Bebo

Seniors ...

May 24th.. Wolfe Tones
June 7th... Cork
June 21st - 1:15PM .. Shannon Blues
June 27th - (Sat) 4:15PM .. St Christophers
July 11th - (Sat) 5:30PM ... Donegal
July 26th - 1:15PM ... A.N.D
Aug 2nd - 2:30PM ... Galway
Aug 16th - 1:15PM .. Macs

Juniors...
June 13th (Sat) - 5:30PM ... Cork
June 28th - 1:45 .... Celtics
July 15th (Wed) - 5:45PM ... Connemara Gaels
July 25th (Sat) - 5:30PM ... Donegal
August 5th (Wed) - 6:00PM .... A. MacAnespies

LOCKER ROOM: Kerry's game against Galway was the best of the season and left us grasping for superlatives, writes Tom Humphries

LET US now praise famous men. Kerry - though they will writhe and flinch in the spotlight, it being this side of September - have been the best quality and the best story of this generally woebegone football championship.

Saturday's game with Galway, played in a monsoon under a charcoal sky, was the best of the season so far and we came away in our kayaks gasping at the longevity of Kerry.

It's one thing for Cork and Kilkenny to have had a modern rivalry stretching back to that 1999 final. Hurling is still a less physically demanding game and the number of times a year when you face a genuine threat to your standing and physical wellbeing is limited.

Kerry, on Saturday, were qualifying for their ninth All-Ireland semi-final in succession. Since the inception of the quarter finals they have played at that stage eight times and won each time. Very few handy options either - Dublin 2001 and 2004, Galway 2002 and 2008, Armagh, Monaghan and, well, Mayo and Roscommon.

Their modern pre-eminence includes All-Ireland final appearances in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and the draining celebrations following four of those finals.

If you are Darragh Ó Sé you can throw in the win in 1997 as well. They are eternal.

In 2001 Páidí Ó Sé and Jack O'Connor and the boys sat with their heads in their hands as Meath dismantled them. They saw Meath into recession. And Galway too. They went mano-a-mano in the puke-football era, swallowing with difficulty the hubris of counties winning a first or second All-Ireland at their expense. Learned to deal with them and saw them off the premises.

They must have noticed that as they came out to deal with Galway yesterday there were still a lot of men in orange shirts sitting in the stands with their tails between their legs.

They never cease to astonish you. How many half-time cups of tea have been drunk in Croke Park by people shaking their heads and noting gravely that Darragh Ó Sé is "gone"? And there he was again on Saturday in the closing stages driving Kerry on and on through the rain.

War horse, the term most popularly used to describe Darragh, doesn't do him justice. Noah's Ark didn't carry enough varieties of beast from which to draw metaphorical comparisons.

What appeals about Kerry is the county's stoical resistance to the ravages of hype. Tommy Walsh, for instance, has been slipped into the team with much head shaking and many yerras and half-apologetic promises that he will be ready in a year or two.

Lawdee! If he were a Dub he would be a folk hero already, almost drowning in the hysteria.

And on Saturday they casually slipped Daniel Bohane into the edge of the square in the second half when the going was tough and Galway were hungry.

Kingdom watchers will know that Bohane plays just about anywhere for Austin Stacks, a versatility that can be a curse when trying to break through at county level.

He had the misfortune last year to break a finger in the warm-up of his National League debut against Cavan in Breffni Park, and then when he got going again two months later he was dropped in at centre back, a decision which was the final straw to Eamon Fitzmaurice, who promptly resigned his bench-warming residency.

Bohane was overshadowed and generally forgotten about.

Then on Saturday he comes in when Kerry are struggling following the arrival of Joe Bergin and he cleans up. He just takes over the defence like he is the new sheriff of Dodge City and every miscreant has three minutes to leave town or face the consequences.

Kerry keep on winning virtually as a by-product of their search for excellence and football perfection. Should they grasp the three-in-a-row which hangs for them from the branches right now talk will turn to the four-in-a-row.

Only in Kerry would the Gooch, a wonder of the world if ever th

The ingenious thing about Kerry football teams is not that they have won 34 All-Ireland titles but that they have done so without provoking national hatred and envy.

When it comes to the matter of Gaelic football, Kerry are undoubtedly the landlords, the occupants of the Big House, and we, the peasants, adore them for it.

Kerry have never flaunted their wealth. If the Lord above wanted to preserve a blueprint of the quintessential Kerry face, he would surely choose the image of Páidí Ó Sé in full, glorious grimace.

Páidí is often described as a rogue, and when he walked in the green-and-pale-gold stripes around Croke Park during the All-Ireland parade in the dozens of finals in which he played, there was a touch of Saturday Night Fever about the strut.

But for all the glinting mischief, Páidí was like a shaman when it came to superstitions and lucky charms. He was apt to believe there were endless influences floating around the cosmos that could affect the performance of Kerry on the football field, and he did his best to ward them off.

When he was happy, Páidí could look ecstatic, but mostly, during his days as a fiery wing back and later as the silver-bullet-headed manager, he looked faraway and pensive, as if examining storm clouds that might or might not be about to rush upon him.

That look of intense foreboding is the everlasting Kerry football expression. History dictates that in the All-Ireland football championship matters will probably turn out all right. But Kerry folks have a default setting that keeps them in tune to the things that may go wrong.

That is why tomorrow's fandango with Dublin is the real deal down in Kingdom country. The theory that Dublin versus Kerry is the greatest rivalry in Gaelic football has been undermined by two bothersome realities: the counties rarely meet in the championship; and when they do, Kerry tend to win.

Acknowledging that Kerry have had the upper hand in the duel for quite some time now, big Bomber Liston grinned on television the other night as he noted the last time Dublin won the fixture was when Elvis was alive (for an instant we wondered if an Elvis Ferris or an Elvis Brosnan had lined out for the county).

But Bomber was talking about Presley, the handsomest man of the 20th century apart from Maurice Fitzgerald and the most distinctive voice in the world except when he happened to be in the same room as Pat Spillane. But Bomber's cheeky quip is as close as you will ever get to schadenfreude from a Kerry man.

Out of caution and respect, the Kerry people will turn out in numbers for tomorrow's semi-final. It is an early start for them. Traditionally, the Rose of Tralee served to remind Kerry folk to check the paper to see which county the boys would be dispatching in the semi-final.

September is generally the month for the annual Kerry exodus to the capital. But it is as easy to get the Christmas shopping done in late August as in September. Kerry folks have the championship odyssey down to a fine art.

They leave behind the beautiful lakes, misty mountains and happy towns early in the morning, stop for sandwiches in Portlaoise and drive on to the capital singing songs about the sheer beauty of Jack O'Shea fielding a ball in Fitzgerald Stadium.

Should they cross the border into Offaly, they fall silent out of respect for 1982. After parking alongside the Royal Canal, they meet friends under the clock at Eason's at four o'clock on Saturday and ask directions to Clery's.

At night, unless there's a John B Keane masterpiece running in the Abbey, they gather in authentic Kingdom pubs. You will find many thousands of them down by the Merchant on the quays, singing dirges about Banna Strand and comely maidens from Glenflesk in their soft, melodious voices and talking about the feats of Paddy Bawn and Tadhgie Lyne and the Horse Kennelly and Maurice Fitz.

To strangers they are welcoming. Kerry people speak at an extraordinary speed,