by Adam Moynihan

Here’s a trivia question for you. Four teams remain in the Kerry Senior Football Championship. Spell their names.

It sounds simple but it’s actually quite tricky, especially if you take heed of the great sportswriter Con Houlihan, who once said that “a man who will misuse an apostrophe is capable of anything”.

Let’s start with the “easy” one. St Brendan’s. Former Sem students will know that an apostrophe is required. An open and shut case. But the official St Brendan’s Board Twitter account is St Brendans Board (no apostrophe), and the official Kerry GAA Eolaire refers to St. Brendans Committee (also no apostrophe).

Most people would agree that there should be an apostrophe. The board, like the Killarney college, is named for St Brendan. It is, in a manner of speaking, his college and his board. Therefore, it is St Brendan’s College and St Brendan’s Board. Without the apostrophe, it is ‘Brendans’ plural. Is the implication that the district is stacked with saints?

With that in mind, let us consider Dr Crokes. This is the usual spelling (no apostrophe) that is used by the club and by most journalists. However, this again suggests a club made up of multiple ‘Crokes’, rather than the club of Dr Croke. Maybe that’s the point, but the Killarney outfit are named for Archbishop Thomas William Croke in the same way that Brendan’s are named for St Brendan. Why should it be St Brendan’s Board but not Dr Croke’s GAA Club? Does one need to be canonised before earning an apostrophe?

The same applies to Austin Stacks, who confirmed to me this week that they prefer not to use an apostrophe. The club is named after the Irish republican Austin Stack and so, technically, you could argue that it should be called Austin Stack’s GAA Club. And that’s a version that has been spotted in the past. I happen to have a Rockies jersey from 2010 for sale on Vintage GAA Jerseys (never miss an opportunity for a free plug) and the name on the crest has an apostrophe (pictured). The apostrophe does not appear on the current crest and it is not normally used by the media, although it is not completely unheard of.

Things become even more complicated when we cross Tralee to Strand Road. Kerins O’Rahillys refer to themselves as such (no apostrophe) on their website and on their official Twitter account. Some journalists – this one included – have been known to use Kerins O’Rahilly’s. However, when you think about it, if that’s the route we’re taking then one apostrophe isn’t enough. The club is named for two men, Charlie Kerins and Michael Joseph O’Rahilly, so, grammatically speaking, should it actually be Kerins’ O’Rahilly’s? Or Kerins’/O’Rahilly’s?

If either of those options look wrong to you, I’m with you. The same goes for Croke’s and Stack’s. They’re jarring because they are not commonly used, and perhaps we are talking about a team or a club of many Crokes and Stacks and Kerinses and Rahillys when we talk about these powerhouses of Kerry GAA.

Ending names in ‘apostrophe + s’ also makes things tricky for me as a sportswriter. It is much cleaner to write, “Dr Crokes’ best player on the day was…” than “Dr Croke’s’ best player on the day was…”

In 2015, Ulster GAA tackled this very issue by producing a document with the official names of every club in the province, in Irish and in English. Apostrophes were adopted across the board. Robert Emmet’s in Tyrone, Red Hugh’s in Donegal, Laurence O’Toole’s in Armagh.

Would it be worth doing the same in Kerry? Even if all apostrophes were officially abolished (with Crokes, Stacks and Rahillys, as well as the likes of John Mitchels and Crotta O’Neills, keeping their current spellings), at least it would remove all doubt.

There are two county semi-finals on this weekend and there's a strong possibility that each of the teams involved will read an “incorrect” version of their names in some outlet or another.

To some, this might only be a small thing. Well, it is and it isn’t. Your name is your name. Surely it’s better for everyone to get it right than for some of us to keep getting it wrong.