New calendar means Kerry’s league struggles could come back to bite them

We went to Donegal for mid-term. When I mentioned the hotel we were staying in to my mother, she asked if I remembered being there before as a child. I drew a complete blank. Not only did I not remember the hotel, I didn’t remember the holiday. We went to Donegal? Really? Didn’t we mostly go to Kerry?

“Ah you do,” she said. “It had a tennis court.”

And just like that, the synapses and neuron circuits that had been catching 40 winks in my brain suddenly snapped to attention. Not only could I now remember the holiday, I was able to instantly name the date — the week of July 4th, 1993. I started rabbiting on about how Pete Sampras beat Jim Courier in the Wimbledon final and there was a big deal made out of two Americans meeting in the final on July 4th. Not for the first time, members of my family rolled their eyes.

We used to be able to click the Lego pieces of the GAA year into place without any effort too but the split season has changed all that

This is not geek bravado, at least not completely. Every sports fan has a body clock and the above story won’t seem odd to most of them. Whereas normal people check the date by looking up the calendar, we tell time by what’s on.

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Halfway through the Six Nations — must be the end of February. Cheltenham’s on the front pages — it’s the middle of March. Masters, Wimbledon, a new NFL season — April, July, September. We don’t think about this stuff. We don’t, in all truth, think about much of anything, real world-wise.

We used to be able to click the Lego pieces of the GAA year into place without any effort too but the split season has changed all that. Did you know the real stuff starts in six weeks? There’s still frost on the windscreen when you start the car in the morning, yet we’re closer to the beginning of the championship than to the beginning of the year. As recently as 2018, round four of the league was a full 17 weeks out from the provincial football finals. Sitting here this weekend, that number is down to 10.

All of which takes a bit of getting used to. The league is still the league but it feels like the sand is dropping through the hourglass that bit quicker than before. The worth of league form is being updated and re-evaluated on the fly. Roscommon and Mayo seem to be going well. Too well? Too early? Who can tell anymore?

In this mix, the state of play with the All-Ireland champions is particularly interesting. Famously, each of Jack O’Connor’s four All-Irelands as Kerry manager has come off the back of a National League title earlier in the season. Whatever the long-term meaning of the hiding they took in Castlebar last weekend, the least we can extrapolate is that Kerry won’t be winning this league. Not that they need to, not that they even want to. But still.

Ordinarily, a Kerry team coughing and spluttering going into the fourth round of the league wouldn’t be worth passing any remarks on. But the change in calendar gives everything that little squeeze of urgency now. Not only is the championship closer at hand than ever before, there’s more of it to prepare for than has ever been the case.

Kerry will, short of an earthquake hitting Gneeveguilla in the interim, be in a Munster final on May 6th. From there, they have at least six and possibly seven games in 11 weeks to win an All-Ireland. Overall, it will take at least eight — a tie for the most games they’ve ever had to play to win Sam, back in 2009. The difference in 2023 is that there are no qualifiers against Sligo, Longford or Antrim. It’s feasible that their three round-robin games could be against Armagh, Tyrone and Kildare.

The point is the new format forces all teams to get a whole lot more serious a whole lot earlier than they’re used to. Sacking off the league isn’t really an option. From last year’s All-Ireland winning team, Kerry have lost David Moran to retirement and a couple of squad players in Joe O’Connor (injury) and Jack Savage (abroad). All Stars Shane Ryan and Gavin White are injured and David Clifford and Sean O’Shea only returned last weekend for a half. Paul Geaney and Stephen O’Brien are a bit away yet, not to mention they’ll both turn 32 this year.

Yet who has staked their claim? Barry O’Sullivan around the middle third maybe. Darragh Roche has done his bit but he’s a tip-of-the-spear type of forward and there is no vacancy in that position for Kerry as long as Clifford can tie his laces

Again, none of this would usually raise an eyebrow after three games of league football and most likely it still shouldn’t. But if O’Connor has seemed a bit crankier than usual these past few weeks, it’s not hard to work out why. Missing so many players for the start of the season was never ideal but he could at least hope to use the first three games to give himself options for the rest of the year.

Yet who has staked their claim? Barry O’Sullivan around the middle third maybe. Darragh Roche has done his bit but he’s a tip-of-the-spear type of forward and there is no vacancy in that position for Kerry as long as Clifford can tie his laces. Tony Brosnan has been lively but he’s a known quantity, he made his senior debut for Kerry in 2016. All in all, Kerry’s championship team seems likely to be more or less the same as last year’s. But that cast of characters was far more advanced this time last year than where it is now.

Will it be enough? Maybe. Would they be able to absorb a Clifford injury in June or July? Unlikely. Are we really, seriously, hypothesising this stuff before we’re halfway through the league? Damn right we are.

The new championship body clock demands nothing less.