Saturday, January 22
Fitzgerald Stadium, Killarney. 2pm
Referee: Niall Quinn (Clare)
Seven days later than initially planned, Kerry and Cork’s senior footballers – and new managers – get to size each other up in what has, in recent years, become a much less frequent meeting than it was, say, a decade before that.
Where once, back around Jack O’Connor's first term as Kerry manager, Kerry and Cork were hopping off each other two, three and sometimes four times a year, for the last few years a once-a-year meeting has been as good as it's been.
Though the old enemies are scheduled to meet in the Munster Championship semi-final in May, Cork are still mired in division two of the national league, so Saturday’s face-off in Killarney could well be one of just two between them for the next twelve months or more.
Quite what any of it next Saturday will inform any of us of what’s in store for both for the season ahead is anyone's guess, but given the rotavating Kerry inflicted on Cork last July in the Munster SFC Final, the least one can hope for is a tighter, more competitive contest, which can only benefit both teams.
Every year since 2015 that Kerry haven’t won the All-Ireland Championship, Cork football – as far as Kerry folk are concerned – has been partly to blame.
‘If Cork were stronger ‘twould benefit Kerry’ is a familiar refrain every September that the Sam Maguire Cup isn’t delivered to the Kingdom. It is, of course, insulting to Cork, and patronising too, as if they are simply to exist for the betterment of Kerry.
But there is also an element of being careful what you wish for. Kerry didn’t run into a brilliant Cork team in November 2020, but they were good enough to capitalise on a careless Kerry performance that Sunday in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
That the Rebels couldn’t go on and win the Munster title against Tipperary is their own business, and a result that ultimately caught up with manager Ronan McCarthy and cost him his job following on from that 22-point trimming last summer.
There was, let’s be honest, a smack of arrogance in some Kerry quarters after that Rebel ambush in 2020, which suggested that had there been a ‘back door’ instead of the straight knock-out format, then Kerry could, and perhaps would, have recovered to the point that there was a Christmas All-Ireland in them.
Anyway, by year end in 2021 Peter Keane had followed Ronan McCarthy out the managerial door to be replaced by O’Connor and Keith Ricken respectively.
Kerry, in their desperation to end a now seven-year drought for an All-Ireland title, have gone back to the tried and trusted O’Connor – a man with three All-Ireland titles as Kerry manager, and over a quarter century of managerial experience.
Ricken, while no novice in the business of sports team management, is in the first few months of his first senior inter-county managerial job.
If nothing else, Saturday’s McGrath Cup final will be interesting if one was to only watch the respective sidelines and management teams, not forgetting that Peter Keane’s younger brother Ray will be in the Cork camp as one of Ricken’s lieutenants.
And yet it is on the pitch were, naturally, the keen interest will lie. It will matter not a whit who carries the titular silverware home with them; much more so this will be about a continuation of the early work both camps have been doing under the new management.
With Sigerson Cup matches being played mid-week it remains to be seen who exactly O’Connor and Ricken will have available to them, though Kerry are likely to call on a few of the Austin Stacks players now available to them.
Joe O’Connor is unlikely to be chanced, even if he does declare himself available after a painful looking knee injury suffered last Sunday, though his namesake Jack will be anxious to get a pre-League look at Dylan Casey, Jack O’Shea and Greg Horan if possible.
Ricken, of course, will still be without the St Finbarrs players, but it will be interesting to see, or sense, if the Barrs’ win in Thurles last weekend can in some way inform Cork’s attitude on Saturday.
There was certainly a sense that St Finbarrs weren’t going to doff the cap to a Kerry team, and they thundered into Stacks with no regard for reputations. If nothing else, Ricken will want his players to meet Kerry teams as their equal, and not be burdened with the inferiority complex they have clearly displayed far too often under almost every manager since Conor Counihan stepped down.
Playing Kerry isn’t just about blood and thunder, and Ricken is far too cerebral a coach to be thumping tables before matches, but he will know that this is an early season opportunity to draw a line in the sand.
It doesn’t even matter that the personnel used on Saturday might be well different to the players he will use next May, the message from Cork’s point of view must be unilateral: we shall not be moved.
From Kerry’s perspective, Saturday will be about getting more game time into players like Dan O’Donoghue, Darragh Roche, Jack Savage, Éanna Ó Conchúir, Adam Donoghue and the aforementioned Stacks players if possible.
Speaking after last week’s 21-point win over Tipperary O’Connor said: “Overall I am just delighted with the lads’ attitude again.
It would be easy to come up here and be a little bit off, but they were on the money from the beginning and just showed tremendous hunger and attitude, and I’m delighted with that.” More of that hunger and attitude will be the minimum requirement on Saturday.
O’Connor did take some heat from some quarters for introducing Savage and Tony Brosnan late in that game in Templetuohy, after both had played a full Sigerson Cup game earlier in the day in Tralee.
“Tony and Jack were tremendous. I didn’t ask them to come up at all, they wanted to be involved. They volunteered themselves.
" That is great to see because those lads are mad to get every minute they can in a Kerry jersey, which is great,” was O’Connor’s explanation, even though the decision on whether they should have even travelled up, or be put into action in a game already well over as a contest, ultimately rested with the manager.
On the joint-decision between O'Connor and Ricken to push this final back a week, the Dromid man said:
“Keith Ricken is right, there is a lot of pressure on young lads with colleges fixtures and all that. The postponement will give a few more lads the opportunity to be involved in the final.”
At least the final comes three days after Sigerson Cup action so the expectation is that some of those students will be available to their county teams on Saturday.
“I’m delighted it is in Killarney, the lads love playing in the stadium,” O'Connor said of the venue. “It is a great pitch, the next best pitch outside of Croke Park.”
It is not confirmed where the Munster Championship meeting in May will be played, but is there any chance this Saturday’s joust could set in train a sequence of events that would see Kerry and Cork – O’Connor and Ricken – come up against each other in Croke Park before the year is out?
Be careful what you wish for!
