Can Kerry turn Galvin into a centre-back?

INSPIRED move or an act of desperation? Only time will tell whether the idea of turning footballer of the year Paul Galvin into a centre half-back for Kerry will become a timely problem-solver or a misguided notion that will cause more trouble than it’s worth.

What are we on about? The grapevine apparently travels well, all the way from the Algarve, where the All-Ireland champions’ five-day warm- weather camp featured a re-draw of the traditional positional boundaries for key players. Unquestionably the most intriguing was the move of Galvin to centre-back – it’s also the most pressing, with Mike McCarthy’s inter-county future still up in the air, Aidan O’Mahony suspended and no one too keen at the moment on the fall-back of switching Tomás or Marc O Sé to the central defensive pivot.

It’ll come as no surprise to anyone who recalls Galvin as a county championship-winning tearaway wing back for UCC a decade ago to learn that he took to the experimental role last week like a duck to water. That UCC half back line also featured Limerick’s Damien Reidy and one Eamonn Fitzmaurice. Makes you wonder where this germ of an idea began...