Brief taste of success ignites real hunger

NFL final: By late Sunday evening, Kerry's league victory was already a thing of the past. From Mallow train station, the players went their separate ways, the celebrations consisting solely of the slapping of hands, a job well done.

The transition from league to championship will be instantaneous, with players' minds now fixed on either holding their places, or winning them back - and none more so than Dara Ó Cinnéide. Right now his appetite for championship football couldn't get much greater.

With the obvious exception of Sunday - when Ó Cinnéide came off the bench for the last 10 minutes - it was a personal league campaign without much joy. Club duties with An Ghaeltacht and then a back injury kept his involvement to a minimum, and when you're carrying the honour of team captain that's particularly difficult. What it has created though is an unmistakable desire to get his place back in the Kerry forward line.

"I know there were at least three or four watching from the sidelines on Sunday thinking about getting a place back, myself included. But with that injury problem behind me now I've got a great hunger for it. And I'll stop at nothing to try and get my place back. Johnny Crowley is full forward at the moment and played very well on Sunday, so you can imagine how we'll be going head-to-head inside in training."

Tomás Ó Sé has been minding the Kerry captaincy in his absence, but when handed the honour by An Ghaeltacht at the start of the season Ó Cinnéide was intent on fulfilling the role to the best of his ability. The next step in that task will be winning his Kerry place back.

"The competition for places now is intense, unbelievable," he adds. "There is very little guarantee of a starting place for anyone now. It's going to be a very interesting three weeks in training before the championship.

"I know I was called in on Sunday but to be honest it was just as the penalty was being taken and we went eight points up. So it wasn't a case at all of taking Johnny Crowley off, it was more a case of giving me a run.

"And from then on though, Galway managed to dominate midfield, so I didn't see too much action. It was mostly one-way traffic from there to the end, especially when Michael Donnellan got the goal."

Ó Cinnéide has already won half his battle by finally shaking off his back injury. "It's fine now, perfect. I was going through hell there after the club final in March, really in severe pain. In the last 10 days though it has eased up a good bit.

"It was all the more frustrating because I've been quite lucky with injuries. Any problems I've had before would have hit around Christmas, but this came on three days before the club final. So the timing of it was the most disappointing aspect of all."

It was discovered to be a disc-related problem, shown on an MRI scan, and it's taken some careful treatment to get it right. Now the countdown to the Clare match on May 23rd begins in earnest, with the next training session planned for this evening and hardly a moment's reflection on a first league title since 1997.

"It was all very low key on Sunday night. We knew we'd exactly three weeks before the start of the championship.

"Some of the clubs are into the county championship this weekend as well, so no one was in the mood to make a big fuss.

"But it was great to win it, and a good game of football, but I suppose you'll nearly always get that when two teams like Kerry and Galway are involved. We both go out to play football, and both sets of forwards had a good day on Sunday."

Sharing Ó Cinnéide's eagerness to get a place in the Kerry forward line will be players like Ronan O'Connor, Sean O'Sullivan, Declan Quill and Michael Quirke, and it means whoever starts against Clare will be out to impress. Not that they'd take anything for granted.

"We know it's set up now for Clare, in that no one will give them a chance. People know Kerry are going well, and we are, but Ennis is never an easy place to get a result. And league form isn't always the best measure for the championship.

"But there are no guarantees in Munster anymore. With Limerick coming through and Tipperary always there or thereabouts there is no easy game. The days of just Kerry and Cork are definitely over."