Clare can’t be as naïve again
Rather than setting up a system to minimise the damage done by the strong running of the Cork midfield and half-forward line, Clare went man to man from the start. Nobody does that anymore and after their showing against Cork, Clare are unlikely to do so this evening.
Clare will lose a shootout against this Kerry team but if they can create the conditions for a battle, anything can happen. They surely recognise that was their greatest failing against Cork. Never at any stage did they suffocate the space in front of Paul Kerrigan, Aidan Walsh or Ciarán Sheehan. The least we can expect this evening from them is some resilience and a defiance that wasn’t there the last time out in the Gaelic Grounds.
Apart from a possible lack of motivation from Kerry, what other reasons have Clare to be hopeful? Well, this is Clare’s third championship outing this year in the Gaelic Grounds so the place will have a very familiar feeling to it by now. Key players like Gordon Kelly and David Tubridy under-performed badly against Cork so they will be keen to atone for that and they are also unlikely to have three goals conceded before half-time.
Expect Clare to put up a better fight this time away from the klieg lights of a Munster final. The reality for Clare is that they’re the least deserving of the last 12 teams to still be in the race. By beating Limerick last month, they ensured their place in a Munster final and thus in the last 12. The onus is on them now to justify their place at the table with a performance fitting of the occasion.
The game presents an altogether different challenge for Kerry. After the altitude of last weekend in Killarney, this evening could be about getting down and dirty for the Kingdom. We should know by 7.10pm how many of their players are mentally present for the scrap. The possibility of getting back to Croke Park for championship football for the first time since last September is a worthy prize for the victor but, as Jack O’Connor said post match last weekend: “They’re human beings, they’re not robots” and there is no gun to their head as there certainly was against Tyrone.
With the games coming hard and fast, the urge to shake things up a bit and go with a few new faces must have been hard to resist but the Kerry management have sent out the right signals by naming an unchanged outfit. The signal and the optics, of course, are never the primary concern when selecting a team and Kerry supporters will be keen to see if a few lingering questions will be addressed this evening.
Can James O’Donoghue continue on his upward graph? Will Shane Enright back up last weekend’s performance with a shutting down of Rory Donnelly or Michael O’Shea, both of whom caused enough bother for the Cork full-back line? Will Kerry’s forwards be willing to put the same heat on Clare’s backs as they did against Tyrone? Can Kieran Donaghy give Kerry the same options as Nicholas Murphy gave Cork against the Clare full-back line and will his fellow forwards be as quick to connect with him as Cork’s were with their target man?
Nothing would give Kerry supporters more encouragement ahead of August weekend than to see Donaghy repeat the form of last weekend. That really would represent genuine progress. One final thought before last weekend is committed permanently to the archive: One wonders would Kerry have responded as well as they did to the own goal had Tyrone’s young full forward, Darren McCurry not started the bit of aggro with Marc Ó Sé? I’m sure Kerry’s more experienced players would like to think that they’re still learning but the delay that followed the set-to, while beneficial to Kerry, wasn’t orchestrated by Kerry.
Cast your mind back to Kevin McManamon’s fateful goal in last year’s All-Ireland and the reluctance of Kerry’s more experienced heads to stop the momentum of the game. Nobody slowed it down or showed a bit of composure at that critical moment. Were it not for McCurry’s youth and recklessness last weekend, would Brendan Kealy have kicked the ball out to the Kerry midfield sooner than they would have liked?
We’ll never know but as it happened, there was a full two minutes and 15 seconds of a delay between the own-goal and Kealy’s kickout.
It was significant that it was Bryan Sheehan who fielded it, passed off and less than 15 seconds later, Kieran Donaghy had the ball in the net. After being involved in the tracking back leading up to the Tyrone goal Sheehan needed that two-minute break and once he got the breather, he stamped his undoubted class on the next 15 seconds of play.
The challenge for Sheehan and Anthony Maher week on week is to get up to the level of intensity brought to bear by the top midfielders left in the championship. Aidan Walsh and Michael Darragh Macauley are the top exponents of what’s required at midfield now but no pairing left in the championship have Sheehan’s or Maher’s kicking skills. Gary Brennan will test the Kerry duo some more this evening but in the absence of any genuine legs, Ger Quinlan could struggle here for Clare.
It seems strange that a manager like Micheal McDermott, who guided Kilmurry-Ibrickane to an All-Ireland final just over two years ago without conceding a goal in five matches beforehand and who the very same season managed a Clare team that conceded just one goal in eight league matches, should be so naive defensively in 2012.
McDermott and his aides will probably demand an end to the innocence and I anticipate a retreating of half forwards with Enda Coughlan possibly being deployed as sweeper.
Clare shouldn’t lack for desire this evening but they have yet to show the capacity for the job in hand. Kerry to advance.
