Kieran Shannon: Kerry's dominance of club championships needs addressing

Since Seán Kelly thankfully and brilliantly introduced All Irelands in both grades back in 2003, Kerry have won 11 of the 20 junior finals

Tue, 17 Jan, 2023 - 11:45

Kieran Shannon

A few minutes before Paudie Clifford got his hands on the All Ireland junior club trophy, TG4’s Micheál Ó Domhnaill was able to grab his brother for a few words on account of him being the winner of yet another man of the match bauble.

Ó Domhnaill immediately noted that this was hardly the first bit of team silverware David Clifford had won in possibly the most magnificent and complete season an individual player has had.

“After such a year with Kerry, winning a league, winning the All Ireland”, now here he was completing the treble of county, provincial and All Ireland titles with the club. Probably only because he had to let Clifford himself get a word in before he’d to dash off to again go up the steps of the Hogan, Ó Domhnaill omitted another team Clifford had won with and whose existence was central to Fossa being the latest Kerry junior club side to enjoy their day of days in Croke Park: East Kerry, crowned county senior champions back in October.

It is one of the most brilliant as well as distinctive features of the Kerry senior county championship that it not just accommodates but champions divisional teams, allowing every player in Kerry to aspire to playing in the county senior championship in any given year. From a development point of view it is ingenious. As anyone qualified in the business of talent development will vouch, good players improve playing with other good players and hidden gems turn up when they’re around obvious jewels. David Clifford would always have come through regardless of the divisional system but a Paudie may not.

Indeed an under-discussed topic in the wake of Kerry’s success at both senior inter-county and intermediate and junior club level is whether more counties should adopt a divisional system and have regional teams in its senior championships. Cork are essentially the only other county to have such a model. If a dual county like that can find a way to allow junior and intermediate players have an outlet to play senior championship, then should an essentially one-code county like a Mayo look into the merits of its better junior and intermediate players being exposed to a higher level of club football? Considering how long that county’s wait without Sam is, it’s worth at least an internal debate.

What they conclude is their own business, just as it’s Kerry’s own prerogative to have divisional teams. But just how many divisional teams they have in their county senior championship is becoming everyone’s business, especially everyone in Munster and it should certainly be the business of its provincial council.

By virtue of having eight divisional teams, the Kerry county senior championship has only eight clubs. In almost every other county the ninth-best team in the county would have just missed out on a county quarter-final, or depending on the draw, even have made it. A club that makes the last eight is deemed to have had a respectable year. In Kerry this year the side adjudged to be its eighth-best club – Austin Stacks – actually made the quarter-finals of the county championship yet were relegated. And its ninth-best team were in – and won – the county intermediate championship.

It has made the Munster intermediate and junior championship almost a procession. The province’s supposed non-traditional counties have always been up against as is, but by all having a 12-team senior club championship, it means their intermediate county winners are at even greater disadvantage being the 13th-ranked team in their county up against the ninth-best team in the strongest county of all.

Of the last 17 intermediate and junior Munster football championships, only two have been won by non-Kerry teams – and they were both from Cork. And you just have to look at how lop-sided some of those provincial finals were. Six of the last seven Munster intermediate winners have been from Kerry, with their winning margin in the final averaging 13.5 points. Clare teams can live with being beaten, but it is another when they are hammered.

It obviously influences the All Ireland race too. Since Seán Kelly thankfully and brilliantly introduced All Irelands in both grades back in 2003, Kerry have won 11 of the 20 junior finals; next best in the roll of honour is Galway and Cork both way back on just a couple apiece. At intermediate the gap isn’t quite as wide, with Tyrone on three All Irelands, just four behind the Kingdom’s count, but still the trend is obvious.

So should the solution. Keep the divisions, just reduce the number of them in the senior championship to six and increase the number of clubs to 10. It’d be fairer to the clubs in the senior club championship and fairer to intermediate and junior clubs in every other county.

Kerry should have full autonomy on how they select their own representatives in the provincial senior club championship, as convoluted as it might be. But Munster Council and Croke Park need to intervene and determine what ranked team in the county represents them in the intermediate and junior provincial and All Ireland championships.