The Kerry junior club with a senior mentality on a mission

Nathan Breen, who leads the Beaufort footballers out at Croke Park for tomorrow’s All-Ireland Club JFC final with Easkey of Sligo, was 13 before he played his first game for the Mid Kerry club.

Born in Wales, Breen was a young teenager when his father, Gerard, moved the family back to his home parish.

But up until the back-to-back Mid Kerry successes of 2016 and 2017 (the first of those ending the club’s 18-year wait for divisional glory) Breen had no medals to show since his move to the small club at the foot of Carrauntoohil.

Those divisional wins laid the foundation for their all-conquering 2018 season, one which they hope will end with them becoming the ninth Kerry club to win the All-Ireland junior championship.

“When Ronan Murphy, Fergal Hallissey and I started playing with Beaufort, we were down in Division Four of the county league and we thought the Mid Kerry championship was too big to win at that stage, let alone looking at county, Munster and All-Ireland titles.

"And that’s not that long ago,” says Breen of the club’s rapidly rising graph. “Even Division One of the county league, when we were starting out, was probably too big a dream. But all of that has served us well.

"As a player now, obviously, the bit of success is enjoyable, but it is very easy to remember not winning anything all the way up from U16 level.

"It means that there is no problem with players staying grounded.”

Though they bore the status of lowly junior club for longer than they would have liked, the captain, a Kerry U21 in 2014, insists commitment was never an issue.

“The grade doesn’t have much mass on the whole thing. We are getting together the same as the Kerry seniors or Kilkenny hurlers, meeting up the same number of times. Guys are putting in the same commitment, traveling down from Limerick and Cork.

It is a small bit frustrating when you go outside the county and somebody asks you where are you from. I am currently in college in Cork IT and if you say, ‘I’m from Beaufort and we’re a junior club’, people will roll their eyes or raise an eyebrow.

"It is frustrating because if you want to win a Kerry junior championship, there is nobody going to hand it to you and if you think you are going to win it playing poorly, you’ve another thing coming.”

The improved depth of their panel, according to the midfielder, has been a factor in their promotion to the intermediate ranks and run to tomorrow’s All-Ireland final.

Liam Carey, an All-Ireland minor and junior medal winner with Kerry in recent years, pulled up with injury during the warm-up before the Munster final against Dromtarriffe.

Where such a loss would have thrown them in recent years, the Beaufort class of 2018 were able to absorb the loss and eke out an extra-time win.

“If you go back before we won any Mid Kerry championship, the way supporters would look on the team is that we have a couple of players who need to play well and if they’re not involved, forget about it, Beaufort won’t produce the goods.

"That mindset has changed. If Liam Carey wasn’t playing in other years, lads might drop the heads or hit the panic button, but our approach to games now is different.”

Breen added: “It would mean everything [to win]. Lifting the cup for the parish and every lad on the panel would be fantastic.”

Eanna O’Malley is the Beaufort manager and he’s well used to watching neighbouring clubs reach All-Ireland finals in early February.

“It’s an incredible feeling. It’s happened to a few clubs around here, but, honestly, until it’s in your own place, you don’t quite get it.

"The Mid Kerry success in 2016 was a key part of it, particularly when we saw that we had beaten teams who had won All-Irelands. We had a poor record in the Kerry JFC.

"We were beaten in the first round in most years, but we knew that if we could get out of Kerry, we would be in with a chance.”