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SPECIAL K: Tom\u00e1s Kennedy produced a stellar performance for Kerry’s Under 20s three days after a Munster final start with the seniors. Pic: Paul Phelan\/Sportsfile<\/p>\nKerry Under 20 football manager Tom\u00e1s \u00d3 S\u00e9 has urged the GAA to do the right thing when it comes to the All-Ireland final against Tyrone and not to play it on a midweek date.<\/p>\n
The Kingdom edged Roscommon at Semple Stadium Wednesday night, and afterwards \u00d3 S\u00e9 was adamant that the decider deserves a weekend fixture.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just hope that the GAA do the right thing now, and give the final date the respect it deserves. We had six lads sitting exams today. One lad has had to defer it into August because he was due to sit it at 4pm. That\u2019s wrong. They talk about well-being for players, and this shouldn\u2019t be happening,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an All-Ireland final. You have teams in that final now, from one end of the country to the other end, and there\u2019s going to be a huge amount of travelling, and an overnight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat game cannot be played midweek. I don\u2019t know what they\u2019re going to do with it, but they\u2019d want to show a bit of respect to lads, and take that into account.<\/p>\n
\u201cTyrone are an extremely well organised team. They\u2019ll be up for it. There\u2019s no doubt about that. They are the kings of under-20 football in Ireland over the last five or six years. We\u2019ll be up against it, but we\u2019ll prepare as best we can. I just hope we get enough time to prepare properly.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Defeated Roscommon manager Cian Smith was just as forthright in his opinion on the scheduling of the U-20 championship. Win, lose or draw, he felt that this All-Ireland semi-final, never mind the final, should not have been fixed for midweek.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bigger picture of the whole thing, and I was going to say this no matter how it went, it\u2019s great to play in an All-Ireland semi-final, on a great pitch, in a great venue, but personally I think it\u2019s absolutely disgraceful that it\u2019s on a Wednesday night,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely crazy. This is supposed to be the second premier competition. It\u2019s one thing playing Connacht championship round-robin on a Wednesday night. We\u2019ve no problem at all with that, but ourselves and Kerry to have to come down here on a Wednesday night?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had two guys today who couldn\u2019t tog for us because they were doing exams in college. It\u2019s absolutely scandalous for players, for supporters, and for management.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, we\u2019re all volunteers. We all have day jobs. We all had to take half days for nearly two months on Wednesday nights. We love doing it, but the GAA really needs to think about promoting it.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously an issue is senior players playing with U-20 squads but, at the end of the day, you\u2019re either an U-20 or a senior. You\u2019ll play senior for long enough.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
SPECIAL K: Tom\u00e1s Kennedy produced a stellar performance for Kerry’s Under 20s three days after a Munster final start with the seniors. Pic: Paul Phelan\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n
On the way that his side rebounded from losing a seven-point lead with around ten minutes of normal time left, the Kingdom manager was seriously impressed by the impact that Kerry got off the bench. That, and the three goals they buried, were the key factors in the eventual win.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey turned us over, and they got a couple of scores, and I think they also missed a few scores, so maybe we were lucky on that side of it in normal time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fear would be that they would drop the heads after losing the lead, and after being ahead, but we spoke and we said we\u2019d stick to the same plan that we had, and that we\u2019d knuckle down and go at it. They were in great spirits going out for extra-time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn extra-time, we had a lot of tired bodies. Our lads, to be fair to them, for the first time this year, in a major way, they worked extremely hard. We were extremely organised defensively. It was that work-rate and attitude. There were spent bodies inside there and, when we went into extra-time, the subs that came in made a huge impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew we had to finish strong. Mairt\u00edn McKivergan, Paudie Finucane, Jack Joy, David Sargent, they all had outstanding games. Dara Hogan had a brilliant, brilliant game. We\u2019re delighted with this, but we\u2019d love to kick on.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00d3 S\u00e9 was full of praise for the way that senior star Tom\u00e1s Kennedy performed just three days after lining out for Jack O\u2019Connor\u2019s men in the Munster final in Killarney. His display, while carrying an injury from Sunday, epitomised the spirit within the group.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a huge, tough battle around the middle of the park, in terms of midfield and breaking ball. I thought Tom\u00e1s Kennedy, after the knock he picked up at the weekend, was heroic. He came out, settled us down around the middle, and won great ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cKillian (Dennehy) was man-of-the-match against Cork, and he was a huge loss coming in. We didn\u2019t know coming up if Tom\u00e1s Kennedy was going to be ok or not. I must give him great credit.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has been brilliant. He\u2019s been absolutely brilliant. It would be great now if Jack (O\u2019Connor) could give him to us now between here and the final, and let us prepare away. We\u2019ll see how we go with that as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a great spirit, and great togetherness, and a great willingness to work there today, which was very encouraging.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kerry Under 20 football manager Tom\u00e1s \u00d3 S\u00e9 has urged the GAA to do the right thing when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[177329,6937,72371,61,60,112],"class_list":["post-448635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-championship-2026","tag-kerry-gaa","tag-munster-gaa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}