Clonakilty better prepared for provincial campaign

November 6th, 2009 by Kevin Egan

Odd though it may seem, there is one peculiar anomaly in the GAA which can, if a certain set of circumstances come into play, result in a team being eliminated from the race for the All Ireland club championship even though they might be the best club team in the land. Of course bad days can happen to anyone, that’s simply football or hurling in action, but this past weekend Dr Crokes were eliminated by South Kerry and thus were ruled out from competing for the All Ireland club championship, despite certainly being among the top three or four clubs left in contention before Sunday, and possibly even being the most talented of the lot.

They can feel even more hard done by since other clubs won’t have to beat South Kerry to progress, they will instead have to beat Kerins O’Rahillys, winners of the Kerry club championship. The peculiar new system adopted in the Kingdom this year, though obviously one cannot argue with anything Kerrymen do in a football sense since their results speak for themselves, means that in the event of a divisional team winning the county championship, it is the club champions who progress. This would be fine if the club championship was treated as the premier competition by all the clubs involved, but it plainly isn’t.

Dr Crokes were eliminated from the club championship all the way back in May by Ardfert, a club who with the greatest of respect, would be some way behind Crokes if both teams were firing on all cylinders. Of course no club, knowing that their primary championship was to be played in September and October in the main, would be at full fitness in May – it would be silly to follow such a course.

The result however is that instead of Kerry being represented by their strongest club team, they are represented by Kerins O’Rahillys. O’Rahilly’s, at their best, would certainly be one of the stronger club sides in the Kingdom, but the problem is that they won’t be at anything close to that level this Sunday. They’ve been out of action for six weeks now since being knocked out of the county championship by Laune Rangers, while they didn’t know for sure that they would be playing in this competition until 4.30pm last Sunday. Now there is no doubt that several players would have trained at full pelt, but equally human nature is such that several more would have been operating at a much more moderate level, and that should tell this weekend.

They will have their two Australia-bound stars on duty as both Tommy Walsh and David Moran have declared themselves available for this tie, however this news is countered by the fact that Michael Quirke will be serving a suspension.

Clonakilty have been out of action for a considerable length of time as well, and they are new to this scene, albeit having quietly improved over the course of the past few seasons. They won’t carry with them the intimidatory reputation of Nemo Rangers, the only Cork club to come out of Munster this decade, however they will be very balance all over the field and have a couple of tidy young forwards in Colm Callanan and Conor McManus who have been called up to next year’s Cork panel by Conor Counihan. On the grounds that this is a moderately even match on paper, with perhaps home advantage for Kerins giving them a slight edge, the prices look right – however when the issue of the Kerrymen’s poor preparation is introduced into the mix, Clonakilty start to look much more appealing. Quirke’s suspension is the final straw that makes a bet here worthwhile.

A 2pt bet on Clonakilty at 11/8 is the recommendation in this weekend’s televised match, along with a second 2pt bet on over 24.5 points at 5/6.

Both these clubs are attacking teams who tend to run up healthy totals, and while the conditions aren’t ideal, there should be a goal or two in this game combined with more than an average amount of scoring chances. Above all, when two teams meet where the county players are all attackers, usually the scoring is healthy enough.

Tags: Clonakilty, Cork, Kerins O'Rahillys