I’m giddy at the thought of what Kerry have in store

The little boy inside of me is dancing a jig of excitement at what might lie ahead

LAST weekend I discovered that school is not out for summer, well not on the football field anyway. For the most part, the lessons learned were ugly ones and yet, by the end of it, the little Kerry boy inside me skipped out the gate with a smile on my face.

And, yes, I am not losing the run of myself because context flowed free and ugly. The provincial championships are a sham and that is not an easy thing for me to acknowledge or to write. I lived, like everyone in my house, to beat Cork and I have 10 Munster medals to prove that I lived a wholesome life.

I value those medals – even if my young buck has raided the drawer and a couple have gone missing – and I value the memories even more. I grew up respecting Cork, watching the likes of Niall Cahalane, Larry Tompkins and Stephen O’Brien ram their boots hard on Kerry throats for over half a decade.

Last Saturday, I thought of those boys and how they must have despaired at how far the team they honoured has fallen.

Without Cork there is no Munster Championship and even with them there was no such thing as democracy, just a power-sharing coalition government.

It has been dead as a competition for years but it took last Saturday night for me to go and bury it. And it’s a shovel that has a bit more digging left in it.

It feels wrong to even refer to Leinster as a championship after Dublin won their 13th title in 14 years and their eighth in-a-row. They could easily win the 20 on the bounce if tedium does not get to them first.

That leaves Ulster and Connacht where there is a residue of competition, but only that.

Three provincial finals played inside 24 hours produced average winning margins in excess of 15 points. Donegal came through Ulster with an average winning margin of 10 points per game so let’s suspend the notion that even the strongest of these championships comes with a beating pulse.

It is an argument for another day and if these competitions are not obliterated off the GAA calendar, then at the very least they have to be is divorced from the All-Ireland series and played as standalone early or even pre-summer competitions.

That’s a harsh lesson for a traditionalist like me to absorb but you can’t ignore what is presented before you in black and white.

And because of the lack of competitiveness in the provincial system, it is nigh on impossible to get a measure on where the top teams are.

And yet the little Kerry boy inside me is dancing a jig of excitement.

Look, I have never brought into this Kerry cuteness lark – to be honest, the yerrah, yerrah syndrome attributed to us has always been overegged by the media in particular – and when I wrote a couple of months ago that I did not give us a hope in hell of contending for the All-Ireland, I was not boxing clever but speaking plainly.

I have had a change of heart and mind and while the Cork match last weekend was not a test, it did reveal that Kerry are developing the two qualities which cost them so dearly 12 months ago – speed and strength.

This is effectively a new team playing a new way and it is hard not to be excited because the brakes are off and they are going after teams.

Of course that is easily done when you are playing opponents you know that you are going to beat and the first real test will come in a fortnight’s time when they come up against a structured and strong Galway team.

But there can be no turning back for Kerry, no going back in the bunker. The whole country knows about the talent that is coming off the Kerry production line but even so I was still surprised at how that talent has developed.

Jason Foley has gone from a kid to a typical, hard-edged North Kerry defender, in the mould of an Eamon Breen, in just a matter of months, Sean O’Shea has shown that he is a leader as well as a free-taker while David Clifford has shown a capacity to work and tackle that equals the magic of his kicking boots.

Above all, there is Gavin White, the one player who I had not seen a lot off and who has blown me away with his pace and his heads-up footballing ability.

Yes, it is early days but I am feeling really hopeful because Éamonn Fitzmaurice is developing the personnel to fit a game-plan that showcases the best of Kerry football.

That is not to say that they are going to win the All-Ireland because the team to beat is still Dublin.

They were not themselves for 35 minutes last Sunday, but I put that down to the fact that complacency is your toughest opponent.

There were times in our prime when it got the better of us in early round Munster games where you knew you were going to win and that inevitably led to a drop in standards and error-strewn performances.

It was never a true measure of where we were at as a team, no more than Dublin’s mediocre first half performance against Laois in last Sunday’s Leinster final. We will see them in all their might as the summer stretches but while injuries have weakened both Mayo and Donegal, and Galway may lack the cutting edge to truly test them, there is a team coming hard at them now.

We could be on the brink of a new Kerry/Dublin era, and while that duopoly might not be to everyone’s taste, it will make for interesting times.

And perhaps never more than in the months that lie ahead.

There were times complacency got the better of us