Kennelly backs united front for North Kerry

NOEL Kennelly has extremely fond memories of being part of Feale Rangers’ County SFC victory in 2007, but he has added to the growing clamour in North Kerry for one divisional team to represent the district in Kerry’s blue riband competition.

“Yeah, I definitely think there is something in it. They should look at a North Kerry team,” he said.

“I don’t think Feale Rangers or Shannon Rangers can win a county championship at the moment. I hope I’m wrong. It’s difficult for the divisional teams and it’s definitely difficult for Feale Rangers at the minute.

“I was stuck with them last year with Brian Scanlon helping out with the coaching and stuff. The hurling aspect of it is tough. The Kerry footballers will, hopefully, in the next few years be getting to more All-Ireland finals, and, in Kerry, your hurling championship is thrown in the middle of all that.

“You’ve no preparation going into the county championship. Straightaway, you’re down seven or eight players between Crotta and Lixnaw. Then you have your club scene with junior and intermediate championships, and that’s the first priority for clubs now. They want to try and win a junior or intermediate and get to Croke Park.

“If we start underage, and get a North Kerry team going underage, if there’s not going to be a North Kerry senior team just yet. Try and get these guys playing together at underage, try and get them competing at county championships between minors and under-21s.

“Football in North Kerry sometimes has a bad name, for sluggishness, or thuggery or whatever. Down through the years, there have been fabulous footballers in North Kerry and there still are great footballers in North Kerry.

“I think that they are not getting the chance to promote themselves in the county championship. Look at 2007 and Anthony Maher getting promoted onto the Kerry senior team that time. He probably could have got there anyway, but by playing for Feale Rangers in a county championship final and putting in a massive performance, he was parachuted straight in.

“The county championship is the best competition in Kerry. If you’re playing at the back end of that, and playing well, that’s a stepping stone into Kerry. That’s where we are kind of falling down in North Kerry. We have a couple in there, in Shane Enright and Jason Foley, but there’s plenty more guys that could fit into the set-up.

“Maybe if there was one North Kerry team competing at the business end of the county championship, that’s the way forward. I think they should give it a try for a couple of years and see how things go. If it doesn’t work out, they can always go back to the way they were,” added the Listowel Emmets man.

Thirteen years ago, Feale Rangers ended up stunning the defending champions and hot favourites, South Kerry, in the county final, but as Kennelly explains, such a scenario didn’t appear in any way possible at the outset of the campaign.

“Yeah, we played St Kierans in a backdoor game in Listowel. Jerome Stack was trainer of the team, and Johnny Mulvihill was manager. And Jerome had to play that day! This is a backdoor game, for Feale Rangers, in the county championship. And Jerome just had to play because we didn’t have the numbers.

“We just scraped through that game and, in the meantime, Fitzy [Éamonn Fitzmaurice] had packed up Kerry, went back into the fold, and we managed to generate a bit of momentum.

“We played Ardfert in Listowel in the next round, got a few bodies back, won that game. Then we played An Ghaeltacht in the quarter-final and that was the watershed moment. We just scraped over the line that day too.

“We went onto the semi-final against Kilcummin, won that after a replay and should probably have been beaten the first day. Then, for the final, we were written off, because South Kerry were going for four or five in a row or something like that.

“We just went traditional North Kerry on the day. The weather wasn’t great, and we went after their strengths. Éamonn [Fitzmaurice] picked up Declan [O’Sullivan], Brendan Guiney might have been marking Bryan Sheehan. We just went horses for courses to neutralise their strengths.

“Like I said, Anthony Maher was wing-forward, and had a massive game that propelled him into the Kerry setup. It was massive to win it. My father had won two county championship medals. I had won a junior and an intermediate, but I had no senior county championship medal.

“Next thing, we ended up winning it that year and it was massive. I actually felt at the time that that team could have won it again in 2008 and 2009. I believe that we left another championship or two after us. Things just didn’t pan out in those two seasons.”