There will be no self-congratulatory clap on the back for writing in last week’s paper “we could be looking at a 20-plus point win for Kerry’. Indeed, after news David Clifford’s omission from the team and squad broke on Friday night we revised our prediction down to a 17-point win for Kerry. Shame on me.
he idea that an absent David Clifford would weaken the Kerry team against an opposition like Limerick was silly. Kerry were always going to have pretty much the run of Fitzgerald Stadium to themselves in Saturday’s Munster Final, and it was always going to be the case that the Kerry forwards would rise even more to the task in hand in the absence of their talismanic team mate.
Paul Geaney and Killian Spillane – neither of whom started against Cork – were both in from the start last Saturday, and between them they scored 1-6 from play: Spillane scoring the game’s only goal, and drawing particular praise from manager Jack O’Connor afterwards.
This writer had a First Holy Communion to attend to on Saturday, and so wasn’t in Fitzgerald Stadium for the game. We were, to be honest, that the Lord works in mysterious and wonderful ways.
Indeed, around about three o’clock on Saturday burgers were being flipped on the barbecue, bouncy castles were being bounced on, and drinks were being drank under the hot sun, and we are pretty confident much more fun was being had by 20 people in a garden in Tralee than was being had by 14,500 around a field in Killarney.
The Munster Championship is dead. It has been withering and decaying for the best part of a decade now, but it is safe to say 2022 is the year it popped its clogs.
There are six counties in Munster, and its provincial football championship is serving none of them well. For the couple of Kerry footballers winning their first Munster medal last weekend it was, of course, a special day. But can any of the majority of senior players in this county say they got any satisfaction or kick out of the Munster Championship this year?
And can the Limerick footballers, despite getting their county to a rare provincial final appearance, genuinely say they enjoyed any part of last Saturday? Even in the first half of the game, when they were trying manfully to stay within touching distance of Kerry, can any Limerick player say they enjoyed being part of a defensive wall there just to try to repel the opposition rather than being in any way creative going forward?
It has always been so: Limerick, Clare, Tipperary and Waterford the perennial cannon fodder for Kerry and Cork, only now Cork are also staring down the barrel of Kerry’s all powerful arsenal.
There is something inherently flawed about a competition – and we use the word judiciously – that has one team having won 83 titles while the other five have won a combined 51 titles.
Between them, Tipperary, Clare, Limerick and Waterford have won two provincial titles in the last 87 years. At its best the Munster Championship has only ever been a duopoly; for the last decade it has become a monopoly, and looks in no danger of going back. It is not enough to look at 2020 and say Kerry haven’t had it all their own way. That was an aberration of a championship in every sense, and while Cork should get some credit for ambushing Kerry, and Tipperary more credit for beating Cork in the final, the reality is that Kerry has won 11 or the last 13 Munster titles and look like them might easily win the next 11 as well.
When Peter Keane spoke to the media after that 2020 November loss to Cork, and again after his Kerry team had beaten Cork by 22 points in Killarney, it was hard to tell from Keane’s demeanour which game he had won and which he’d lost. Keane clearly knew that landslide win over the Rebels last July would do his team few favours in an All-Ireland semi-final.
Jack O’Connor won two of his three All-Irelands through the back-door qualifiers so he appreciates that defeats and tough, hard games in Munster don’t have to be fatal to Kerry’s chances of All-Ireland success. But having crushed Cork and Limerick by an aggregate 35 points en route to the county’s 83rd provincial title, the new manager is understandably concerned about his team being not best prepared for what could be a very tough All-Ireland quarter-final in four weeks, and potentially a much tougher semi-final against Dublin a fortnight after that again.
The provincial championships – all four of them – really aren’t serving any county well. If the Munster Championship was a fair fight and fit for purpose, one would think that having won nine of the last ten provincial titles that they might have managed to win more than one All-Ireland title in that time.
In a reasonably competitive Connacht Championship – albeit it a three-horse race at best – Mayo (5), Galway (3) and Roscommon (2) have won provincial titles but have claimed not one All-Ireland title between them. Indeed, it is 21 years now since the Sam Maguire Cup crossed the Shannon.
The Ulster Championship is held up as the shining beacon of the provincial championships, but it is not without its flaws either. Derry’s title success last Sunday made them the fifth county to win the Ulster title in the last 10 years, but only Tyrone last year saw the Sam Maguire go to the northern province in the same 10-year period. It seems as if the ultra-competitive nature of the fight for the Anglo Celt Cup might, in fact, hinder the Ulster champions when they come to Croke Park for the All-Ireland series.
Of course, everything is somewhat skewed by Dublin’s dominance over the last decade, but it is very much the case that their seven All-Ireland titles since 2013 have been won in spite of them winning 17 of the last 18 Leinster championships, than because of it.
Leinster has been of absolutely no use to Dublin’s All-Ireland dominance over the course of the 12 in a row provincial titles they’ve won since 2011, and it is, in fact, a credit to them that they could raise their game so much after what has been a perennial series of glorified and poor challenge games in the province in that time.
Next year the new League/Championship format should breathe some life back into season, but for all the change some things will stay the same, and that includes the provincial championships.
The new ‘green proposal’ will cut the waiting time for provincial champions to enter the All-Ireland series, a bugbear of jack O’Connor this year, but the League system might already have qualified the top teams for the All-Ireland Championship so they are likely to carry even less significance in 2023 as they did this year.
As long as the provincial councils remain determined to hold on to their power at all costs, the cost to the provincial championships will remain a costly one: 14,500 at a Munster final is shockingly low.
But until a brave new world emerges to replace these out-dated relics, I’m afraid the heavy beatings will continue until morale improves, which it won’t.
