‘It makes a change from them asking about Kerry football’

Richard Gentleman didn’t believe he’d ever see the day where the hurlers of Kilmoyley would contest a Munster championship final.

The club stalwart, and current selector, never doubted the ability of a Kilmoyley hurler to stand toe-to-toe with Munster’s finest, rather his attitude was born out of several frustrating afternoons he endured in the green and gold once the county title had been safely stored away for another winter.

Gentleman, along with fellow selector Ollie Diggin, was a prominent figure on the Kilmoyley team which won four consecutive Kerry SHC titles between 2001 and 2004. Each consequent sojourn into Munster was brief. They fell to Blackrock in 2001 and ’02, hammered by Kilruane MacDonaghs (4-16 to 1-6) when dropping down to intermediate in ’03, and similarly annihilated by Toomevara (5-19 to 1-11) in ’04. The 2002 quarter-final defeat to the Rockies at Páirc Uí Chaoimh is the one that was let slip, a four-point defeat that continues to torment.