Dr Crokes senior hurling manager, John Lenihan, has called on the County Board to offer a more equitable distribution of fixtures between football and hurling after being surprised by County Hurling League weekends consistently coinciding with rounds of the County Football League.
ith Dr Crokes having three teams in the senior football league, it’s meant that dual players simply have to choose between the codes at the Lewis Road club.
“Is it fair to the players that want to play both that they’re not given the opportunity?” he asked.
"There are some players, maybe there’s only a few of them, but I would say that if the opportunity was there more would take it. Is the profile that we want there to improve the Kerry senior hurling team? And if that is to be done, then you have to broaden the a little.
“I’d like a debate on that. Everyone will say ‘oh you’re good to pin-point the problem you’re not great to come up with the solution. I know that there’s 70 football clubs in this county and nobody is trying to dilute football at all, but there’s only eleven or twelve hurling clubs, so why not for the first three or four months of the year have it every second week.
"Hurling one week, football the next week. Give it a pilot and see how it goes and then see if you have to make changes. You wouldn’t have to do it for the full twelve months, because it’s not parity, it’s not equal. I don’t think the disruption would be huge if you tried that.
“I’d love to see some of the Crokes footballers given the opportunity to play a bit of hurling. We might only get another four or five, but it would make us a lot stronger.
"We are competing against three football teams inside our own club – and I don’t mean competing – we’ve accepted that they can’t. How many players have given up football for hurling?
"Very few and we don’t expect that either, but I don’t think it should be like that. I think there should be some gap to allow a player to play a small bit of hurling with his club, play football of course, but a small bit of hurling.
"I think that would improve us 100%, it would improve the Kerry set-up as well in my view.”
The Crokes boss also outlined that he saw the issue as not solely an issue for his club.
"Look at Kilgarvan,” he noted.
"They pulled out of the senior [hurling] league because they realised they couldn't do that. They hadn’t enough of players to play football and hurling all on the same weekend for ten or twelve weeks in-a-row. You can’t blame them for that.
"We all know you’d prefer a fella who’s 100% into hurling and doesn’t play football, but in this county there aren’t too many of those there and that’s the challenge.
"I’ve always said when they're juveniles you kind of put up with it, but I didn’t expect that would be happening if we went senior. The fixtures thing is not helping us. That’s all I’m saying.
"It’s not any campaign to change things or anything like that and you have to cater for the majority, I understand that, but if you’re looking at why we’re not developing as much as possible and why we’re not getting more players they’re the reasons.
"We have to deal with the cards that are played us, but it’s so much more difficult.”
Lenihan also suggested the the County Board should be open to playing some of the group phase games in Fitzgerald Stadium and not just in Austin Stack Park.
"The more times hurling is brought into our backyard the better,” he noted.
"it was great to have the likes of Ballyduff and the other North Kerry clubs playing a senior league game in Dr Crokes this year. That was a great experience for us and whatever happens, happens.
"I think our idea of going senior was to increase the profile of hurling in this area, show them what it’s like, but this is only the start of it. There’s a lot more that could be done.
“The way Tralee Parnells are going they’re going on an upward graph and they are putting serious work into it. There is merit to it, but we should be promoting more hurling in this area of the county. How we do it, we’ll welcome support in that and are open to ideas, but it should be debated more.”
