The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Teams count cost of absent county players
Paul Brennan reflects on a County SFC weekend that saw the good, the bad and the almost unseen work of the ‘county man’
THE blue and white manually operated scoreboard in Templenoe, with its box of numbered wooden squares underneath, would remind you of the numbers game they use on Countdown on Channel 4, or for those of you who prefer, 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown.
On Saturday night when the clock ran out for the local Kenmare District team against Dingle, Templenoe’s Rachel Riley fecked off and let the ‘Home 2-4 Away 3-16’ scoreboard hanging in the breeze. As much out of embarrassment, we guess, as duty, the man to tackle the scoreboard, as it were, was native son Tadhg Morley. Of course, had Morley been playing that evening instead of nursing injured ankle ligaments he might have been able to knock a goal and a few points off Dingle’s final total, and if his Templenoe and Kerry team mate Adrian Spillane also hadn’t been sidelined with injury the now absent scorekeeper might have been a little busier with the numbers he had to place after ‘Home’.
Morley intimated that he’s looking at another two weeks of rehab before the ankle problem clears up and that means just one thing: the clock is ticking on his fitness and availability for Kerry’s Munster SFC semi-final four weeks from last Saturday. Kenmare District don’t play their Round 2 game this weekend (they await the winners of the Legion v Kenmare round 1 replay) and it would seem unlikely that the three outstanding Round 2 matches will go ahead the following week, which will be just a fortnight before Kerry’s Munster title defence begins against Clare or Limerick. Quite when we see Morley or Adrian Spillane or the other four Kerry panellists who missed out last weekend through injury is anyone’s guess.
In any event it was the flying fit Paul and Mikey Geaney who shouldered Dingle to victory in Templenoe, with Paul’s 2-2 from play illustrating the value of having the your county men out on the pitch where they need to be.
No more than Morley and Spillane being able to overturn their team’s 15-point defeat on Saturday evening, it’s doubtful the presence of Darran O’Sullivan and Peter Crowley would have done enough for Mid Kerry to reverse their 11-point loss to county and All-Ireland champions Dr Crokes on Sunday. Crowley is a great defender and O’Sullivan a whizz on wheels, but Crokes? In Fitzgerald Stadium? With All-Ireland club medals in their locker? Come off it.
Where the presence of a couple of county men might really have made a difference was up the road in Tralee where South Kerry - minus Bryan Sheehan and Killian Young - went down by four points. You think between Sheehan’s free taking prowess and Young’s tenacious defending they couldn’t have overturned that margin of defeat?
Speculation, perhaps, but if you want actual proof of how much the ‘county man’ can influence a game when he’s on his game look no further than Connolly Park. As we took in the delights of Kenmare Bay as Rachel Riley did his thing behind us on the scoreboard, word came through that Austin Stacks were trailing St Kierans by eight points at half time, having trailed by nine points at one stage.
‘Is the big man playing?’ we enquired of no one in particular. He wasn’t but then he was. Hamstrung with a hamstring problem and unable to start, Kieran Donaghy asked not what his club could do for him but what he could do for his club, and Pat Flanagan told him to get the feck in there and wreak havoc. Donaghy did and did enough to help Stacks recover for an extra-time draw and a chance to live and fight another day (in Scartaglin this Saturday evening).
For other county men it was a weekend of mixed fortunes. Barry John Keane kicked five points from play in O’Rahillys win over South Kerry, Ronan Shanahan’s exploits with Stacks ended after a 16th minute black card, and Legion’s James O’Donoghue had a penalty brilliantly saved against Kenmare.
The takeaway from it all is that you can never underestimate the influence or impact of the inter-county player when it comes to the county championship, whether he is playing or injured, scoring or stopping, black-carded or denied by goal-keeping brilliance...or simply but diligently packing away the scoreboard because the original operative has absconded.