Kerry District League accepted into U17 National League

The Kerry District League will join the SSE Airtricity National U17 League for the 2016 season. This was announced via the official FAI website yesterday as all involved look to provide a better quality of football for young Kerrymen looking to make their way in the game.

The league’s representative sides won the 2015 SFAI Kennedy Cup and the U15 Galway Cup which was underlined by FAI Performance Director, Ruud Dokter, as one of the principal motivations behind the move.

He told www.fai.ie “It’s great to have the Kerry District League in the SEE Airtricity National U17 League. It’s an important area for football to develop in this country.

“Kerry have produced a lot of good players before who may have had to travel to play at this level so it’s great that they will now have the opportunity to play at national level with the Kerry League team.

“Kerry won the Kennedy Cup this year so we can see that there is a lot of young talent in the county so this step can be an important help in improving the pathway for players from the area,” he continued.

The Kerry District League secretary, John O’Regan was equally enthusiastic and hailed it as an opportunity for local players to stay at home and ply their trade as opposed to absconding to Cork and Limerick where opportunities, up until now, have arguably been better.

"We're delighted naturally enough. We've been developing our facilities at Mounthawk for a number of years. We had a team in the U20 league several years ago and would have liked to build on that so when this opportunity arose to enter a team we were more than delighted to do so," he said.

 "A lot of our players were going to play in the SSE Airtricity League with the likes of Limerick, Cork City and Cobh Ramblers so now they can get to play at the level they are capable of playing without leaving Kerry. 

"Providing everything goes according to plan we'd like to progress to U19 level in due course but for the time being this is very positive.

"Winning the Kennedy Cup and the Galway Cup at U15 level this year was fantastic and showed how much talent is in the county and a few years ago Killarney Celtic and Tralee Dynamoes won national cups. 

"The county has produced league players for a few years now including the likes of Billy and Darren Dennehy, Shane Guthrie, David Hennessy and many others.

The excitement will come to a head on Monday evening when John Delaney and Martin O’Neill head to Mounthawk Park to a delegates meeting and official opening of the facility, which opened in May this year.