Kerry legend Pat Spillane has claimed his nephew Killian is the top minor footballer in the country at present.

Killian, who is a son of Pat's brother and fellow All-Ireland winner Tom, showed his star quality by scoring seven points from play for Kerry in their Munster MFC semi-final victory over Clare last week, but it's unlikely that he will be thanking his famous and outspoken uncle for singling him out for such praise.

"This guy is, honestly, he's brilliant," Spillane said at the launch of RTE's 2014 championship coverage.

"If I was U21 manager, I would have him playing this year. If I was (Eamonn) Fitzmaurice, I would be using him with the seniors next year. We're slow in Kerry. We don't bring through the Cormac Costellos and the (Ciaran) Kilkennys.

"They bring them through in Dublin. They even bring them through in Cork. We brought them through in the past. I was brought through and Ogie (Moran) and all those. I told him - (Killian) and he's a good level-headed guy - he's Kerry material next year.

Repeating his wish to manage the Kerry U21s, the RTE analyst is predicting an All-Ireland drought for Kerry in the wake of years of failure at underage level.

"We have had no U21 success, no minor success. I think we are paying the price. We are only now catching up with the development squads and we're only now catching up with strength and conditioning and producing a stronger type of footballer," he said.

"We sort of got lost for a few years. We were producing dancers, lovely light skilful forwards, particularly who are fine when things are going well, but when things go badly they are not the fellas you need in battle.

"I just don't think we had enough strong fellas, not enough guys who can win the independent, the 50/50 ball. So we've caught up now. And also one of the problems with the development squads was that there was no continuity, there was no Kerry style of play." Tweet

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