Christy O'Connor: Cork clubs need to front up to halt Kerry's club football dominance

BACK in February, when Cork clubs were voting on the decision to create a fifth county championship tier, the majority of Junior clubs who took hold of the microphone prior to the vote vehemently expressed their reasons for voting against it.

Their anger was based on Munster representation being taken away from Junior county champions, with that distinction passing to Premier Junior clubs.

Despite such a strong cohort of delegates going against the proposal, Option B was the preferred choice of delegates, winning out over Option A (proposing four county championship tiers) by 120 votes to 99.

A fifth tier already existed on the hurling side but the lower Intermediate grade was renamed Premier Junior Hurling. With four grades already in football and that new fifth grade of Premier Junior Football coming into effect from 2023, Kilmurry and Cobh were already guaranteed of promotion ahead of the Junior A final in November. One of the biggest attractions though was the winners got to represent Cork in Munster.

Kilmurry made it as far as the final but were well beaten by a David and Paudie Clifford-inspired Fossa. When Kanturk went down to Rathmore the same weekend, it reignited a debate that has been raging for years around the performance of Cork clubs in the Munster Junior and Intermediate championships, and Kerry’s complete dominance of those competitions.

Since Canovee won the Munster Junior title in 2007, Kerry clubs have won all but two of the 32 championships in both grades played out since. The only two exceptions were Clyda Rovers (Intermediate champions in 2013) and Knocknagree (Junior champions in 2017).

Back in January, John Fintan Daly, who managed Knocknagree to that Junior title, before leading the side to the All-Ireland, wrote a hard-hitting column on the subject in the Irish Examiner.

In Daly’s opinion, the lazy answer was that Kerry were just stronger than Cork in football, full stop. But he argued that the remedy for the current imbalance lies entirely in Cork’s own hands.

Cork has more adult football clubs than the rest of Munster combined, which means more grades. Yet Daly’s contention was that Kerry’s dominance is bound to continue with Kerry’s second-grade champions (Intermediate) playing Cork’s third grade champions from Premier Intermediate, while Kerry’s third grade champions play Cork's fifth grade winners.

IMBALANCE

“Cork can’t ignore this ongoing imbalance,” wrote Daly.

Daly proposed that Cork’s secondary grade champions (Senior A) compete in the Munster Intermediate championship and the current fourth grade winners to enter the Munster Junior championship.

Arguing how the Kerry senior hurling champions play in the Intermediate hurling championship, Daly felt that if the existing rules don’t allow for Cork's second grade to enter without rebranding the Senior A championship, a county bye-law could be added to ensure players from that new grade could not qualify to play with their divisions in the senior championship.

In so many ways, Daly’s reasoning makes perfect sense, especially when the 25th-ranked team in Cork has to take on the ninth-best team in Kerry in Intermediate. The disparity between the Junior representatives is even bigger again with Kerry’s 25th-best team taking on Cork’s 49th-ranked team.

On the other hand, the real crux of the issue here is not really with Cork, but with Kerry. Only having eight senior clubs does skew everything in this debate because it hands Kerry sides a massive advantage.

It’s not the Kerry Intermediate and Junior clubs fault that the system is the way it is but it completely imbalances those championships in Munster.

There is no reason for Kerry to change a pathway that is consistently leading their teams to the verge of Croke Park for All-Ireland finals. In the short history of those competitions, Kerry clubs have reached 21 finals (13 in Junior, 8 in Intermediate).

Kerry are beating more than just Cork teams but, given how the trends are going only one way in Munster, is it time for Croke Park to step in and argue that Kerry’s current grading system is completely unbalancing those championships in Munster?

After all, Kerry sides have won the last three Munster Junior and Intermediate finals (six games) by an aggregate margin of 85 points.

Dromtarriffe did run Beaufort to one point in the 2018 final a year after Knocknagree beat Dromid Pearses in the 2017 decider. But those results are too sporadic to justify a continuation of the current set-up.

What else are Cork supposed to do? The grading system works in hurling so are Cork expected to change their whole system purely on the basis of being able to compete with Kerry at Junior and Intermediate football level?

If that was to happen in hurling, it would require, as Daly says, a county bye-law to prevent players from playing with their divisions in the senior championship.

If that bye-law wasn’t passed, and if the Senior A champions were representing Cork in the Munster Intermediate championship next year as a Tier 2 side, Bride Rovers, Killeagh, Cloyne and Carrigtwohill could possibly play with Imokilly in the senior championship?

If that somehow happened, Cork GAA would effectively be handing Imokilly the Seán Óg Murphy cup before a ball was even pucked.

FAVOURITES

Less than a year after Austin Stacks were Kerry senior champions, where they ran St Finbarr’s close in the Munster senior final, they were relegated to Intermediate in the county.

Stacks will have a job of getting back up to senior in 2023 but, still, they are already probably hot favourites to win the 2023-24 All-Ireland Intermediate title.

The current imbalance does not lie entirely in Cork’s own hands.