The Nire carrying the hopes of the game’s lesser lights
WHEN Niall Carew appeared on The Sunday Game alongside Pat Flanagan during the summer of 2013, the conversation with presenter Des Cahill focused on the viability of a two-tier championship. Kerry had mauled Carew’s Waterford to the tune of 4-21 to 1-4 and Flanagan’s Westmeath had endured a similar shredding by Dublin at Croke Park.
Colm Cooper sat at home that same evening and found it hard to disagree with the underlying sentiment. In an interview later that year, the Kerry forward warned: ‘If things continue you will see the elite teams with the bigger resources pulling away from everyone else.’
And yet there is no talk of the financial divide in the build-up to this afternoon’s Munster club final. It’s the pick of Kerry – champions Austin Stacks with All Star Kieran Donaghy in tow − against Waterford champions The Nire and yet nobody is talking about an uneven playing field or invoking Roman Abramovich comparisons.
The club championships still show it’s not all about the money. Carew, who knows the Waterford club scene well after managing the county team for the last two years before taking on the Sligo job last October, explains why.
‘The club hasn’t lost its values. They’re still picking from the same parish whereas if you look at counties, it is down to the finance in terms of preparation, back-up et cetera.
‘To run a club, it takes ‘x’ amount of money. It’s a smaller industry. To run a county team, you’re looking at 20 or 30 times that. That’s where the money divide comes in. It’s all down to preparation.’
Stacks are strong favourites, and rightly so, by virtue of their pedigree in the competition and Kerry football’s as a whole. But the beauty of the club championship is that it does not necessarily follow the traditional county carve up. In last year’s Munster club final, Clare champions Cratloe came so close to shocking Cooper and Dr Crokes.
And while Waterford football might live in the shadow of its hurling counterpart, The Nire have been here before, the core of the team giving Dr Crokes the fright of their lives in the Munster final in 2006.
The powerhouses of the All-Ireland club scene in modern times have been all about talent combined with parish values, kingpins Crossmaglen being the perfect example. The lasting attraction of the club championship is that it distils the amateur ideal better than any element of the association.
‘It does,’ says Carew. ‘And I think that’s what the association was founded initially for, the club set-up. The county set-up then got very commercialised and sexy with television and advertising and things like that.
‘Whereas your club player – if you asked anyone in the country, they wouldn’t name five Crossmaglen players, unless they played with Armagh. Which is terrible! Outside of their own county, no-one would be able to name them. Yet someone outside of Armagh would be able to name four or five county footballers.’
Since the summer of 2013 Carew has taken up Flanagan’s old role at the helm of Sligo’s footballers while the latter is now in charge of Offaly. Nothing that has happened in the intercounty scene in the interim has changed the former Kildare player’s mind about the slide towards a two-tier championship, the financial gulf fuelling the onfield divide.
Asked if he sees the gap widening, Carew says: ‘I think it is. This is where finance comes in to it.
‘If you look at the Kerrys, Dublins, the counties who look to win it every few years, Cork who win it every decade – tradition is also a big thing. But you can’t get away from the back-up and resources that are needed at county level.
‘What every manager does, and what I try to do, is bring that club mentality to a county team. The Nire have a massive opportunity of lifting a Munster club title. And they have the players to do it. I’d love to see it happen because the likes of Brian Wall, at 36, gave me everything this year. And so did the three O’Gormans. Tom Wall who was goalkeeper for a long time there as well.’
While Donaghy epitomises the strut and high profile attached to being an All Star and All-Ireland winner in a Kerry jersey, Carew says it’s too simplistic to think success by The Nire could lift all boats in Waterford in terms of county football.
‘If you only have 50 or 60 going to matches, it’s very hard to sacrifice so much to play for the county. And it’s wrong in a way to link the club with county.
‘For me, there is a massive gulf between the Munster club championship and the Munster championship – it’s chalk and cheese if you’re comparing club to county.
‘Look at Baltinglass as well who won it [in 1990], with the likes of Kevin O’Brien. They had excellent footballers but Wicklow haven’t been able to reach a Leinster final in the history of the GAA. So no, I don’t think it can be transferred. Because the gap is too big.
‘Even Division 4 football would be ahead of club football. That’s not disregarding The Nire – I hope they go on and win it – because it would be a massive boost to football in the county.’