Warriors here to stay as Jungle fever takes hold

In a town like Tralee and a county like Kerry, mention or sight of a football is never far away. As I queued with my two children outside the Tralee Sports Complex last Sunday over two hours before the tip-off of the game that would decide the men’s Superleague basketball title, a couple of other kids temporarily took leave of the lengthy line to go kick a ball on the adjoining green.

That their ball happened to be of the orange variety was a measure of the hold that hoops and the Garvey’s Tralee Warriors has had on the locality the past few weeks and even years, but that they were exchanging it by foot rather than by hand was another reminder of how football will never lose its grip in these parts.