I don’t think the Kerry senior championship is anything hectic since Crokes have dropped off in standard in recent times. Stacks won both the club and county championships and we saw yesterday that they’re nothing special. I saw them in two other games this year and they were a horrible watch. Not what you’d expect of a Kerry team at all. There’s a good spread between all the clubs of the Kerry intercounty players which is probably why there is no one dominant side. A lot of them play below senior too.Fair play to the Barrs. Cork needs a club of that size flexing its muscle on the national stage more often and it's needs a football club other than Nemo to show it can perform outside the county championship.
Might be too early to use it as an example of how the new format has lead to a big increase in standards but you'd have to say they were better prepared than the last time. There's a lot of misgivings about the standard in Cork club championship compared to what we see in Kerry, but when our winners dump out their winners maybe it shows that's more of a perception than what we thought.
I think the Barrs learnt a lot from their previous venture out in to Munster and adjusted their goals fairly quickly upon winning the county here. Last time it was probably seen as bonus territory but this time they seemed to keep their eyes on the ball with Munster, that’s half the battle.
They have a chance now but it’s fairly even among the 4. Kilcoo look arguably the best but nobody they play really takes the game to them. Barrs will have a go, that much I’m sure of.
Someone said above about what happens when we saw the number 1 in Cork take on the number 1 in Kerry. It’s not hugely important but we should change the naming of our grades so that the teams in intermediate and junior in Cork are represented at a more fair level in Munster against the Kerry clubs. It’s a great journey for the clubs and at the moment, those two grades have very little chance against the Kerry winners. Nobody does.