LOOK TO THE Deep South, and a bout of navel gazing about the state of their senior football championship as two divisional teams; Mid Kerry and East Kerry get ready to face each other for the second season running in the decider this Sunday.
In the background, the footballers of Fossa and Milltown/Castlemaine await to play their intermediate club final. David and Paudie Clifford, and a bunch of their Fossa team-mates, will be mercilessly flogged for the next fortnight as they chase glory with division and club across two different levels.
If something is rotten in the State of The Kingdom, then they are not blissfully unaware.
Former county board chairman and GAA President, Sean Kelly, has long earned his spurs when it comes to giving clubs their place. Refreshingly, he bracingly disregards the Omerta observed by many former holders of high office who decline to comment on current policy.
Therefore when he talks, he generally has a good read on what way the wind is blowing. It carries weight.
Almost a fortnight ago, he felt an intervention was necessary.
“We now have a situation where we have reached the finals of the junior and intermediate were postponed for five weeks to accommodate the senior county championship,” he said.
“That does not make sense to me. Neither, does it make sense to me that Kerry, the strongest and most successful county in football in Ireland, has only eight senior club teams.
“This does not make sense and any team could be relegated any year, as we saw last year with Austin Stacks.”
On the Stacks issue, we will return.
For the sympathy expressed towards them by Kelly, the system has been very good for Kerry when it comes to competing in the Munster and All-Ireland series at intermediate and junior level.
The raw stats show that other counties feel the dice is loaded.
The theory goes that if there are only eight club teams with senior status, then the ninth best club team in Kerry can be expected to be miles ahead of a county such as for argument’s sake, Tyrone, with their neat figure of 16 clubs competing in senior championship.
It’s a crude measure to say it, but essentially at intermediate, you are looking at the ninth best in Kerry, playing the 17th in Tyrone.
And that’s borne out on a global scale.
Of the last 11 All-Ireland intermediate club football championships, five Kerry teams have taken the honours, with Finuge beaten in the other decider.
Since Ardfert won the 2006 Munster intermediate final, only Cork’s Clyda Rovers in 2013 have snatched a title at that level in the province. It’s been all Kerry since.
Go further down into the junior ranks, and we must stress that the Kerry senior championship hasn’t always had just eight teams.
But from when St Michael’s/Foilmore won the first (then unofficial) competition in 2001, only Cork’s Carbery Rangers (2003), Canovee (2007) and Knocknagree (2018) have snatched the Munster junior title out of Kerry. That’s 18 times Kerry clubs have lifted the Munster title out of 21 competitions.
They’ve converted that strike rate into 11 All-Ireland junior wins and three beaten finalists.
If the undercurrents feel as if the game is rigged then the headline acts, such as the big Tralee clubs of John Mitchels, Kerins O’Rahilly’s and Austin Stacks all starting next year as intermediate teams, is causing consternation.
Last January, Rahilly’s were only three points short of eventual All-Ireland kingpins Kilmacud Crokes in a senior semi-final in Croke Park. Last Saturday they lost after extra-time in a senior relegation final to another local Tralee side Na Gaeil.
Today the Strand Road club issued a statement where they are proposing a new structure for the Kerry county championships. It would see the eight senior clubs joined by the eight intermediate championship quarter-finalists from this year in a senior county championship.
The eight divisional teams (who can only draw from junior clubs) would play in the intermediate championship with the eight remaining divisional sides.
A level playing field #ClubZap. See https://t.co/dY1i4K8qoI for more.
— Kerins O'Rahillys (@korgaa) November 2, 2023
Who else to turn to in such turbulence, to consult on the nuances, than Dara Ó Cinnéide?
Currently chairman of An Ghaeltacht, he was part of a crew of pirates that came from nowhere, to almost win an All-Ireland club in 2004.
A few years back they reached the All-Ireland intermediate semi-final but lost to the Moy of Tyrone. And having gained senior status, found themselves exposed and sent back down again.
So you’ll forgive him, if his sympathy has limits.
“To me, it’s a wake-up call for those clubs. Austin Stacks won a county championship only two years ago. The following year they were relegated because they weren’t consistently performing over the course of the year,” he states.
“It can be perceived as being unfair and if you are in one of those clubs you might feel it is very unfair, because there are a few divisional teams that don’t have to earn the right to play in the county championship.”
Where it gets messy is that some divisional teams haven’t always been fit for purpose.
At present, the structure is eight senior clubs and eight divisional teams, split into four groups of four for round-robin games.
This can lead to dead rubber final games. And, to Ó Cinnéide’s mild disgust, West Kerry decided against the four-hour round trip to Cahirciveen to play for nothing but pride against South Kerry.
The difficulty here is that some divisional teams lack identity. Especially if the clubs in that region are vibrant, which is certainly the case in west Kerry where Dingle won the Kerry club football championship this year.
To change that requires charisma and a cause.
Cast your mind back to the mid-80s and Páidí Ó Sé showing some savage ambition. He wanted to be a Kerry captain but he needed to be part of a successful championship-winning team to be nominated for the honour.
He hadn’t a hope of that with An Ghaeltacht, so he crowbarred himself into a player-manager role with West Kerry. He drove and motivated and bullied them all the way to a Kerry championship, and was thereby eligible to be nominated as the Kerry captain. He lifted Sam Maguire in 1985.
To show how low the expectations were at the time, it was West Kerry’s first triumph since 1948.
If you want it badly enough, you take steps towards it happening. But it must be remembered that this is sport and teams must come down as well as up.
“There’s part of me likes the fact it’s absolutely ruthless,” says Ó Cinníede.
“Eight senior clubs playing county championship. And you have the likes of Austin Stacks, the likes of Kerins O’Rahillys, Legion dropping down to intermediate.
“And you say, ‘Ok, if you are good enough, or you feel you are too good for the intermediate championship, well just win the bloody thing and come back up.’”
The intermediate level in Kerry as a result has become absolutely cut-throat. At the start of the year, Ó Cinnéide found himself in the company of some Austin Stacks stalwarts.
They were putting a brave face on their new situation. New football grounds, different post-match pints to enjoy and new corners of Kerry to explore as they gently prise themselves back into senior football.
“You will do well to pull your two legs out of the intermediate championship,” the 2000 All-Ireland winning captain warned them.
And they found that out on 11 September when they drew the semi final 0-21 apiece after extra time, with Fossa going on to win the penalty shootout.
That game was a microcosm of an awful lot of what is happening in Kerry football right now. And if Kerry’s establishment sneezes, the rest of the country might catch a cold.
The rural areas, the ones propped up by the likes of An Ghaeltacht, are struggling. Primary school intakes are low and getting lower. Clubs are amalgamating and uneasy truces and alliances are being formed all the time.
Some club stalwarts are fixing pegs to their noses as they have to row in with the next shower down the road.
In the towns, the traditional clubs like John Mitchels, Austin Stacks, Dr Crokes even, have to work at attracting players. The townland rule pertaining in country areas is not hard and fast in the towns.
The real winners in all this, is the likes of Fossa. A suburb of Killarney, there is a population explosion there. The club of the two Cliffords also have the most powerful recruitment weapon going.
They face Milltown/Castlemaine in the intermediate final and Milltown is the fastest-growing town in Kerry.
The old dynasties start crumbling. The roof might cave in for a time. Other forces come steaming out of nowhere and plant a flag. What harm?
“There should be no sacred cows in any championship,” Ó Cinnéide emphasises.
“I won’t be thanked for saying this but you are getting a lot of it where people are talking about the traditional clubs. And I find that sad because they are the cogs of which Kerry football tended to turn on, historically.
“Austin Stacks are a proud club, more championships, more All-Irelands (senior inter-county medals) than any club. Kerins O’Rahillys have years and years of unbroken senior status and John Mitchels were the blue-ribband team of the ‘60s, the only team to do five in a row.
“But nobody is safe in this system. And that’s good. And everything is evidenced by what we see in the intermediate championship this year where Fossa, if they win, could be a senior club after being a junior B club for most of their history.
“The Cliffords are lifting all the boats in Kerry at the moment, it’s fascinating to watch and reminds me of us 30 years ago.
“It’s a brilliant story and we will be talking about it in 25 years’ time when the Cliffords are finished playing football. That was their golden era.”
Isn’t that what it’s meant to be about?
