In Templenoe, they’ve seen enough and experienced enough to know that worrying is a pointless exercise.
The late 90s and the mid 2000s were bad. The lean years, as men like Timmy Clifford and Mike Crowley like to call them.
Back then, this half parish in South Kerry struggled to field teams. Dropped down to Division Five. Hit rock bottom in Kerry football and suffered some big hammerings on their slide.
But even though they were down, they were far from out. 49-year-olds lined out alongside 15-year-olds just to keep the thing going. Pat Spillane for example, played until he was 45 even though his knee was completely and utterly banjaxed.
They did it all, these Templenoe legends because they knew something was coming. Something special.
That speical something is in full, glorious flow right now.
The golden generation arrived in the early 2000s and they barely lost a game underage. Suddenly little Templenoe was rubbing shoulders with the mightiest clubs in Kerry. From there, they grew and developed.
They mightn’t have a village or a school but they had a football team.
In 2016, they won the junior All-Ireland. In 2019, they won the county intermediate and come 2020 they’ll be senior. This Sunday, they are the most strongly represented club on the Kerry team who are hoping to win an All-Ireland senior football title.
Killian and Adrian Spillane, as well as Gavin Crowley and Tadhg Morley are Templenoe legends now.
Watch their amazing story here, told by Gavin Crowley’s father and the club’s joint manager Mike and former club chairman and player Timmy Clifford.
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