Ciarrai_thuaidh Can I ask how are the divisional teams managed? Do the club teams send people forward for selection? Or does management do the selecting from the available club panels? Would there be many rows over players not selected?
Looked at same way as a strong club team in most cases. Take South Kerry for example, a very strong divisional team with a strong tradition of winning championships. They've had external coaches/managers a good bit. William Harmon who managed Rahillys most recently. Paudie Kissane from Cork who is a good coach/S&C mix was involved a few years ago. The South Kerry board would be well run and organised though. Not all divisions are.
In a lot of divisions they just pick someone from the constituent clubs but usually with a fair balance of selectors - otherwise it just goes to sh*t!
My own part of the county, North Kerry has had a shocking record in SFC over the last 40 odd years. From an era when we had unbelievably strong teams in the 70s and even early 80s - Shannon Rangers and Feale Rangers contested the 1977 final - to no title being won from 1980 to 2007 and only 1 appearance in a final between 1985 and 2007 when Feale Rangers won one. Since 2007 it's been largely similar. Shannon Rangers got things going well for about 2/3 years and reached a Semi in 2014 I think it was. Feale Rangers got to the semi last year but otherwise it's been poor effort, poor organisation, poor performances.
By the way in case anybody's interested, Shannon Rangers is a combo of Beale, Ballyduff, Ballydonoghue, Ballylongford, Tarbert and Asdee.
Feale Rangers is a combo of Listowel Emmets, Finuge, Duagh, Moyvane, St Senans. Those are the main teams in the area. There are 3 teams in North Kerry district (Desmonds, Brosnan and Duagh)who play with St Kierans in the Senior championship to complicate things. St Kierans is basically Castleisland (Desmonds) and surrounding Parishes.
Anyway, Feale and Shannon Rangers were performing so poorly and standing no chance of competing with the likes of East Kerry (who have been utterly dominating Minor for a few years and having disproportionate representation on Kerry squads) so they decided last year to amalgamate and form one North Kerry team and enter just the underage championships to see how it went. There's actually been a good bit of work done behind the scenes on football in the area in schools as there were the odd county player being produced (Jason Foley, Shane Enright, Anthony Maher for example) but not enough guys making the grade and no games being won in county championship.
As it turns out North Kerry won the Minor, lost the U21 by 1 to a star-studded East Kerry and competed well in U15. So while I was against it as it meant less players got the opportunity to play at County Championship level and the coaching and structures being worked on could have been a mid to long term solution - I suppose it has justified itself in a way and now there's 5/6 guys in with a shout of playing Minor or U20 who wouldn't have been.
Anyway, don't know why I said half of that. Bit of a tangent sorry.
Basically the divisional thing is great in so many ways - but in divisions where the structure is gone stale or weak and no work is being done it can lead to very lean and unproductive periods. It's down to the people in the different areas, the strength of schools and underage etc. Right now the East Kerry and Killarney area is massively dominant. Schools like St Brendans, Social Sliabh Luachra (Rathmore) are playing top level. Crokes, Spa, Legion, Rathmore, Glenflesk, Firies, Kilcummin are are all very strong clubs at underage or adult or both..Fossa are coming now aswell. They all feed into East Kerry underage a lot of years except Crokes are almost always on their own. So it's a bit imbalanced.
But all that being said - the divisions just add hugely to the whole level of competition out there. Some of the most memorable games in Kerry in my lifetime involved divisional teams. Laune Rangers and East Kerry played 2/3 times in the late 90s and they were titanic battles. That East Kerry team won 3 in a row and were the springboard for the Kerry careers of Johnny Crowley and Tom O'Sullivan (Rathmore). Then you had the Crokes v South Kerry battles in the 2000s and they were fairly epic aswell. Some of the Minor and U21 games I've seen have been brilliant aswell. Without them it would just be the big clubs like Crokes and Stacks dominating and probably getting more onto Kerry panels aswell, but this way the country boys from all corners get a fair shot. It's why a Declan O'Sullivan (Dromid), Jason Foley (Ballydonoghue), Anthony Maher (Duagh), Killian Young (Renard) - all players from very lowly clubs most of the time - can make it with Kerry I think.
Anyway, end of essay..
