, it is, after all, all about the All Ireland Championship.
To that end Keane and co. will work through their panel as and when they see fit, but from the outsider’s point of view it would be interesting to see a few new faces inhabiting those new home and away jerseys unveiled over the last few weeks.