Gaelic Games

Fionan Mackessy focused on raising up Kerry hurling inch by inch

Real progress for Kerry in 2024 would be a Joe McDonagh Cup success

Fionan Mackessy. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho

Paul Keane
Wed Dec 20 2023 - 06:00

When Kerry won the All-Ireland minor football championship in 2016, Fionan Mackessy was comfortably the biggest player on their panel.

Physically, we’re talking about, standing at 6ft 3ins, taller than colleagues David Clifford and Seanie O’Shea, with almost 14 stone of raw power on his considerable frame.

Almost eight years later, Mackessy remains an imposing figure but more so in a leadership sense as he attempts to drive a Kerry hurling revolution.

Now 25 and coming to the end of his PhD studies at MTU Kerry, the centre back rose to national prominence in August when he became the first Kingdom man to be crowned King of the Mountain as winner of the All-Ireland Poc Fada on Louth’s Cooley Peninsula.

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A few weeks later, just up the road in Newry, he celebrated success again as part of Ireland’s hurling/shinty international win over Scotland.

Those were enjoyable experiences but his real devotion is to Kerry hurling and to raising it up, inch by inch. They’ll be involved in one of the first competitive fixtures of 2024 when they host Davy Fitzgerald’s Waterford on January 2nd in Group B of the Co-Op Superstores Munster Hurling League.

“We’ve a very young panel, I think there’s going to be 14 new lads coming in so there will be a lot of lads making their senior intercounty debuts and what better place to make it than against the likes of Waterford and Tipperary,” said Mackessy. “You’re not going to get better than those teams so it’s a fair awakening and a good lesson for any new lads.”

Real progress for Kerry in 2024 would be a Joe McDonagh Cup success. Nobody deserves that breakthrough quite as much as the Munster men who have contested three of the six finals so far. They’re the only county to have competed in all six instalments of the competition.

Kerry's Fionan Mackessy in action against Lee Chin of Wexford during the All-Ireland SHC preliminary quarter-final in 2022. Photograph: Lorraine O’Sullivan/Inpho

Their 2023 campaign ended at the group stage following defeats to Offaly and Laois.

“In north Kerry, we’re very proud of our hurling, we live and breathe it, all the clubs do down there,” said Mackessy.

“Then you have the Kilgarvans, the Kenmares, the Dr Crokes, Tralee Parnells, they’re all coming in as well. I think we’ll have 10 senior clubs this year coming in the senior championship so we’re constantly trying to get better and to promote hurling down there. We’re mad about it.”

As a player involved with a county just outside the top tier, Mackessy didn’t like the vibes that came from Croke Park recently when it was floated that five of the weakest teams may be cut from the National League. The suggestion hasn’t entirely gone away either as it was passed across to the new hurling development committee to consider.

“I thought it was a bit of a joke, to be honest with you,” said Mackessy. “There shouldn’t be any county not let play hurling, that’s not promoting it, if that’s what they were trying to do. That was a bit of a disgrace really.”

Likewise, talk of getting rid of the All-Ireland preliminary quarter-final place for the McDonagh Cup finalists didn’t sit well with Mackessy who played at that stage in 2022, against Wexford.

“We’d be happy enough to keep it the way it was and keep getting into the preliminary quarter-finals,” he said. “We really enjoyed that and it’s definitely a bit of a carrot for the McDonagh teams.”

Perhaps some day he may even reunite with Clifford and O’Shea, as a Kerry footballer. Brian Byrne, in a similar position in Kildare, recently jacked in hurling for football.

“It’d be nice to go and play it but I’m happy with the hurling at the moment and it’ll always be my number one sport,” he said.

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