IN the long and decorated history of post-match plámas, Billy Lee’s interview after Austin Stacks had won the Munster intermediate title was a real doozy.
The former Limerick manager had just seen his Tralee charges put seven goals on Aherlow. Beat them by 7-7 to 0-2, some 26 points. Crushed them. Created national headlines, stirred up old debates about how the ninth best team in Kerry isn’t an intermediate team at all.
But Lee’s assertion that his team’s performance “wasn’t good enough” wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card. All he was missing was a yerra or two.
From the moment they were relegated from senior football for the first time ever by Kenmare in late 2022, the only surprise about Austin Stacks ending up in an All-Ireland intermediate semi-final is that it wasn’t last year’s.
They were overwhelming favourites in 2023 but David Clifford kicked 13 points as Fossa denied them in a dramatic semi-final that went to penalties.
All that did was delay the inevitable. They were going to get out of Kerry sooner rather than later and when it comes to intermediate and junior football, getting out of Kerry means getting out of Munster.
Fifteen of the last seventeen Munster intermediate titles have been won by the Kingdom’s representatives, with seven of them going on to win the All-Ireland.
The dominance is even more pronounced at junior level. Kerry clubs have been successful in 19 of the competition’s 22 iterations since it began in 2001, and backed that up with eleven All-Irelands.
There is an unease about its internal impact in quarters of Kerry, though little care for the impact it has anywhere else.
When a discussion got up at Cork’s 2024 annual convention, it was suggested their Senior ‘A’ champions should be nominated to play in the Munster intermediate championship in a bid to challenge Kerry’s dominance.
It was suggested that Cork’s structures were out of sync.
“It is our friends over the border who are most out of sync,” replied Cork CEO Kevin O’Donovan, referencing how the rest of the Munster counties bar Kerry are roughly aligned with each other.
It is of Kerry’s own doing and not always to their own taste, but 2024 marked exactly a century since their divisional boards were formed.
In that time, not much short of half the county titles have been won by divisional or district teams.
You’ll have read explanations on how Kerry football works many times. There’s a very good chance it hasn’t sunk in, so let’s have another cut.
They have two separate championships.
The senior football championship is the primary competition, which comprises eight clubs and eight divisional teams.
The senior club championship is for clubs only and is viewed as the secondary competition.
They’re linked in some ways, not in others, but the importance of the club championship was best underlined by Kerin’s O’Rahilly’s success two years ago.
They won the club championship before being eliminated from the SFC at the group stage.
But because the SFC final was contested by two divisional teams – East Kerry beating Mid Kerry – the O’Rahillys’ success in the club championship meant they became Kerry’s representatives in Munster.
They went on to win the province and pushed Kilmacud all the way in the All-Ireland semi-final.
On Sunday, Dr Crokes will face Errigal Ciaran in the All-Ireland senior semi-final in Portlaoise.
Crokes beat St Brendan’s in the Kerry SFC semi-final.
The St Brendan’s team had Michael Tansley, Colin Griffin, Armin Heinrich, Joe O’Connor, Daniel Kirby and Paddy Lane playing that day.
Those six will all be playing for Austin Stacks in Saturday’s All-Ireland intermediate semi-final against Ballinderry.
Kerry football has eternally wrestled with balancing an opportunity for every player to win a senior championship medal against the top clubs being able to thrive.
In order to do that, they’ve settled on having just eight senior clubs.
The battle to avoid relegation the last few years alone has been bloody and brutal.
Austin Stacks won the Kerry SFC in 2021. That year, Dr Crokes only stayed up by virtue of beating Legion in the relegation playoff.
Crokes had been All-Ireland champions in 2017 and lost another final in 2019.
A year after winning Kerry, Stacks were relegated for the first time ever.
Kerin’s O’Rahillys won Munster in 2022 and were relegated to intermediate football in Kerry at the end of 2023. That was their first ever drop from the top flight as well.
On the back of it, they proposed effectively breaking up the divisional structure.
They wanted to relegate the eight divisional teams to intermediate, replacing them with eight club teams and changing the structure of the divisional outfits so that they were made up of only junior players.
That was never likely to succeed but it fed into a debate that has forced Kerry football to shift in its chair.
Four clubs, one of whom was Austin Stacks, brought motions to last year’s convention to restructure the championship.
Those proposals were shelved but informed the work of a committee headed by former All-Ireland winner Dara Ó Cinneide that earlier this year put forward its vision for reform.
This will be the last time the ninth-best team in Kerry represents them in an All-Ireland semi-final.
Next year, the SFC will expand to nine, before growing again to ten in 2026. The eight divisional sides will remain involved but because of Croke Park’s upper limit of 16 teams allowed in a senior championship, they will have to be whittled down to six by a preliminary round or two.
In an interview with The Irish News earlier this week, Ballinderry manager Jarlath Bell referenced the bookies’ valuation that his side are 4/1 to outsiders on Saturday.
He will no doubt have invoked the recent memory of Steelstown, who were given similar standing three years ago against another Tralee outfit, Na Gaeil. Steelstown beat them and went on to win the All-Ireland, having been 45/1 just to win Ulster before it began.
As it was then, this is on paper Derry’s 17th-best team against Kerry’s 9th.
But there’s a certain fallacy within that too. Ballinderry played Division One football this year and finished fifth, beating among others eventual champions Newbridge and former winners Slaughtneil.
Last year’s All-Ireland junior winners Arva were beaten by the Shamrocks in the Ulster final three weeks ago.
Arva played senior league football in Cavan both years, more than holding their own.
It’s not purely a Kerry thing, but it is their system that has tempted others including Derry to bend theirs out of shape.
Like Ó Cinneide, Damian Cassidy headed a committee back in 2020 that put forward proposals for district teams to be added to Derry’s senior championship.
In the course of compiling their proposals, they had spoken to Kerry. The idea was that Derry’s junior and intermediate clubs would provide players for new district teams.
That committee was quietly disbanded, their work pushed down like an impure thought.
They wanted to adopt the Kerry model yet the stronger clubs in Kerry have pushed back the other way.
Speaking to the Irish Examiner shortly after Austin Stacks were relegated, former GAA president Sean Kelly, who founded the junior and intermediate All-Irelands, foresaw how their inevitable success in the second tier would force the debate back to the surface.
“The grading has been left up to the counties completely and it isn’t balanced at the minute. It’s no fault of any county because they organise their competitions as they see fit for themselves. But when you’re talking about provincial and All-Ireland competitions, there should be a level playing field. It hasn’t happened and it should happen,” he said.
How Kerry balance their club structures distorts and imbalances the intermediate and junior grade across the whole of Ireland.
Their move to a ten-club-plus-divisional-teams SFC from 2026 is a start.
It is a compromise solely to suit their own house, not anyone else’s, but it might be the best we get.