Kerry set to present club championship report in October

KERRY REVIEW GROUP: The thorny topic of Kerry players playing in their district championships got its first tentative airing at Kerry County Board level this week, with a discussion on the progress of the district championship review group. Pic: Domnick Walsh © Eye Focus LTD.

The thorny topic of Kerry players playing in their district championships got its first tentative airing at Kerry County Board level this week, with a discussion on the progress of the district championship review group.

Rathmore delegate Donal Murphy asked the group chairperson Joe Costello how and whether the issue had been moved forward in 2026.

The review group includes current Kerry player Paul Murphy, former All-Ireland winner and Listowel chairperson Noel Kennelly, along with Jason McGahan (high performance manager with Kerry), and Mid Kerry’s Mike Sayers.

It had been presented with correspondence to the effect that Kerry players were seeking not to play in these events, as well as a Gaelic Players Association (GPA) survey of the Kerry players conducted back in January.

That survey indicated that 91% of Kerry players support the split season, while a total of 92% support the GPA’s idea of a ‘no-contact November’.

The review committee said it had assessed GPS data from 33 of Kerry’s senior panellists in making their findings and also looked at Kerry’s formats compared to those of All-Ireland contenders around the country. In one instance, three Kerry players had played a total of 17 games for the county in the year assessed.

Mr Costello said the review committee’s desire to meet district boards was to find out about how they perform their draws, when they intend to start and finish them, and also if they give any teams with inter-county players byes forward into later rounds. The hope for such meetings was to try to make the competition more streamlined across the county.

Following the completion of the presentation, Beaufort’s Frank Coffey took issue with what he felt was the interpretation of the correspondence the club had sent on the matter. He said the club’s main question was to ask how an inter-county player playing three District Championship games with their club could be contributing more to ‘burnout’ than an inter-county player undertaking 70 training sessions with an inter-county team.

He pointed out at the time that inter-county players make up 2% of the GAA’s playing population, and that the other 98% of players were being neglected in such arguments. He also disagreed with a suggestion that a three-person committee should be the ones to decide on whether or not a Kerry player should play in a District Championship or not. Mr Coffey did welcome the fact the group were seeking to meet the district boards, however.

Moving on 12 months, Donal Murphy asked what progress had been made and why was there not a report ready to be put before county committee delegates.

Mr Costello apologised for the delay: “It is my fault, unfortunately, that there’s been delays with it. We managed to meet all the district boards last year, but it has been delayed, and for that I apologise. We’re very close to the final draft, which will be ready for the middle of September. I’ll present it to the management committee here, and once [they] are happy with it, it will be circulated out to the clubs by the end of the month for consideration for the October meeting on the 6th.

“Just one thing I will say is last year when we were going through the process of meeting with the district boards, we did mention about just the scheduling of their district championships and how we can maybe tighten it up and save some time, and I must commend every single one of them.

“The competitions ran off as quickly and as efficiently as they possibly could. I’ll be re-engaging with them over the couple of weeks. I know some district boards have done their draws already, but we’ve had some meaningful conversations with the district boards last year and I expect the competition to be run off in the same time frames as they were last year.”

The launch of Kerry’s primary SFC will take place next Monday with the first and second rounds drawn. The final is due to be played on October 25.

Meanwhile, as revealed by Examiner Sport, the change to venue arrangements for a Cork-Kerry Munster Club SFC final has been confirmed, the meeting heard. There will be a home-and-away arrangement with the games being played at venues where there are floodlights.

If the Cork club is at home, it will be Pairc Ui Caoimh or Pairc Ui Rinn, it will Austin Stack Park for Kerry clubs.