Ó Sé hoping Munster championship will revert to open draw

Marc Ó Sé hopes the Munster football championship returns to an open structure next year.

Kerry and Cork were handed byes to separate semi-finals this year after a decision by the Munster Council’s competitions control committee last September.

The footballers of Clare, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford boycotted the McGrath Cup as well as representation on the Railway Cup team, which disappointed Ó Sé, who played in a team comprising just Kerry and Cork footballers. He agreed both Clare and Tipperary, in pushing the finalists so close in this past weekend’s games, were motivated by the perceived unfairness of the seeded draw.

“Absolutely, I do. Probably next year, it’ll revert to the former system, and that will spice things up again.

“We played the Railway Cup this year and it was only Kerry and Cork and we’d only love to have the other counties because there are some excellent players out there. You saw Gary Brennan, he’s an excellent player.

“It’s a great competition and it was disappointing that those fellas weren’t available. Hopefully, wiser heads will prevail next year and they’ll have a proper system.”

Kerry travel to Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Sunday week, having won just one of their last five championship clashes with Cork there.

“We’ll give it everything,” said Ó Sé. “It’s always a tough place to go but we’ve gone there in the past and got victories. We’re going there to win.

“Cork put it up to us in the last league game inside there in Tralee so we’re under no illusions about how good Cork are. We’re not going to take the game against Tipperary for anything. We know they are a strong outfit, they have great forwards, strong in the middle and improved their defence. It’ll be a tough encounter.”

The 34-year-old conceded there was some rustiness in Kerry’s performance in Cusack Park on Sunday.

“We can’t have any excuses but the big thing is we had three months without a game so it was going to be hard. We’ve a lot of work to do before the Cork game — they came through a very hard game against Tipperary. We’ve to look at ourselves more so than Cork and see where we can improve. Clare had two Championship games and that was certainly good for them. Hopefully, we can get a few boys back from injury and we’ll look forward to two weeks.”