David Moran tops as Kerry make possession count

The question posed all week was which team would learn most from the drawn Munster final. Without doubt, it was Kerry, who managed to right most of the wrongs of the previous meeting.

Kerry dramatically altered the stats in their favour on Saturday night. Kerry won only 45% of the total possession in the drawn decider but they upped that to 52% in victory.

Not one Kerry player topped 20 individual possessions last time out but on this occasion David Moran handled the ball 35 times followed by James O’Donoghue (23) and Anthony Maher (21). Kerry’s tackle count in the drawn game was 63 and this time round it was 83, and in turn this forced Cork into 15 turnovers against, which was crucially nearly double Kerry’s tally of turnovers on Saturday evening.

Kerry systematically ticked every stat column on the night with an improvement in their performance. None more so than in the area of contested kick outs, where Kerry won 11/18 breaking balls in midfield as opposed to just 4/13 breaks in the drawn game.

The chief reason for this was the dominance of David Moran and Anthony Maher in midfield. The Kerry duo won eight kick-outs while their opposite numbers Alan O’Connor and Kevin O’Driscoll won just one, when O’Connor was fouled midway through the second half.

O’Connor and O’Driscoll’s possessions on the day combined were just 20 with nine for O’Connor and 11 for O’Driscoll. The Kerry pairing had a total of 56 combined.

This midfield dominance was crucial to Kerry’s game plan because the Kerry full-forward line were starved of possession in the drawn game.

Again this completely changed on Saturday evening with James O’Donoghue (23) and Paul Geaney (11) having a combined possession tally of 34 compared to Cork’s two-man full-forward line of O’Neill (6) and Hurley (8) with just 14 possessions combined.

The one area where Cork enjoyed some positive stats was their possession of the ball in their own half. Mark Collins (34), Paul Kerrigan (26), Brian O’Driscoll (24), Patrick Kelly (19) and Barry O’Driscoll (18) had a combined possession tally of 121.

But the problem from a Cork perspective was that there was little in the way of penetration from those possessions.

Cork’s goal came from a turnover when the Kerry defence were on the back foot.

The fact that Cork failed to score in the final 27 minutes of the match further emphasises the lack of variety to Cork’s attacking options.

Cork have seven days to tweak their tactics ahead of the Kildare game and it will be interesting to see how much Brian Cuthbert and his management team learn from this defeat.

They will be disappointed that Cork’s tackle count was 20 less than Kerry’s, and they will also be concerned with a 41% return from scoring chances.