The news delivered in these pages last week that the Kerry senior footballers were hoping to be overlooked by their clubs for the divisional championships wouldn’t have come as any surprise to Peter Keane.
Citing burnout, the players had notified the county board executive, who are not stopping any club from fielding players, that they need to take a break. The likes of the Cliffords have spoken most favourably of the split season but even they, it seems, are reaching critical mass.
The participation of Kerry players for Munster this weekend, one day after another, may raise an eyebrow or two but this juncture, when enough was going to deemed enough, had been foreseen by former manager Keane.
This month two years ago, he warned: “I think the real meat in the sandwich is your inter-county player. If you are going flat out from January to July or January to June with club, who is the main man there? The county player.
“You then go from June/July to October/November with your inter-county, and who’s in the middle of that, your county player. So what happens then? He gets flahed.”
Keane reiterated his point on in July. “I don’t particularly agree with the split season. I think you have clubs who started last January and are still going to be going next December, so it’s all year round for them.”
SuperValu store owner Keane had always preferred the concurrent model, feeling that “cramming” the inter-county season was like “a shop closing down on a half day when there’s plenty of business there for the rest of the day”.
But his major point was the pressure exerted on the inter-county player, something his successor Jack O’Connor has also spoken about before. “The only reservation I have is in a county like Kerry you have three championships, as opposed to most counties have one,” he said in January 2023. “Kerry have SFC, the club championship and the district championships, that can be tough going.
“You have players playing into November and for example in the case of five Kerry lads who had to fly back a day early from our team holiday to play in an East Kerry O’Donoghue Cup Final between Crokes and Spa. They are playing into December so that is far from ideal and I would be just a bit worried about issues of burnout in the long term.”
O’Connor did not direct his panel of players to be excused from the divisional competitions but his concerns about them are on record. And Kerry’s extra championship load is known throughout the country. At Monday’s Football Review Committee football interprovincials launch, we asked Pádraic Joyce what he thought of the Kerry players’ plea for leniency.
“I think it’s a complicated system in Kerry. They’ve probably three competitions in the one county. That’s the way they do it, that’s their structure. It’s definitely a call from players to say, ‘hold on here, we’re being asked too much here.’ It’s game, game, week on week.
“You take the Cliffords, a couple of years ago I remember watching them, they went straight through from inter-county season (in 2022), they beat us in the final with Kerry that year, they would have had a massive run (with Fossa) until January, and back in again.
“I see Dylan McHugh in the same way in our own county, he’s club, county in the last couple of years, county finals, Seán Kelly, these fellas. When they come back into the county scene, unless the inter-county manager gives them the break, they don’t get a break because they’re needed for their club.
“The club can’t be without the county player. And then if we give them a break in December or January, they’re missing the pre-season, and it’s going to come against them down the line. It’s a vicious circle and it’s the inter-county player that suffers the most in the club-county split.”
This weekend is the only the third Dingle’s Tom O’Sullivan, Barry Dan O’Sullivan and Dylan and Paul Geaney have had without a championship game since the middle of July. As they shortly seek revenge for the club final loss to Dr Crokes whose own Kerry contingent of Tony Brosnan and Gavin White have had quite the workload, they are hardly complaining when they are winning. Neither, for that matter, are Loughmore-Castleiney whose schedule has been far busier.
East Kerry’s O’Donoghue Cup is usually treated seriously by Dr Crokes and they are due to face the Cliffords’ Fossa in a quarter-final late next month. But if the Kerry players are to make a stance then nobody can walk past the picket line.
That will be difficult for those fringe footballers who played a fraction of what the first-team men did in 2024. Crokes’ Shane Murphy who deputised for Shane Ryan this year and only started the Munster final. Glenflesk’s Darragh Roche whose sole championship appearance was as a substitute against Monaghan.
Lest we forget, not every Kerry player is the same.
Neither the big screens nor the scoreboard will fall in Croke Park on Friday, we are reliably informed. Likewise, the presence of a red flag beside the green one at either set of goalposts won’t see them come tumbling down (not making it orange in Armagh’s year and completing the tricolour seems a missed opportunity).
Nevertheless, the additional scoring compound that is the two-pointer from outside the 40-metre arc – 45s will also be worth two points – has created a discussion about the possibility that the recording of scores in matches will need to altered to reflect when a red flag is raised to signal a two-point score has been completed.
In previous Football Review Committee (FRC) briefings, the idea has been dismissed. In the “sandbox” games, the score has been kept as per usual. As FRC chairman Jim Gavin spoke of the supporter who took in the recent Cavan-Kildare game the weekend before last, “There was a gentleman in the stand in Mullahoran who said it was a long time since he saw Cavan score 2-21.”
Cavan registered a couple of two-pointers so their score could have been considered as 2-2-17. That’s not to mention their total was 29 points, not 27 because of the one-point value added to a goal.
Asked about the nature of score recording being altered at last week’s interim report launch, Gavin replied: “How you report it, that’s not our intent (to change the scoreboard). From a scoreboard perspective, it’s still the same. It might evolve that way (to three components).”
At the very least, it will be incumbent on those reporting on Friday and Saturday’s games and possibly beyond to state exactly how many goals, two-pointers and single points each scorer has converted. To do so otherwise would not accurately reflect what happened in the games.
If the two-point score is retained, it may be a case that the aggregate total scores, as in International Rules, are provided along with a breakdown of what comprises that figure.
By the end, Dublin’s invincible run of 45 championship games covering almost six years from 2015 to ’21 was most appreciated in the vastness and wonder of the numbers they were accumulating.
In Eric Haughan’s , a tome has been released that does justice to that period of unprecedented dominance, chronicling their triumphs and odd torment.
A book that simply had to be written, Haughan makes no secret of his love and affection for his county and those teams of Jim Gavin and Dessie Farrell. At the same time, he provides balance with observations from the likes of Donegal’s Brendan Devenney and Westmeath star John Heslin.
Former UCD student Heslin’s praise for Dublin is fulsome but he also mentions their advantages. “They weren’t wanting for resources. Ultimately, that has to be significantly mentioned too. They wouldn’t have won six All-Irelands in a row if they had the exact same people training Leitrim. If you think that’s the truth, you know, you want to have a good look and talk to yourself.”
It’s too early to consider whether Dublin’s golden years will be remembered as romantically as Kerry’s but Haughan has succeeded in articulating a simply outstanding period for a team featuring some of the greatest to have graced the sport. Unbeatable – Dublin’s Incredible Six in a Row is published by O’Brien Press and is priced at €19.99.
