What do you mean by the Kerry club championship is weighted for their super clubs to win all Irelands? I would have thought their system of divisional sides was very egalitarian giving every footballer the chance to play senior club and actually went against their super clubs chances of winning all Irelands.
That exact point is used against the cork hurling structure. Divisional teams v strong past few years
Because only 8 clubs take part in their senior championship, the senior competition is a closed shop where only 8 teams have the prospect of representing Kerry in the AI series.
The super clubs come back year on year on year. Why have the likes of Crokes dominated for so long? What sort of system would allow that to occur?
The biggest thing about it is the advantages it throws up at intermediate and junior.
There are 8 senior clubs in Kerry, this year there will be 18 in Tyrone for example (usually 16 but no relegations last year due to Covid).
So at intermediate level, in essence you will have the 9th best club in Kerry facing the 19th best in Tyrone and so on at Junior. Hardly fair is it? I think club football in Kerry is not about creating good competition, it’s about rigging the system so they can guarantee their best clubs get a crack at provincial and AI every season.
It 100c does advantage them at junior and intermediate. You’re wrong on the senior one though. The divisional system has denied the clubs dozens of county championships. I’m not sure many Kerry club has won a Munster or all Ireland after not winning the main senior championship? I’m sure it must be easier get relegated from senior too if there’s less clubs.
Sure there are teams that dominate in every counties championship. Crossmaglen for example
You can see the West Limerick crowd are very passionate about Kerry Football and will defend it to the last
Yes.
You’d expect a footballing county like Kerry to have a competitive senior championship between their clubs. Crossmaglen have had serious provincial and All Ireland success in the past 25 years while dominating Armagh.
Crokes have not fared very well outside of Munster.
I would say club football at Kerry is not is a great state despite all the structures in place for their clubs to utterly dominate the All Ireland scene.
I think the problem in Kerry is that populations are so low in certain clubs that there is a big divide between the big town teams like Crokes, Stacks, Legion etc. and the rest. This doesn’t help competitiveness at all.
There’s parts of Kerry that are terribly sparsely populated which doesn’t help at all. Every club in South Kerry is amalgamated at Juvenile level, and a lot are even struggling to field 15 at adult level
You’d know more than me, but I’d imagine in Tyrone, most of the top 16-20 clubs would be picking from decent population bases and can all comfortably field 2nd and maybe even 3rd teams.
The North Kerry region is very weak - Shannon Rangers, Feale Rangers etc. With East Kerry dominant in the county championship, the club representative for the All Ireland series often comes from the less prestigious club competition, like sending the FA Cup winners to the UCL.
Templenoe bate Crokes the weekend, and they barely have 15. Incredible club
Breeding
North Kerry has been a basket case for a good few years now.
What happened Listowel was very sad, but I believe they are at least trying to get back competitive again.
Its amazing what they are doing.
They know themselves they will disappear off the map before too long, but what a generation they currently have.
Tell Woolie if he doesn’t want to be lynched the next time he’s in Killarney, it’s not pronounced SPA it’s pronounced Spaw. The crowd from Spaw go mental when you call it SPA
Any other county and a club like that would have folded long ago.
I wouldn’t agree with that.
Kerry are actually one of the few clubs who get good representation from their big towns.
We’ll say Killarney/Tralee make up 40k of a county of around 150k.
I’ll use Tyrone as an example to compare and contrast as its the county I’m most familiar with.
Tyrone have 170k of a population. In nationalist/GAA playing terms they have probably 100-110k of that population, probably closer to 100k.
Omagh/Strabane/Cookstown/Dungannon make up around 60k of the 170k population. There are 4 clubs in those towns, 2 are senior, 2 are intermediate. 2 Omagh players on the county panel, 1 Dungannon (an Edendork man) and 0 from Strabane and Cookstown who haven’t had a player on the panel in about 6 or 7 years.
North Tyrone would be highly underrepresented in Tyrone, the likes of Clonoe/Ardboe/Coalisland would be considered East Tyrone. No senior club in North Tyrone, you’d have the likes of Gortin, Owen Roes, Strabane, Gortin, Newtownstewart, Greencastle etc there. Small rural clubs (bar Strabane) but there’s a higher proportion of protestants in the north west of the county, similar to the south east of the county where it borders with Armagh and Monaghan - places like Augher, Clogher, Fivemiletwon, Aughnacloy all have significant protestant populations in and around.
All this means though is you have stronger areas and weaker areas, nothing stopping these clubs coming up and down.
How many clubs in Kerry? They certainly do very well maximising the big town populations compared to most counties.
I would have thought the likes of Errigal, Dromore, Trillick, Carrickmore, Ardboe, Moy etc. would have big picks?
Certainly far bigger than every club in South Kerry, and bigger than every club in North Kerry bar Listowel.