You don't have to be as familiar with the nuances of Irish history as an Fear Rua to be aware (or even beware) of the many attempts made by foreigners to sunder our people and their beloved homeland....

Some used láimh láidir, while others tried plámás until, finally, in the Anglo Irish Treaty of 1921, six counties of the historic province of Ulster were sundered from the rest of the country. Thankfully, over the years, reason has prevailed and a Peace Process is in place now to try to bring our people together again.

But just when it seemed progress was being made on these fundamental issues an attack has come from a most unexpected source - O'Neills the GAA jersey manufacturers, or as they prefer to be known these days, O'Neills House of International Sport. In a brazen and unprovoked attack on the integrity and sovereignty of the island of Ireland, O'Neills have attempted to reduce the number of counties from 32 to 31! Now, An Fear Rua well understands that there may be some other people around who would like to try something similar if they got a chance. There's many a Waterford lad and lassie would like to see Cork disappear off the map of Ireland, never to return. And since 1995, many's the Tipperary Stone Thrower who might like to have seen their Clare neighbours disappear somewhere around the Porcupine Trough. But none of these people have actually dared to take the final step recently taken by O'Neills House of International Sport and eliminated an entire Irish county! Not only that, but the county involved is not even a county at all - but a Kingdom - the Kingdom of Kerry!

Ireland without the Kingdom of Kerry? Well may you raise your startled eyebrows to high heaven says An Fear Rua. Lennon without McCartney ... fish without chips .... Pamela without Tommy Lee ... Morecambe without Wise ... You get the idea. Ireland without Kerry? Cole Porter could have written a whole new song about it. Think about it for a minute: no John B Keane … no Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh … no Mick O'Connell … no Pat Spillane (Oh Heaven forbid!) … no Inishvickillaune … no Peig Sayers … no John 'The Bull' O'Donoghue … nor even a Jackie Healy-Rae … (Come to think of it, that mightn't be such a bad idea ... ).

No, not even Cromwell at the height of his powers would have attempted such a task. But that didn't stop the brave lads and lassies of O'Neills International House of Sport. They recently caught up with this new-fangled web gadget (An Fear Rua deprecates the rumour that it took Old Mr. O'Neill several months to find the on/off button on his laptop) and started marketing their GAA replica jerseys over a website, in conjunction with that fine Northern newspaper, 'The Irish News' (A paper, by the way, that has never flinched in its belief about the exact number of counties in Ireland, An Fear Rua must concede). However, if you try to order a jersey on-line from this website, you can order jerseys for only thirty-one of the thirty-two counties but not for Kerry! All the other counties are priced at $70 a jersey, while Kerry is priced at $00.00. The innocent might think at first blush that O'Neills are giving away Kerry jerseys for free, and after their Munster Final performance this year, there are probably parts of the Kingdom where they wouldn't take such a jersey if you gave it to them for free … unless 'twas for something useful, like making a warm bed for a good class of a sheepdog or greyhound or blocking a hole in a window facing Eastwards towards Brandon.

No, my friends, the reason you can't buy a Kerry jersey online from 'The Irish News' is because O'Neills don't make the Kerry jersey. That honour belongs to Adidas … or as An Fear Rua's old pal Mick Dunne referred to them in a recent GAA magazine article 'another jersey manufacturer'. So, Kerry can win all the Munster Finals they like, carry the Sam Maguire twenty times back and forth to Castleisland every year for the next fifty years and fill the entire fifteen places on the team of the next Millennium, but they still won't exist as far as Old Mr.O'Neill and his International House of Sport are concerned.

Of course, some other conspiracy theorists may think this is just O'Neills jumping on the Kilkenny County Board bandwagon. Remember the KCB are the people that have already tried to reduce Ireland to 31 counties by failing to field a senior county team in the All Ireland senior football championship.

Lookit, An Fear Rua knows the pressures of trying to make a living as well as anyone else. And he well understands that O'Neills are anxious to hold the line against further counties defecting to the Adidas brand. But, in ainm Dé, how can any online shop be credible if offers only jerseys from only thirty-one of the thirty-two counties. If O'Neills have confidence in their product they should not fear fair competition. Indeed, carrying the Adidas Kerry jersey would be a mark of strength and maturity on their part. Even if the lads and lassies in An Ceannáras are not concerned at this travesty, the day cannot be far off when the bureaucrats of Brussels take a closer look at the relationship between the GAA and O'Neills and the latter's apparent stranglehold on the supply of replica GAA jerseys. Some of the ground hurlers in the EU's famed Competition Division might begin to wonder if there was not just a touch of what the experts call 'abuse of a dominant position'.

Anyway, An Fear Rua wishes well to O'Neills, Adidas and the rest of them. It's all a far cry indeed from the days when Mother Benignus and the Passionate nuns above in the convent slaved for many a long hour knitting the famed pink and black jerseys of Gowlnacalley-John Redmonds. Canon Guiry once had to give a touch of his famed 'bod dubh' to a couple of the so-called bright sparks of the club when he overheard them talking about going up to the convent to collect the new jerseys from Mother Big Knickers. On the other hand, the Canon may have misheard what they said. After all, his hearing wasn't the best once he had his 'bod dubh' in his hand....