Kerry chokers? Say it ain’t so, Joe
Chokers you might even say. And that has a relevance this weekend.
Maybe Brolly’s thesis was calculated to jizz up Kerry for Tyrone — Derry’s nemesis — and find a home on the back of their dressing room door in Killarney. Maybe not. But even allowing for that, it shouldn’t be summarily dismissed as self-serving pap. The allegation that Kerry essentially lose their poise and stature when they are properly buffeted merits consideration. It actually does. Joe believes Kerry are flat-track bullies; suckers who hang around them long enough invariably find a route to Kerry’s glass chin. That amounts to an accusation of bottlers as I understand it.
Levelling such at Cooper drew a hysterical response in Killarney. But Brolly didn’t actually say Gooch is a choker. He said Kerry are.
I was on my own backdoor route to Croke Park — The Black Stove pub in Carvoeiro in central Algarve — when all this kicked off, and the only reason it’s being revisited here is in the context of a challenge tomorrow from heavyweight champions of Ulster, Donegal.
Brolly’s prosecuting a case I’ve raised in the past, he on the basis of five games in 12 years. Tyrone thrice, Armagh a decade ago, and Dublin last September. Two of them, 2002 and 2011, were All-Ireland finals Kerry should have won, in my opinion. They could have won 2008 too. From that year on has most relevance because it is largely the same group of players that will face Donegal tomorrow.
For the defence, your honour: the group dug out a win against Sligo in the face of impending humiliation in 2009, and recovered from a Cork blitzkrieg to reel the Rebels in the final of that year. Tomás Ó Sé kicked a point in the 58th minute of that decider, and there was nothing for the remaining 12 minutes. Zilch. Not even air to breathe. Kerry, from Deenihan through Doyle and Páidi Ó Sé, Flaherty and Breen and onto Moynihan, Fitzmaurice and Tomás Ó Sé know how to put down an uprising. Two years ago in Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Cork had Kerry beaten up a stick three times before a Marc Ó Sé point took it to extra-time. Cork buckled. With Paul Galvin in the vanguard, Kerry outlasted their superior opponents on the day.
No Joe is wrong, as wrong as wrong can be to claim this Kerry team are chokers. As Kieran Shannon pointed out this week in these pages, every team loses games, even Kerry. And Kerry live in the GAA’s goldfish bowl. Limerick were guilty of a catastrophic system breakdown in the final minute when they had Kildare beaten last month in the qualifiers, but nobody debates whether they’re chokers or not.
However, there’s a but. There have been enough cock-ups, individual mainly, from Kerry in reachable memory to justify a debate if not Joe’s particular debate. Kerry will always give you a chance if you’re good enough to take it. When it comes to closing the deal, or rather not, Kerry ain’t ruthless.
Last-minute goals cost them league wins in Ballybofey (2008) and Omagh (2010). You want to talk about 2008? Cork in Croke Park. Eight points ahead with five minutes to play in the drawn — yes, drawn! — All-Ireland semi-final (1-13 to 3-7). The replay could have been worse. Kerry blew another massive lead, but against the ropes, young David Moran caught a kick out and Colm Cooper snaffled a goal. An escape to victory. Jack O’Connor’s reign began eight years ago with a defeat in Longford to a last-minute goal. And anything they’ve done this season is measured by the capitulation in the final pressure-cooker minutes of last September — nor forgetting, of course, the individual gaffe that gave Mayo a lifeline in April’s league semi-final. They lost that one in extra-time.
That’s what makes tomorrow’s semi-final the can’t-wait clash of the summer. Unless one team completely loses its coordinates, it is going to be a tense, physical, squeaky-bum tussle. Donegal under Jim McGuinness won’t even pause for breath. As such, it offers the most under-appreciated (relative to its success) Kerry team I can remember the chance to close off another excuse for people not to afford them due credit.
This will be Kerry’s 13th quarter-final in a row and, potentially, their 12th semi in 13 years. In that time they’ve made nine finals and won five. And it could have been seven. The only final they could have no ‘if only’ regrets over was 2005. Notwithstanding the facile province Munster is to emerge from, it still represents an achievement as great as the eight titles the Golden Years team annexed from 1975 to 1986.
Kerry people are slow to decorate their own as folk heroes but they know there ain’t a whole pile left in this group. Jack O’Connor has wrung everything he can out of them, going back in time to prop up the present (Mike McCarthy, Eoin Brosnan, Eamonn Fitzmaurice et al). Kerry people are now, finally, awake to that fact. The numbers who travelled to Mullingar, who played brilliantly in Killarney against Tyrone as 16th man, and made the effort for the non-event last Saturday against Clare, underlines that. That’s why the reaction to Joe Brolly has been so volatile.
Ger O’Keeffe butted into the crossfire between Mike Sheehy and Ger Power one night a few years ago in Harty’s pub in Tralee. “Ger”, said one of his Rock Street colleagues, “pipe down. With all due respect to you, you’ve only five All-Ireland medals.” It’s why Pat Spillane will always command an audience. Eight medals tends to do that.
Kerry people can and have come down hard on their own. On Tomás, Galvin, Donaghy, Declan, even Gooch but that’s their right, no-one else’s. Certainly not Joe Brolly’s.
