THE KINGDOM COMES CALLING

Kerry prepared for bow on national soccer stage

2023-02-11 -

A husbAnd and wife went for their sunday stroll just after lunch.

They made their way along beaten paths through the tall grass, a winter sun shining its glare over the walkers.

Yet the unusual bit to the story isn’t the uncommonly good weather for the time of year, rather it is what happened every 50 yards or so.

The O’Keeffes have lived in Kerry all their lives and are well known for their contributions to local soccer. But there’s a difference between being well known and getting stopped for a chat by every person you meet.

Eventually, after the umpteenth time a well wisher offered luck to Sean, the long-time Kerry district league chairman, his wife turned to him and smiled.

“All these years and I never knew I was married to a celebrity.”

These days everyone involved with Kerry FC, the newlyformed League of Ireland club, feels that way. “We’ve all had to go into hibernation,” Sean explains, “because the demand for tickets has been insane. Seriously we could sell this game out three times over, maybe more.”

The game he’s talking about isn’t an All-Ireland final. It isn’t even a county Championship encounter. It’s football alright but not as we know it. This coming Friday the League of Ireland, formed 101 years ago, arrives in the Kingdom.

Famous

And the county’s most famous son has his ticket.

If you didn’t know Kerry sport and if you didn’t know David Clifford, you might be surprised by that news. After all, memories of ‘The Ban’ remain fresh in people’s minds, the furore about Rule 42 even more so.

But before he became known nationally as a Gaelic footballer, Clifford was picked by his county’s underage soccer teams, getting as far as the 2013 Kennedy Cup, the prestigious Under-14 national competition.

This is O’Keeffe: “Ah sure, maybe he’d like to tog out for us.” He laughs before becoming serious again.

“We have always worked side by side with the GAA.

“Dual players are a big part of Kerry sport but the way we’re looking at it, we’ll develop a player of the same standard as David Clifford. We have been putting down seeds. Danny Okwute came through our system and he has since gone across to Stockport County. We’ve a pathway set up now. The final bit is there.”

That ‘bit’ came at a fair old price.

To the outsider the League of Ireland’s First Division might not tick too many of the glamour boxes but for those operating inside it, the passion runs deep, a sense of community crossing borders, geographic and spiritual.

Welcomed

Refugees are welcomed here. Racism is fought. Here you get bitter rivalries between clubs but a simultaneous respect that everyone is involved in the same fight, to try and promote a league that is frequently sneered at. This week Kerry FC enters the fight. And it isn’t just the fact they are the newest entrant that has caused a stir. It’s the name, the location. Kerry, home of the All-Ireland SFC champions, home of David Clifford, Irish sport’s greatest talent, now has a new club in town.

But how will Kerry FC compete with 38 All-Irelands?

How can this David topple Goliath and win over the hearts and minds of a Gaelic footballobsessed county?

“The fact this is a predominantly GAA county does not faze us,” says Kerry FC administrator Ivan Hurley.

“Kerry will always be known as a GAA county but why can’t there be a soccer David Clifford? You’d like to have an idol on your team. The GAA is not the opposition to us. We are operating in a different space.”

The club’s new captain, Matt Keane, remembers when he op

erated in the same place.

As a kid he was on a Killarney Celtic team that went all the way to an SFAI Cup semi-final.

On that team were eight players, goalkeeper Shane Ryan, right-back Dan O’Donoghue, centre-backs Shane Cronin and Liam Kearney, wingers Paudie Clifford and Darragh Roche, midfielder Micheál Burns, striker Tony Brosnan, who have gone on to play GAA for Kerry.

“There was passion in that team,” says Keane of a Killarney side who were eventually beaten by Home Farm at the penultimate stage of that Under-12 competition. “That shouldn’t surprise you. There’s always been a love for soccer in Kerry.”

Nationally we just didn’t pay much attention to it even though Kerry Schoolboys are one of only five leagues to have won the Kennedy Cup; Tralee Dynamos won the FAIYouth Cup in 1998; a Kerry FC Under-17 side reached a national cup final in 2019.

So, in one sense, it was inevitable that some day a League of Ireland team would eventually emerge.“But as a junior league, we just couldn’t afford the costs,” says O’Keeffe, who has been Kerry and district league chairperson for 14 years.

That was where Billy Dennehy came in. As a player, Dennehy was a winger, a league winner with Shamrock Rovers, a fine operator for Cork City, St Pat’s and Limerick, too. “It always hurt that I never got to represent my county,” Dennehy, a Tralee man, says.

Manager

Now he can go one better.

He’s the manager of this new enterprise and was also part of the consortium that turned this footballing dream into a reality.

Between himself and another Kerry man, Stephen Conway, they managed to persuade a Boston-based Irish businessman, Brian Ainscough, that this project was worth investing in.

“They have removed the (financial) burden,” says O’Keeffe. “Those lads have made this happen.”

Yet anyone who has been involved in any League of Ireland club quickly gets to appreciate these things only work if built from the bottom up as well as being paid for from the top down.

That’s why the sight of volunteers at their Mounthawk Park home has been so heartwarming.

“What can we do, they ask us,” says Hurley. “Give us a paintbrush there. I want to help.”

At the Tralee school he teaches in, Keane, the captain, is answering more questions than he gets to ask these days.

“Kids are coming up to me, ‘when can we order the kit?’” says Keane. “People in Kerry love their sports. They’ll go to a soccer game on a Friday, basketball on Saturday, (Gaelic) football on a Sunday.

“You might say we’re up against David Clifford, possibly the greatest player to ever play Gaelic football, but David will support us the way we (Kerry FC) players will support him and all those who wear the green and gold. This isn’t Kerry FC versus Kerry (the Gaelic football team). The only team we’re thinking about is Cobh Ramblers this Friday.”

Can they, this new team, this untested collection of local amateurs, upset the odds and beat some of the best semi-professionals in the country?

“We are Kerry men and we are always going to be confident going into anything we do,” says Keane. “That’s why they call us cute fellas. Every game we’ll go in for, we won’t be fearing anyone, home or away.”

Competing

This is Hurley: “In one sense, we are competing with a lot of sports, GAA, basketball, rugby — Munster Rugby’s home games are close by — but young people in Kerry now see a future, they don’t have to go away anymore to play their soccer. They can do it here. Their dreams can be fulfilled on their doorstep.

“The swing towards soccer is going to be huge.”

This is O’Keeffe: “We owed it to the players from the underage set-up. They played for Kerry at Under-14s, 17s, 19s. We always felt it was a shame that Kerry people could not play for their county in soccer, the way they do in Gaelic (football).”

Off the field they have made it possible. They had a ground, but that had to become a mini-stadium, 491 new seats arriving from Spain, costlier bulbs inserted onto their floodlights, two tonnes of rubber applied to the 4G pitch; fire certs obtained.

“People are taking Kerry soccer seriously now,” says O’Keeffe.

‘Why can’t there be a soccer David Clifford in Kerry?’