Holding back the tide: Kerry's big football conundrum

Kerry GAA appointed a demographics officer this year to interrogate one of the biggest issues facing the county - to stave off a situation where clubs will cease to exist

The valley of Dromid, outside Waterville, in south Kerry: 'If you have only 16 boys across eight classes in the local primary school, your chances of having a club team going forward are limited'. Pic: Don MacMonagle

FORTY minutes into last Saturday’s Kerry SFL Division 4 local derby between Dromid Pearses and Waterville, Dromid led 0-8 to 0-5. A Waterville goal suckered them but Dromid have scrapped hard for too long to go down from that and they quicky restored their three point lead. Again, in the dying final minutes, a high ball into the Dromid square caused problems and delivered an equalising goal for Waterville. “We don’t have the big fellas in there any more to protect against that sort of ball,” club chairman Jeremiah O’Shea reckons.

The clubs, who sit in the same parish, sit side by side in the fourth tier of the Co League, sixth and seventh. They’ve been living cheek-by-jowl since separating in the 1940s and at the rate population decline is accelerating in south Kerry, they’ll soon be swallowing the unpalatable merging at adult level. The numbers don’t lie.