*Peter Keane. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
ATTEMPTS to seed Kerry and Cork on opposite sides of the Munster senior football championship has been criticised as “very unfair” by Clare manager Peter Keane.
Keane’s first season in charge of Clare ended on Sunday with Louth eliminating the Banner County from the All-Ireland by a margin of three points in what was Clare’s fourth loss of the championship.
For the third year in a row, Clare reached the Munster final but efforts are underway at a provincial level to restructure the championship so that Cork and Kerry are kept on opposite sides of the draw and not the finalists.
On the potential of such a restructuring, Keane stated, “I think it’s very unfair, there is no other province trying to do that. You want fairness and balance and why should there be two teams seeded like that every year when you are trying to promote the game. There is no seeding going on in hurling and they are promoting it and developing it. There was something like 300,000 people watched the hurling this year. If you want to bring people to games you can’t be offering them the same fare each year. Maybe it might be better to invest more money into the counties to improve their football and their standards”.
