Rathmore still the one to beat in Intermediate Championship

GROUP C was the one they all wanted to avoid once Rathmore was the third of the four seeded teams pulled out in Monday’s Intermediate Championship draw.

Ignominiously relegated from the senior ranks last year, the East Kerry club will be fiercely determined to make a quick return to the top echelon of club football, and that can only spell danger for the other 15 clubs in what is always a viperishly competitive championship. And that in itself means Rathmore will get nothing easy at any turn, and they will earn every bit of it if they do manage to win this championship.

The first part of that will be to face another club that has fallen on lean times of late, Laune Rangers, but which is making small, but steady, steps in the right direction once again. Group C is completed by a Castleisland Desmonds team that has, by any standard, underachieved in recent times but will be desperate to make a real impact on this competition, and Ardfert, one-time All-Ireland Intermediate championship but a team that is a long way off that standard now.

One of their All-Ireland winning players, Shane Griffin, is in the Ardfert managerial hot-seat this season but everything points to Rathmore coming out of this group.

Group A has another couple of All-Ireland Club Junior Championship winning clubs, Beaufort and St Marys, though An Ghaeltacht are possibly the strongest team in this quartet and can be fancied to reach the semi-finals.

Newly crowned All-Ireland Club Juni0r champions, Na Gaeil, start life in Intermediate football in a tough, though not impossible, group with Glenflesk, Currow and Spa.

Currow might be regarded as the most obdurate of the sides in this group, Glenflesk, arguably, have the most talented team overall, while Spa are a fine team whenever it comes to championship football. Nonetheless, with the positivity they’ll carry with them from that Croke Park victory last month - and the lift they will surely get from new manager Jerome Stack - Na Gaeil can have no fears of coming out on top in this group and reaching the last four, at a minimum, as long as fatigue doesn’t catch up with them.

Group D brings together two South Kerry clubs, Dromid Pearses and Waterville, and two from Mid Kerry, Glenbeigh/Glencar and Milltown/Castlemaine, in what is a really tough group to call a winner of.

At a push the semi-finalists should be An Ghaeltacht, Currow, Rathmore and Glenbeigh/Glencar, with Rathmore to edge An Ghaeltacht in the final if they don’t meet at the penultimate stage.