Galvin says Kerry paid price for underage neglect

Kerry minor selector John Galvin believes the county’s underage structures were neglected during the Kingdom’s senior glory run of the ’00s.

Only for the past five years, says Galvin, has there been a concerted effort to put in place the proper structures to nurture the next generation of Kerry footballers and the selector is optimistic the recent investment at underage will be rewarded with a first All-Ireland minor crown in 20 years this Sunday.

“The underage development squads have only been getting serious for the past few years,” claimed Galvin.

“Let’s be honest, when Kerry were winning All-Ireland senior titles the underage wasn’t as well looked after. I don’t believe the same emphasis was on it. In the last four or five years there was a realisation they had to invest in the development squads, the underage. The structures became far more serious.

“To be fair to County Board chairman Patrick O’Sullivan, he got Tony O’Keeffe involved and set up a sub-committee to look at that area. More structure and organisation followed.”

Galvin was invited to be part of the team driving the under work two years ago, initially reluctant to get involved such was his scepticism of the development squad practice.

“Donal Daly from the coaching side of things asked me would I like to get involved with the U16s. To be honest, I was a bit sceptical.

“The thing for me was that if you got in at U14 you were there right through to U17. Surely there has to be late developers, fellas finding form along the way. I think it was that it just seemed to be the same group of players for three or four years. That was an area John Rice, Billy Hennigan and myself looked at very strongly. We said we would have to get up off the seat and go out and look around, get on to the clubs and see who had they.

“I was quickly won over when I got involved. You were given whatever resources we wanted.

“For the past two years I have grown with these players. I know them all very well. You would have got a sense from very early on that this was a special group. Individually they had all the skills and they had the confidence to go along with it. They are serious about their football. As a group they just needed to gel together and I think they have.”

A sizeable chunk of Jack O’Connor’s panel were involved in the county minor semi-finals — Dr Crokes v East Kerry and Dingle v An Ghaeltacht — two and a half weeks out from Sunday’s contest. Galvin insists the decision to schedule the games so close to the final was a correct one, claiming the players returned with a renewed vigour.

“I think lads can be wrapped up in cotton wool. They can just as easily get injured at training and those semi-finals allowed the lads to get back with their clubs, a welcome break I imagine from the inter-county set-up.

“They came back in with us and there was a renewed freshness. The break was no harm. It also allowed management to see the lads with their clubs and perhaps rethink things or reassess our opinion of certain players.

“They have been more focused since returning from the break. Training has definitely picked up a couple of notches.”

He added: “In the semi-final we went 19 minutes without scoring. That won’t do on Sunday. We looked at it and hopefully we have addressed it. We will have to get going from the off against Donegal.”