Dr Crokes of Killarney achieved a slightly odd distinction in 2017. As Colm Cooper managed to collect the one medal that had eluded a garlanded career, his club became the only Kerry side to win the All-Ireland club title more than once.
For a leading – the leading – football county, the club roll of honour looks underwhelming. Just six All-Irelands. That’s the same as Crossmaglen Rangers and one fewer than Cork brand leaders, Nemo Rangers.
Twenty-five years before ticking that personal box, Cooper had been the mascot when Crokes won their first.
A major presence on that team was a slight, sniping corner forward called Pat O’Shea, who would go on to manage the club when they added to their All-Ireland tally. He also led Kerry to the 2007 All-Ireland and is one of Munster GAA’s two provincial games managers.
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Ask him if he believes the county has underachieved in terms of senior club titles and he says it depends on how you define achievement.
“If you ask about structure, look at Éire Óg, who are playing this weekend in the senior club and their hurlers are already in the provincial final,” said O’Shea. “Ennis is effectively a one-club town – The Banner is a junior and youth club based a couple of miles outside – with a population of nearly 30,000.
“The Kerry equivalent is Tralee, 30,000 people and it’s a four-club town, plus two clubs neighbouring the town. So, every young person in Kerry is getting an opportunity.
“There’d be a slight argument for Stacks to have the lion’s share of what Tralee have, but that wouldn’t hold as true as it used to. Killarney is similar enough, next biggest town, population of 15,000 people and three clubs.
“So, structurally, you have what you have. There’s an assumption that there are these huge clubs in Kerry that punch way below their weight, and they should be doing a lot better.”
O’Shea points out that the same demographic pressures, common enough in the west of Ireland, also apply.
“You look at a club like Dingle (current county champions). I think something like two boys went into Dingle’s primary school last year. Now I could be wrong on the exact number, but it’s really down into the small digits.”
Another aspect of the county’s senior championship is the presence of divisional teams. The arrangement allows non-senior clubs in a region to amalgamate and make up teams that compete with senior clubs.
This allows all footballers to have a crack at the county championship. The game’s most famous player, David Clifford, plays for Fossa, who have risen only to intermediate level, which has allowed him to play senior with the East Kerry division. Clifford has won a junior club All-Ireland with Fossa and also four senior county medals.
Historically, divisional teams have been quite successful. The first official club championship in 1971 was won by East Kerry. O’Shea thinks that side “could have comfortably won the National League that year; it’s a huge area of talent”.
That inaugural success prompted a rethink by the GAA and divisional teams were then excluded from the club championship.
These days, if a divisional side wins the county championship, Kerry’s place in the Munster senior competition goes to whoever wins the club championship – a separate tournament, specifically for clubs.
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Then, there is the changing nature of the competition. Initially, it was extremely difficult to win on a recurring basis. Nemo Rangers, with seven All-Irelands, accumulated that success down the generations.
Waterford football manager Ephie Fitzgerald, who represented Nemo in his playing days, said in an interview last year: “We tended to be beaten early in the following season in my time. It was a long year.”
These days, clubs around the country make domination of their county a springboard to provincial and national success – something the generally competitive Kerry championship doesn’t encourage.
It is probably significant that the most dominant club in Kerry this century has been Dr Crokes, with seven titles in nine years, which duly produced an All-Ireland winning team.
Yet this compares with All-Ireland winning clubs like Crossmaglen, who have 23 Armagh titles in the last 30 years and Kilcoo, playing in Saturday’s Ulster semi-final, who have won Down 13 times in the past 14 seasons. Corofin, the Galway club who broke the All-Ireland three-in-a-row barrier five years ago, have 15 of this century’s county championships.
O’Shea argues that even accepting the structural disadvantages for Kerry clubs, there is rarely very much separating their representatives from wider success.
“The club championship is a brilliant competition. Funnily enough, it does two things. It allows for shocks – or the opportunity – for any team to win because they could get a home game that could give them an advantage.
“We may have seen more repeat winners in the past couple of decades but the margins are not big. Dr Crokes won Munster last year and only lost an All-Ireland semi-final in extra time to Errigal Ciarán, who went close in the final after a bad start.
“This weekend, county champions Dingle are in the Munster semi-finals and there is an argument that they have been the best team in Kerry for the last five or six years – if they can get their best players on the pitch.”
Ultimately, O’Shea believes that the county is happy with its competitive structures because they strike a good balance between prioritising the development of players without compromising Kerry clubs too heavily when they contest Munster.
“If the question is ‘are the structures inhibiting our success in senior club?’, I would say they probably are, but I don’t think they’re built for that. They were never built for that.
“Are all counties building and putting their structure in place to be successful or to have one team successful at top level – but to the detriment of their county? That’s an argument to be made but ultimately, the measurement in the GAA of club development should be about player development.
“The unfortunate thing for me is that I think far too often, the association hasn’t grasped the idea that we’ve got to reach out to the people who play so that they all get opportunities. The better players are always going to get loads of opportunities and yet, we obsess about the small numbers of people that play too much.
“From a Kerry perspective, I think the exact structures that help us at inter-county level also help at club level. They give greater opportunity for more players.”
