A North Kerry team would give new impetus

John O’Dowd spoke to Johnny Mulvihill who believes the time has come for Shannon Rangers and Feale Rangers to amalgamate and form one North Kerry team to compete in the County Senior Football Championship

JOHNNY Mulvihill is a Feale Rangers man through and through.

The Moyvane man captained the divisional outfit during their 1977 county senior football final defeat to Shannon Rangers, was a member of the teams that lifted the Bishop Moynihan Cup in 1978 and 1980, and managed the North Kerry outfit to their last county title in 2007.

Despite all those memories of past glories, the principal of St Michael’s College in Listowel believes that it is now time for Feale Rangers and Shannon Rangers to come together and form one team to give the area a proper chance at competing at the elite level of Kerry senior championship football.

“I’ve always had a great interest in Feale Rangers because in 1977, Feale Rangers and Shannon Rangers played in the county final, and I was captain of Feale Rangers, and Shannon Rangers beat us.

“Imagine that. Shannon Rangers and Feale Rangers in the county championship final! And at the very height of

Kerry football, the

Golden

Years, and our two divisional teams were in the final!

“The following year, Feale Rangers won it and Johnny Wren from Tarbert was the first man ever to captain a Feale Rangers team to win a county championship, and Shannon Rangers were beaten in the semi-final that year. Feale Rangers then won it again in 1980,” said Mulvihill.

“For those ten years or so, Feale Rangers and Shannon Rangers were up there with the best of them. Obviously, both sides went downhill after that, and it’s sad.” Feale Rangers did make the final in 1999 where they lost to East Kerry, but it was November 11, 2007 (a gap of 27 years) before the Bishop Moynihan Cup made its next and last visit to North Kerry when Mulvihill managed a side containing Éamonn Fitzmaurice, Paul Galvin, Brendan Guiney, Anthony Maher and Noel Kennelly to a 1-4 to 0-6 victory over defending champions, South Kerry.

“I was manager that year with Jerome Stack, and we were lucky in the sense that we had a great squad, we had a great leader in Éamonn Fitzmaurice as captain. I think we got beaten in the first round, and there was a back-door then. When we won our second game, we wanted to really bring home to the boys that we had a real opportunity.

“South Kerry were going for four-ina-row that year and Feale Rangers beat them by one point in the final. Those days, to me, are days that you can never forget.

“I remember about two weeks after that county final, I think Tarbert and Moyvane were playing in the North Kerry Championship in Moyvane, and we were doing some fund-raising. We collected around €50,000 in one day out there, because the people were so delighted with the Feale Rangers win.

“The people of North Kerry love their football, love their Feale Rangers, love their Shannon Rangers.”

Despite all that, and with both North Kerry divisions only recording two victories each in the last five years of county senior championship football, Mulvihill is adamant that it’s time for change.

“What can we do for the future going forward? I do honestly think that the time has come to bring Feale Rangers and Shannon Rangers together. This is not new. North Kerry played together before, and they got to two county finals where they lost to the great five-in-a-row John Mitchels team in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

“I think it would bring a new impetus to everybody if we had a senior championship team going forward for North Kerry, under the banner of North Kerry. You would have a stronger team, plus I think you could get momentum going.

“If you had the right managerial team over them, and if you had the North Kerry Board backing them, not in money terms but in time for preparation, a North Kerry team would put it up to any of the present county championship teams.

“There is a suggestion to start at minor and under-21 level. I would be of the opinion though – I would go for broke now! I think now is the time,” stressed Mulvihill.

The Moyvane man, of course, is also principal of a secondary school in the area and he feels that while there are no representatives in the Munster Colleges SFC (Corn Uí Mhuirí) competition, North Kerry is in a pretty unique situation.

“If you look at West Kerry, they have one school. South Kerry, they have one school. Kenmare has one school. Then you have The Green in Tralee, Gaelcholaiste Chiarrai, etc. But in North Kerry there are six schools – St Michael’s, Tarbert Comprehensive, Causeway, Ballybunion, Abbeyfeale, even though it’s in the West Limerick district they’re getting players from North Kerry, and the Community College with us here in Listowel,” he explained.

“If all those schools were together as one school, we would be winning Corn Uí Mhuirís like the likes of St Brendans in Killarney. But there are advantages too with small schools in that more players are playing the game.

“We won the All-Ireland ‘C’ Colleges title in 2013 for the first time ever in St Michael’s, and it was the greatest occasion ever in the school. Little victories like that are very important, they’re huge for the school. Tarbert have won some great competitions over the years, so have Causeway and Ballybunion.”

Indeed, in recent weeks, Colaiste Ide agus Iosef in Abbeyfeale won the Munster Colleges ‘C’ title, with a team including Brosna’s Kerry Under-20 star Paul Walsh, emphasising that there are green shoots for the schools game in the region.

Light at the end of the tunnel which could have been extinguished if a recent Congress motion to do away with the All-Ireland Colleges competitions at the lower grades had been passed.

“At national level, the GAA tried to do away with the All-Ireland ‘C’ and ‘D’ competitions, and that was a very retrograde step. I have to compliment the County Board because they came in behind the Kerry Colleges and the motion didn’t succeed. It would have been an awful step for colleges football,” stressed the St Michael’s principal.

Every school in North Kerry is making sustained efforts to improve their own situation, not least St Michael’s, where they have built an astro pitch and a new sand pitch at the cost of €300,000, which was mostly funded by the school itself.

“We need those facilities because at winter time all fields are closed because of the wet weather, and we cannot really coach our teams at that time. This new facility, which will be available for all the schools in North Kerry, and to the clubs, will change the way that we are doing things in North Kerry.

“We started an initiative this year where (Kerry Games Promotion Officer) John Dillon comes in two days a week coaching our first years, second years and third years, and we have seen the benefits already. Our Under-15s got to the Munster Final and, unfortunately, they got beaten by two points up in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

“Lorraine Scanlon, Cormac Mulvihill, Liam Hassett and myself, we’re all working away at it, doing more in fact, because teachers still can give a great coaching chance to young people. I think it’s only a matter of time before North Kerry will turn it around. But we can’t be complacent.”