Dr Crokes bidding to end year on a high

It all feels pure pantomime.

The sniffling noses and swollen eyes tell you it’s freezing but Colm Cooper wanders into the room in a pair of shorts and football boots. Brian Looney follows him, clutching the Santa hat he was asked to wear by a photographer. It’s quite a lot to be drooping from the tiny hook of an All Ireland quarter-final against the London champions yet, initially, they play up the opposition, talk of a trip into the unknown and how they’ll take nothing for granted. But every so often, a shard of reality breaks the surface.

Cooper isn’t sure if it’s the same London team they played a few years back, and asked about his knowledge of the fixture, he admits they only realised it was their turn to play this round after the provincial semi-final disembowelling of Clonmel. Then again, this isn’t about Tir Chonaill Gaels, instead it’s one last chance this year to sit back and admire Dr Crokes. What we’ve seen so far from Cooper suggests these quiet summers with Kerry are refreshing his game, and what we’ve from Looney is a player who decided 12 measly minutes against Mayo in the league in 2010 isn’t going to be his only memory of county colours. That’s before we get to Mike Moloney, Johnny Buckley, Kieran O’Leary and one of the most entertaining and stylish club sides there has been.

“If you think back to 2006 (when they last went to London), a lot of the guys were involved then but they were only 20,” says Cooper. “Now they’re 25, 26, so they’ve experience built up and they’ve a lot of conditioning done and they’ve a lot of personal development done so we’re reaching what we would think would be the peak of our powers. We’ve learned a lot over the years winning and losing games and so we’ve developed as a team.”

That improvement hasn’t been just over the longer haul though as there are obvious signs they’ve moved on, even from this stage last year.

“We have set very high goals for ourselves,” notes Cooper. “We lost an All-Ireland semi last year and we want to see if we can go one step further. But we’ve taken it game by game. I think the supporters might have been delighted with the trip to London, it will be a shopping weekend for a few of them, but not us and we just want to win because it would cap off a very good year for the club. You’ve ticked all the boxes that you set out to do at the start of the year and you can sit back a small bit and recharge the batteries.”

“We just want to keep playing the way we are,” adds 25-year-old Looney, whose seven points against Castlehaven capped the most complete performance of this club championship. “Our starting six forwards and the few subs that can come in are all capable of scoring. It takes the pressure off Colm, who can do what he does best then, which is play football like a genius. It’s something we’ve developed and even at this level, it’s not far off professionalism because when you’re not training, you have to be doing something to mind the body, you’ve to keep your mind fresh and so on. That’s easier though when there are big rewards. And every win at this stage offers a reward.”

Even this one, as not only will it end the pantomime season, but it will allow Crokes to test themselves in the best final four we’ll have witnessed.

Verdict: Dr Crokes by eight.