Murphy’s law: Kerry must not get carried away

Kerry defender Paul Murphy has warned that one win will not make their summer and has urged his teammates to build on the foundations they have laid with Sunday’s victory over Mayo. Having lost their opening Super 8s fixture 12 months ago, Murphy admitted they were wary of a repeat scenario given that defeat to Galway led to their Championship exit.

Sunday’s statement of intent against Mayo, as well as the 10-point winning margin (the latter could yet prove crucial if this group is decided by score difference), puts Peter Keane’s charges in a decent position to reach the last four. And should they defeat Donegal this weekend, their credentials as genuine Sam Maguire contenders will be indisputable.

“In the opening round of the Super 8s last year, we were playing a provincial winner, Galway, in Croke Park. We didn’t perform. And we never recovered from that. That was our summer over,” says Murphy.

“Now, I’m not saying, by any stretch, this [win] is the making of our summer. It is one win in a mini-league. It gives you a good foundation to build on and go with. But by comparison with last year, certainly, this is a better spot to be in going into next week.”

Declan Bonner’s Donegal also came out of Round One with a healthy score difference, beating Meath by nine points.

Murphy, who was Man of the Match when Kerry and Donegal last locked horns in the championship (the 2014 All-Ireland final), believes it will be a “huge ask” for the Kingdom to better the Ulster champions.

“It will be a huge test. They are playing very well. Even going back to the league, they got momentum in Division 2 and carried that winning form into Ulster. They won by nine against Meath and they are playing very well. They can transition from defence to attack very well.

They all know their roles very well so it is a huge ask, but a great challenge for us at the same time.

Even though Murphy is adamant that he neither read nor heard the criticism of the Kingdom rearguard in the wake of a Munster final where they conceded 3-10, the 27-year-old admitted he and his defensive colleagues wanted to prove a point at Killarney.

And that they certainly did. The league champions were held to four points for the first 31 minutes and finished the half with a meagre 0-6 on the scoreboard. The first four substitutions James Horan made was to withdraw four members of the Mayo forward unit. Fionn McDonagh, Kevin McLoughlin, Jason Doherty, and James Carr — three of whom did not last the 70 minutes — contributed 0-1 between them.

The increased aggression which the Kerry defenders brought to the table was the main improvement, according to Murphy, on what had been a porous Munster final effort.

“It is a cliché that you don’t listen to or read the criticism, but I honestly don’t! But you get the vibes off people that there was a bit of criticism out there after the Cork game. You’d meet someone in work and they’d say: ‘So and so was over the line there in what he said’. You are looking at him and you don’t know what that person said.

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“It is natural enough as a group of backs that you want to prove a point. You can’t be looking at what people are saying and writing about you. You just have to focus on what you are doing inside in games.

“Obviously, we were better on Monday though we probably conceded a bit too much at the end. But we were tighter to our men, there was a bit more aggression on the ball, a bit more aggression on the ball outside coming in. Even if there is 5% improvement in all of those things, it can make a big difference.”

With Kerry having managed to win only one of their previous six clashes against Mayo before Sunday, there was a sense of the hierarchy being restored at Fitzgerald Stadium.

“Mayo seem to have had it over us the last few big days out. It is good to get one back on them. Go back to the league final, we would have felt we were on top a bit in the first half and didn’t convert enough. Then, in the second half, when they had their purple patch, they made hay. It was important when we had the purple patch that we kept the shoe down and we made it count on the scoreboard.”