Tomás Ó Sé without 14 players as Kerry U-20s start John Kerins Cup title defence against Kildare

Kerry v Dublin

Saturday, February 11

Fitzgerald Stadium, Killarney at 2pm

Tomás Ó Sé makes his Under-20 team managerial bow with a title to defend. Eleven months ago Kerry captured the John Kerins Cup - the prize on offer for one group of the GAA’s U-20 Football Development League - after beating Dublin by three points in the final in Nenagh.

On Saturday Kerry start the defence of that title with a home game against Kildare in Killarney, though Ó Sé sounds a note of caution for anyone expecting Kerry to be pulling up lots of trees against the Lilywhites.

A combination of Third-Level commitments this week in the shape of Freshers Championship and Sigerson Cup, as well as Saturday’s Corn Uí Mhuirí final involving St Brendan’s College, means the Under-20 management will be short the guts of a team’s worth of players.

Suffice to say the incoming manager isn’t best pleased, but he also says that the absence of so many of his working squad opens the door of opportunity for others to stake a claim for a place on a panel Ó Sé has to cut further ahead of the Munster Championship, which starts in mid-April.

"That’s fourteen (Kerry U-20) players away with those teams,” Ó Sé told The Kerryman this week. “But, that said, I think it is a great opportunity, we have depth and a good squad and that’s whole point why we have fellas able to step in if required and they have a great opportunity to stake a claim and that’s healthy for competition.

“We have our own targets for this league and we’ll use it for what we need out of it, and that’s what we’re going to be going at. (Winning it) is not the be all and end all. As long as the team is where we want them to be in mid-April, that’s the target and what we want to get out of the next couple of games and months,” he added.

Of the team that won the 2022 Munster title - before losing their All-Ireland semi-final to Tyrone - Ó Sé and his management team of Seamus Moynihan, Bryan Sheehan, Sean Walsh and Maurice Horan can call on almost half of his predecessor Declan O’Sullivan’s squad.

Dara O’Callaghan (Rathmore), Cillian Burke (Milltown/Castlemaine), Thomas O’Donnell (Castlegregory), Dylan Geaney (Dingle), William Shine (Legion), Sean Broderick (John Mitchels), Keith Evans (Keel) Paudie O’Leary (Gneeveguilla) and the Austin Stacks trio of Joey Nagle, Jordan Kissane and Armin Heinrich are back again this year.

Quite who or how many of them will be available for Saturday’s game remains to be seen.

Four players who Ó Sé definitely won’t have at his disposal to face Kildare will be John Kelliher, Luke Crowley and cousins Cian Lynch and Mikey Lynch. All four will be playing for The Sem, Killarney in Saturday’s Corn Uí Mhuirí final in Mallow.

Such is Ó Sé’s introduction to inter-county management. He got a taste of the pull on players’ demand during his spell as a selector to the Offaly senior footballers last year, and now he has to juggle those headaches as the bainsiteoir.

Quite how Kerry fare against Kildare is anyone’s guess. Getting fifteen on the field might be a victory in itself.