The club set-up is a unique one in Kerry.
In Ireland’s most successful county, two county championships are ran off before divisional competitions take place.
The main event, the most important county championship involves divisional teams such as South Kerry and Feale Rangers. A second county championship, known as the club championship also takes place around the same time as the county championship every year. Here, there are no divisional teams, just stand-alone clubs competing against one another.
Dr Crokes won the club championship at the end of April this year and the county championship is now into its last four. Crokes are still standing and so are Dingle, Kerins O’Rahilly’s and East Kerry.
Killian Young was a part of the South Kerry team who were beaten in the quarter final of the county championship on Sunday.
David Clifford was on form and the men from the south couldn’t manage him. The remainder of that competition will be played off over the next month but Young and his south Kerry teammates’ year isn’t up yet.
That’s because the above-mentioned divisional championships have still to be decided. The quarter finals of that competition are set for the first Sunday in November – a full month away now, while the finals don’t usually take place until early December – so for men like Young, it’s back to his club Renard for another month of hard slogging before an end-goal that’s still a long way away.
If you take it from a player like Killian Young’s perspective, the Kerry panellist hasn’t had a break all year and he won’t have before he rejoins the county set-up in December of this year or January of next. The GAA becomes a 12 month season and the enjoyment is sapped out of it all.
The fixtures aren’t currently up on the Kerry GAA website but Young has it that they’ll take place after the county championship has been decided. Surely it would make more sense to play them off, especially seeing as south Kerry are gone from that championship.
And Young, the 32-year-old Kerry defender took aim at the fixture calendar for the slogging, the training, the waiting.
“I really feel the younger generation are going to stop playing this game,” he said.
Club fixtures😡. Went out of the county championship last Sunday which was disappointing. Now we move onto the next competition, the South Kerry Championship. QF’s are set for 3/4th & 10/11th Nov. That’s a 5/6 week wait… While we wait, we must continue to train over these…
— Killian Young (@killianyoung) October 4, 2018
weeks to try stay fit and sharp as we adjust to winter conditions once again. The finalists will end up playing in Dec. I really feel the younger generation are going to stop playing this game. A Jan to Dec season is madness. #Gaa #Fixtures
— Killian Young (@killianyoung) October 4, 2018
This south Kerry team was composed of players from nine different clubs. It takes a talent not far off county standard to make it onto this team so while it’s undoubtedly exhausting and tough to readjust to training for a lad like Young, it’s not half as bad for him as it is for the solely club players from Renard, Valentia, Derrynane and so on.
These lads haven’t even had a county team or a divisional team to focus on and they’ve been training away with no games all summer. Every club player is used to it when the county season takes over in the summer months, and it’s just exploiting these lads passion for the game they love.
