Manner rather than margin of victory pleases the players

THE GOOCH rests a shoulder up against the wall and dumps his kitbag emblazoned ‘Cooper’ at his feet.

The heel of an Adidas boot protrudes menacingly from one side, like the barrel of a hitman’s rifle. Surprisingly, it isn’t still smoking.

So young and with another five-star display tucked under his belt, Cooper, as is the norm with him, shrugs off the platitudes for his display. He was just lucky the points went over, he deadpans. Sure, like The Beatles were just lucky to make good music.

Eight times in the first half Cooper felt the leather in the palm of his hands. From that he scored four points, won two frees and passed one ball; all ended in scores. The other time he spilled the ball and lost possession. Human after all.

All year he’s been following a similar script but yesterday was the first time that the rest of his colleagues all read off the same page. If you’re going to sing in harmony, August isn’t a bad month to start, not that Kerry were overly concerned by their stutters earlier this summer.

“It’s always a worry but there was no panic about it,” said the Dr Crokes forward. “After winning an All-Ireland the year before, you’re always expected to play that way again and that didn’t happen for various reasons.

“We’ve stepped it up a bit today and we’ll have to do that again for the final if we’re to win it.”

This was a game that was ready and waiting to bite Kerry in the ass. With Tyrone joining Armagh in the other semi-final on Saturday, everyone was anticipating a Kerry win that would set up the long-awaited rematch for the champions.

Kerry knew too that Cork would be chomping at the bit to do unto the champions what the Kingdom had done to them three years ago by reversing the Munster final result and claiming the place in the decider.

“I’d say they believed they had a great chance coming up here because they did play very well in the Munster final when our goal was the only thing separating the teams. We were lucky enough to get out of Páirc Uí Chaoimh without playing particularly well.

“They just never really got going for any period today and we were able to just tap over the scores. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out for them.”

The size of the win will leave the whole Kingdom beaming but it was the manner rather than the margin that most pleased captain Declan O’Sullivan afterwards.

“We’re delighted with a performance like that. The most pleasing aspect of it was that it was a 19-man, 20-man performance. It was a pure team effort. Up to now we’ve been depending on four, five or six fellas but everyone really put their shoulder to the wheel today and that made it possible.

“The great thing about this team is that the panel is very strong and training is very competitive. You have to be coming into training focused every night to get the best out of yourself. Players seem to be benefiting from that and coming into form at the right time of the year.”

It was the midfield which Paul Galvin identified as the biggest difference between the teams. In the first half Kerry claimed only one clean catch from kick-outs but their policy of snaffling breaking ball saw them collect 17 of the 23 dead balls dropping into the central sector.

“We didn’t expect to dominate so much - around the middle of the field won it for us really,” said Galvin.

“That was the deciding factor. Darragh and Kirby were outstanding. Maybe Kavanagh wasn’t 100%, he probably wasn’t, and that definitely affected them.

“We probably managed to put together a more complete performance than we had done up to now. It was a good show, but if you go back through the years you’ll see many’s a good semi-final performance by teams before going on to lose the final. There’s lots of examples of that so we’ll just have to forget about this now and concentrate on the final.”