Valentia GAA plea: ‘We just want to find a home for our players and look after them’

Valentia Young Islanders’ manager Fionán Murphy talks to his players before last year’s Kerry JFC match against Beale. Picture: Alan Landers

It was one of the toughest emails Deirdre Lyne has had to sign off on during her time as chairperson of Valentia Young Islanders.

Her words were part plea and part warning as rural depopulation has eventually claimed its first high-profile Kerry GAA club.

She wrote: “We are asking that the South Kerry Board help us in finding a club in South Kerry that would consider an amalgamation at senior level. We have a group of 8-10 players from 18 up that want to play senior football in 2021. We would hope a club in South Kerry would have the foresight to see that numbers are dwindling throughout South Kerry and although they may be able to field on their own in the coming year, that might not be the case in the not-too-distant future.

“It would be our hope that if we joined with another club that we would then be in a position to field both a senior and junior team, thus enabling both clubs to strengthen their players with junior football while also making football available to those players that may be reaching the end of their career, for those that cannot commit to a full year of football and those that are starting out at senior level.”

Lyne admits that this development did not come as a surprise. It was always a matter of when rather than if, given the club — which counts Mick O’Connell, Ger O’Driscoll, and Ger Lynch, among its famous sons — has been hanging on by its fingernails over the past decade.

The departures of former Kerry midfielder Brendan O’Sullivan (along with brother Paul) to Austin Stacks, coupled with a number of retirements, meant that they had no choice but to accept the inevitable.

Lyne explained: “It is simply a numbers game for a club like ours and we did not have the numbers. We were losing more than were coming in each year.”

She paints a picture that will strike a chord with many. “Covid papered over things last year as we had a lot more around but as lockdowns eased a lot of those players have now returned to work or have moved away again. For the last number of years, we would have 12 or 13 players and the feeling was we’d always manage to pick up the extra couple we needed to field a team. But eventually, we had to say enough was enough.”

That call to push the nuclear button was made by a core group of 10 players who contacted their chairperson last October. “They told us that they just want to play football, they want to enjoy football. They don’t want it to be a chore. They want to be training in groups of 20, not in groups of three or four. They want to go play matches, not be running and racing around trying to get bodies to field a team.”

Plans and proposals are with the divisional board, with Lyne set to talk with county officials later this week.

But surely it is a big ask for any club to agree to take on an amalgamation and all that goes with it? 

Lyne accepts that point but offers a counter-point: “You can’t predict the future. Once the vaccines roll in, who is to say that there wouldn’t be a mass exodus out of clubs of young players who want to go and see the world after being cooped up at home for a year or more. 

“So a club that might have 19 or 20 players now might suddenly find themselves down a couple in a few years time and in a similar position to what we are in now. We just want to find a home for our players and look after them. 

“Obviously if they are scattered to different clubs it becomes harder and harder to envisage us returning ourselves so that is why we are so keen on going the amalgamation route.”

Lyne continued: “The chairman of the Kerry County Board, Tim Murphy, is from Brosna, a rural club so he knows the story. I’m sure that he also knows that this wouldn’t be the first or last of these requests he will face on his watch. Whatever the solution is here may prove to be a model to follow for the years ahead.”

Lyne doesn’t want the obituary for Valentia penned just yet. She points to the successful merging at underage level with Skellig Rangers and how these players will eventually come through.

“Valentia are not folding up the tent. If we can stay together as one entity those younger players can see something to aim to play for. We may never come back — or we might come back in droves.”