Burke: Lure of Leinster Rugby one of Kilmacud's big challenges.

Paul Keane Burke: Lure of Leinster Rugby one of Kilmacud’s big challenges

According to the 2016 census, Mullinalaghta’s entire population of 447 in north-east Longford is more than 10 times smaller than the membership of the Kilmacud Crokes club in south Dublin.

On that basis alone, it seems almost unfair to ask the first-time finalists to take on 2009 All-Ireland winners Crokes in the AIB Leinster club final on Sunday week.

Pat Burke, the veteran Crokes forward who has played for Dublin and Clare, isn’t looking for sympathy, but offers an intriguing counter-argument that the giant Stillorgan outfit have their own battles to fight.

Such as holding onto their best young players who are consistently snapped up by rival codes, particularly Leinster Rugby. Scott Penny is the latest Kilmacud youngster to strike it big at the powerhouse of European rugby with a try on his debut in the PRO14 win over Ospreys last Friday.

Under only slightly different circumstances, he’d have been playing for Crokes in their provincial semi-final defeat of Portlaoise two days later.

“It’s funny, there are different challenges for different clubs,” said Burke. “I was looking at Scott Penny doing well for Leinster at the weekend. I coached him briefly when he was U14, so there’s kind of two sides to things.

"You can have a small club and you can have everyone in it together and then we’re a bigger club, yeah, but we’re competing against bigger entities again with the likes of Leinster. We’ve lost the likes of [Ian] Madigan, Ian McKinley, Scott Penny, and Eoin Barr is another young lad who is playing international underage rugby at the moment. They were all Crokes kids.”

Crokes will still be hot tips to overcome Mickey Graham’s Mullinalaghta on December 9 and to march confidently through to February’s All- Ireland semi-finals.

Doing so would cap an incredible personal journey for Burke, who was part of Pat Gilroy’s Dublin panel when Crokes last won Leinster in 2011 (the 2010 final was postponed until after Christmas due to weather).

Months later he came on again for Bernard Brogan when Dublin lost by a point again to Cork in the 2011 National League final. He transferred to play for Clare, the county of his birth, in late 2014 and lined out in their shock Division 3 league final win over Kildare at Croke Park in 2016.

His Banner career concluded with an appearance against Kerry in the 2016 All-Ireland quarter-finals at Croke Park.

“I had a great time playing for Clare, I wish I could have continued playing, but the body just wasn’t up to it,” said the 35-year-old.

The live-wire corner- forward who sniped 0-3 in Sunday’s win over Portlaoise, admitted he didn’t think another chance like this would come around.

“I thought the chance would come for Kilmacud. I doubted that it would come for me, personally,” said Burke.

I think they were trying to retire me a couple of years ago! On a personal level, I’m delighted. From a club perspective, I think we have the talent to be competing at this level and I think we need to be doing it more consistently.

Burke is adamant that nobody at the club thinks the battling three-point win over seven-time champions Portlaoise was the real final.

“No, Mullinalaghta had definitely been mentioned as a strong club,” he said.

“We had heard about them even when we were in our Dublin campaign, that they were going to be strong and were targeting Leinster and we know these games are mayhem, we’ve played games against Portlaoise, Rhode, down the years that have just been absolutely frantic and you don’t know what’s coming at you. You’ve just got to adapt every day.”