‘There’s a serious togetherness there in them’

A DECADE ago the challenge seemed so much different for Dr Crokes.

Yes, they did reach Croke Park in 2007 against Crossmaglen (losing after a replay in Portlaoise), but they were still to make the much sought-after breakthrough at County Championship level that had been threatened with a promising group of players.

That would come in 2010 as the first of five Munster Senior Club titles this decade followed a year later as now, they have a fifth All-Ireland Club semi-final to look forward to on Saturday in Thurles.

Brian Looney and John Payne have been there during the successes and disappointments with the Killarney club and Looney admits facing a fifth voyage beyond Munster is not a bad complaint at all for the club.

“I agree the two decades I have played in have been very contrasting, but now the breakthrough has been made like it was back then it’s great to make this stage as many times as we have.

“We’ve always viewed winning Munster as being a bonus from giving you that route to an All-Ireland semi-final as well as some downtime to prepare for it with the time gap between them,” the seven-time County Championship winner said.

Team captain Payne believes there is a core of experience to the set-up for this stage of the competition that perhaps wasn’t there before.

“I think if you look at the more experienced players, we had in 2012 when we lost to Crossmaglen, the experience they had wasn’t really of an All-Ireland Club semi-final.

“Now you have the younger guys like we have at present as well as me and the older lads who have both won and lost All-Ireland semi-finals so we can pass that on to the younger lads about what to expect,” he feels.

Payne admitted it was a tremendous feeling to be captain of the club during a clean sweep of county, province and district in 2018 as Looney put the O’Donoghue Cup success in East Kerry down in the main to the depth of the Crokes panel.

“Fifteen players will not get it done for you with the amount of competitions that we play in. We’ve spoke a lot about the panel we have, and I felt that told for us in the O’Donoghue Cup.

“There were players that wanted game time and an opportunity to stake their claim for a place on the starting team and it was great that they had that chance,” he said.

Returning on the second weekend of January to full training after their O’Donoghue Cup Final win over Kilcummin the Saturday before Christmas, all focus has been on Mullinalaghta of Longford as Payne says the midlands outfit relatively small size will not cloud the Crokes’ judgement of them.

“There’s a serious togetherness there in them, they are great in the tackle and have handy forwards. They are good all-rounders that we can’t take lightly. They might be a small parish, but any team can have fifteen players good enough for this level at anytime and they beat the favourites for not only Leinster but probably the All-Ireland in Kilmacud,” the Crokes captain said.

Looney also adds that the experience of losing three consecutive matches at this stage between 2012 and 2014 will them all about the pitfalls of this level.

“When we lost to Ballymun in 2013 was a prime example of it [the pitfalls] I felt,” he said.

The motivation in 2017 was more on their own expectations when it came to the Crokes finally winning at this stage against Corofin.

“I wouldn’t say there is any less pressure going into this because of the 2017 win, it feels like all the other All-Ireland club semi-finals we have had. One where nothing less than our best will do as we found out in the Munster Final in 2017 when Nemo beat us.

“We must match Mullinalaghta’s intensity and physicality and probably play as well as anything we have done in the last two years,” Looney concludes.

Payne says that the club have noted neighbouring Kilcummin and Beaufort’s progress to Croke Park and what to make it a hat-trick of visitors by Kerry club sides to Croke Park in the early part of 2019.

“It’s super to see both up there especially after playing them both them in 2018. Hopefully we can make it three in terms of getting there [Croke Park], but we’ve a mighty tough challenge to get through first before we can think about that.”

Dr Crokes were part of the only other trio of Kerry visits to Croke Park for the graded football deciders. That was in 2007 when Crossmaglen thwarted them the second day and Ardfert (Intermediate) and Duagh (Junior) were there as well.

Most will fancy them to get there again for a repeat occurrence twelve years later.

We always viewed winning Munster as being a bonus from giving you that route to an All Ireland semi-final