Rice has Templenoe on the boil for semi-final battle

Templenoe’s journey to the last four of the All-Ireland intermediate club championship hasn’t come as a surprise to their manager John Rice.

Since winning the Kerry novice football grade in 2013, the junior title followed two years later, garlanded with Munster and All-Ireland victories. Coupled with that was the progression from Division 5 to Division 1 of the county league between 2011 and 2015.

There was little adaptation period needed at intermediate as the club reached the county finals of 2016 and 2017 before making it third-time lucky last year.

Another provincial victory followed, overcoming St Breckan’s of Clare in the Munster final before Christmas, and they will try to make it back to Croke Park again as they take on Galway’s Oughterard in Saturday’s All-Ireland semi-final at Kilmallock (2pm).

Regardless of how they do, the county senior championship awaits later in the year and Rice, a member of the successful junior side before succeeding Mike Crowley as manager, doesn’t feel that they have been overwhelmed at any stage.

“I don’t think so,” he said, “because when we won the junior, we had an exceptional group, within a similar age bracket of a few years.

“There was a very good group coming up through the underage, quite a few of them had played minor and things like that and when we won the junior, the team was very young.

“They were only in their early twenties, around the 20 or 21 mark, and there was always the potential that if you gave them another three or four years, they’d develop into senior footballers, that they’d have the ability to tackle the intermediate grade.

“In hindsight, the two intermediate finals were probably a year or two too early for our guys.

This year, they’ve really matured into a good senior team. Winning a Kerry intermediate title is tough enough, but then going on and winning Munster and challenging for the All-Ireland is another big step again.

With the condensing of the All-Ireland club season, teams involved have had to deal with working over the Christmas period but it wasn’t something that unduly affected Templenoe.

“We kept it pretty much as we had been up to now,” Rice said.

“We were training twice a week, we trained on St Stephen’s morning and we trained on New Year’s Day, we were out on the Sunday in between and we kept it going.

“It isn’t every year that you get to an All-Ireland semi-final and the sacrifice is worth making at this stage. Things have been fine, we’ve been working away.

"We have been training well, we had one challenge game before Christmas and then the four Kerry fellas were away with the team (on holiday). The rest of worked us away and they were all back last weekend and training Sunday.”

With Kerry squad members Gavin Crowley, Tadhg Morley, Adrian Spillane and Killian Spillane in their ranks, Templenoe benefit from the quality they bring in the first instance, but Rice also feels that there is a knock-on effect for the rest of the panel.

“When the Kerry fellas come in, everyone else wants to be just as competitive as them,” he said.

That drives the rest of them on, they’re watching the guys when they come back and challenging them and comparing them to where they’re at themselves.

There hasn’t been much of an opportunity for Rice and his management team to scout Oughterard, but that helps to keep the focus on what his own team does.

“It’s very much a case of going into the unknown,” he said.

“We’ve obviously read their match reports and things like that but our preparation has been very much about focusing on ourselves and getting our own gameplan ready and concentrating on that.

"Any team in an All-Ireland semi-final is going to be good anyway.”