Premier A

Killarney Celtic          7-1      Listowel Celtic

Peter McCarthy (2)

Danny Roche (2)

Wayne Sparling (2)

Michael Devlin

Killarney Celtic are one step closer to confirming their place in this year’s league final following another comfortable victory over Listowel in Celtic Park. Peter McCarthy, Danny Roche and Wayne Sparling put the visitors to the sword with two goals apiece as youngster Michael Devlin chipped in with one in a lopsided match.

Celtic are now nine points clear of Dingle in third with four games to play, so three points on Sunday against Mastergeeha will all but guarantee them a top-two finish. Realistically, they’re almost guaranteed to finish first at this stage so it’s more a case of seeing who’ll be joining them in the final.

We’ve had a few weeks off now again with Athletic so by the end of this week the top three will all have the same amount of games played. Dingle have their game in hand on Sunday against Castleisland and we’ll be keeping a close eye on that one. This is arguably Dingle’s toughest remaining fixture and if they were to drop points it would really play into our hands, but we’re working off the presumption that they’re going to win all their games and, therefore, so do we.

Looking at the run-in, Dingle have Tralee Dynamos at home and Fenit home and away, whereas we have Celtic away and Fenit and Dynamos at home. That Celtic game will be massive. Depending on when it takes place and how other results go, we might have to beat Celtic to get into a league final with Celtic. The way they’re going at the moment, it will be a big ask but we’ll just have to see how things pan out.

We have no fixture again this weekend so by the time we play again, we’ll have had four weeks off. This is the second time we’ve had a full month off in 2018. There’s a lot of football on at the moment, though, so maybe it suits us.

In other news, there will be two more Tralee clubs in the Premier A next season (although Dynamos could pass them on the way down). Tralee Celtic had already confirmed their pace in the league final and Mitchels Avenue also confirmed their promotion with a 3-2 victory over Classic last week. The top two contest the league final to see who wins the league but both go up regardless.

It’s great that teams like Athletic and Celtic are competing for the title but it’s nice to have a bit of rivalry with the Tralee clubs at the same time. Park’s demotion has taken away from the league a bit, and Dynamos are going through a rough patch, so Tralee Celtic and Mitchels Avenue joining the top flight can only be a good thing.