Good outcome for Kerry hurlers from fixture plan

The Kerry hurlers have got pretty much everything they would have wanted

HAVING worked so hard for it, to have it snatched away just like that must have been incredibly difficult to take. On Sunday they qualified. On Tuesday they trained and, by the time their next training session rolled around, the entire world had been turned upside down. Play suspended with no real indication of if or when the Division 2A final the Kerry hurlers had just qualified for would take place.

The longer the lockdown went on, the more discouraging the pronouncements from health officials and, even from the President of the GAA, the more difficult it was to imagine that any matches, let alone the Kingdom’s with Antrim in the league final, would take place.

It wasn’t until the last couple of weeks that the fog cleared and we got some indication that there would, after all, be games this year. Still, even then, there had to have been a certain amount of trepidation for Kerry hurling boss Fintan O’Connor and his players ahead of last Friday’s announcement of the fixtures plan.

Would the league final survive in the reduced season? What sort of championship would they get to play in? Would it be a straight knock-out affair as was being mooted for the All Ireland championships at senior level?

In the end they need not have worried. The Kerry hurlers have got pretty much everything they could have wished for. The league final with Antrim will be played – whether or not it’ll be played in Croke Park as had originally been expected remains to be seen – and the Joe McDonagh Cup will be played in its original form.

Where the Kerry footballers are essentially guaranteed only three games this year – two league fixtures and the Munster semi-final with Cork in Páirc Uí Chaoimh – the hurlers are guaranteed five high quality games – the league final and four rounds of the Joe Mac.

“Yeah we’re happy enough,” Fintan O’Connor confirmed on Monday afternoon.

“The league final will be played and the Joe McDonagh Cup final will be played as a curtain raiser for the All Ireland final, which is huge for everyone. There’s a lot of positives, but we’ll have to do our stuff before then.

“In the circumstances you couldn’t complain about anything, no matter what happened, but we’re delighted that the league final is going ahead. When you play in a competition you like to see it being finished.

“No grounds for complains in fairness and this is probably the only year that if Kerry win the Joe McDonagh we’re going up regardless of what happens, which is a huge thing. I think every other year we’d be playing the bottom team from Leinster, but my reading of it is that if we can manage to win it, we’ll get to go into the senior championship next year.”

O’Connor’s belief that Kerry, if victorious, would be promoted automatically is, we assume, based on the following line from the GAA’s press release last week about the Joe Mac Cup that the “winner [is] promoted to MacCarthy Championship for 2021.”

Perhaps that will be the case, but there is a proviso to that later in the document which states that the “issue of what happens for 2021 MacCarthy Championship should Kerry win the McDonagh Cup will be dealt with in final competition regulations.”

There’s a bit to run on this issue yet and Croke Park confirmed to The Kerryman on Tuesday that no decision has yet been taken with discussions on-going with stakeholders.

Still though even there the worst outcome would be for a retention of the status quo where Kerry are treated differently than their Leinster and Ulster counterparts. Not ideal, but no worse than before and there’s hope that it might be a lot better.

O’Connor and his panel of players were clearly buoyed by the news this week.

“We’re all excited to know that there is an intention to play it as long as [everything goes according to plan],” he said.

“We have to keep our fingers crossed that the country stays going in the right direction and all that. You’ve always got that thing in the back of your head that maybe there will be a second wave and it’s put back on the backburner.

“You’ve just got to stay positive that things will work out alright and we’ll all get to play our games. That’s the big thing everyone is looking forward to it.”

As for the mid-September date given for return to training, O’Connor is generally supportive, but still has some questions about how it will work in practice. “You’re never 100% happy with anything,” he said.

“I’d like maybe for there to be some sort of compromise situation where clubs are knocked out of the championship, like the hurling in Kerry is knockout which means that half the teams in Kerry will be gone day one.

“Will they be doing much hurling in the meantime? That’s the question, and we don’t want to be breaking any rules and we’re not going to break rules, but if a player isfinishedwith his club what’s he going to be doing for six or eight weeks before he’s back in with his county? “That’s the one thing I’d be looking at and I think from other county managers who are more important than me it’s been said already, so maybe there will be some change in it.”