Kerry Senior Stars To Be Absent From O’Rahilly’s v John Mitchels Semi-Final

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Barry John Keane, will likely be seen more in green and gold than blue and white this year. Photo by Dermot Crean.

Barry John Keane, will likely be seen more in green and gold than blue and white this year. Photo by Dermot Crean.

Kerins O’Rahilly’s v John Mitchels, Town Championship semi-final, Strand Road, Sunday 12:30pm 

IT may be the new year, but the 2014 season still rumbles on this weekend when Kerins O’Rahilly’s face John Mitchels in the Town Championship semi-final after playing out a dramatic draw in December.

That matched finished 0-16 to 2-10, with O’Rahilly’s scoring with the last kick of the game in extra-time to secure the replay.

The drawn game has probably caused a few headaches for Stacks, who await in the final next Sunday, January 25. With their All-Ireland club semi-final now looming large, they would have liked to have the town league final out of the way by now.

This replay was scheduled to be played Saturday evening at John Mitchels, but has been moved because of the poor weather.

Kerry senior stars, David Moran, Barry John Keane and Tommy Walsh will be unavailable to face Mitchels because of an Kerry A v B game scheduled for Sunday. O’Rahilly’s will also be without their Kerry U21 men, Jack Savage and Cormac Coffey.

We spoke to Kerins O’Rahilly’s team manager Barry O’Shea about the problems clubs face having their best men on inter-county duty.

“Obviously they’re top class players, but it can be difficult to integrate them in a short period of time when they’re not playing with the other guys,” said O’Shea.

“Any club that produces a few inter-county players, in a way, gets penalised. In any given year clubs can only expect to have their county players for maybe two league games and the championship games,” said O’Shea.

“It’s not ideal, but what can you do about it. It’s a bit like the rugby setup; the club produces a player only for the province to take him away, basically he’s not your player, only for a couple of times a year,” he said.

“The GAA need to do something to streamline the season because there is no season as such. There’s no shape or form to it which makes it nearly impossible to plan at club level. There is so much time spent training rather than playing games. All other top sports teams play week in week out. It’s been going on a long time, but something will have to be done,” he said.

“The game this weekend is good in a way because it offers players a little bit of a reward at the start of the year when they’ve just got back into training,” said O’Shea. “We’ve a very young squad so we’ll be trying to give players as many games as we can,” said O’Shea.

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