Dubs’ delay in getting to grips with tactical battle almost cost them victory
When expectation actually delivers suddenly everyone is surprised. Is there any better way to spend your Sunday than this? The ebb and flow of this game is hard to document on paper. How do you go about dissecting a game and do justice to the entertainment on display? What we expected from Kerry was a good start, some nice football and an honourable attempt to hold back the inevitable second half charge from Dublin. It was to be a day where the elder players would give their all and bow out gracefully knowing that a younger, faster, fitter Dublin team would take over. Instead, they delivered a superb team effort beyond what I had envisaged and in doing so nearly pulled off a massive shock.
In fairness to Eamonn Fitzmaurice he had a plan and it worked perfectly for 35 minutes. Key to this was the movement of the forwards. Kerry played with three full-forwards, two inside and one on the top of the ‘D’.
Colm Cooper positioned himself on the centre half-forward position while Donnchadh Walsh and Paul Galvin foraged for ball further back into the defence.
This allowed Cooper the full space of the three quarter line to sweep over and back in lateral movements to receive outlet possession from the defence and set up intelligent attacking play.
All passing to Cooper in the first half was via the foot, it was early and into the space. Once on the ball Cooper pulled all the strings and tore the Dublin defence apart. Incidentally for the entire 35 minutes while all this was going on Ger Brennan remained his marker. While Cooper was conducting matters, James Donoghue was the chief assassin. He gave a brilliant display of movement, retention of possession, and clinical efficiency in front of goal.
Kevin O’Brien, his marker, lasted a meagre 16 minutes — and correctly so. I believe the saying goes ‘If it was good for the goose then it is good for the gander.’ Meanwhile in the defence the match ups were as expected with Fionn Fitzgerald and Peter Crowley marking Ciarán Kilkenny and Paul Flynn respectively. Both players did what was asked of them. In an effort to allow Fitzgerald the single task of debilitating Kilkenny, Crowley appeared to be given dual responsibilities of marking Flynn and covering the centre of defence. The latter was a role he failed to succeed in for the first half as repeated Dublin attacks came straight through the middle. For a long period it was their only source of scoring opportunity.
It went wrong for Kerry after half time.
Dublin switched Cian O’Sullivan to man marking duties on Cooper, replacing Brennan. O’Sullivan, a defender by nature, was much more physical with Cooper and closed down his space to get possession. Couple this with an illogical and probably subconscious change in attacking play whereby the free flowing accurate foot passing and unmarkable inside forward movement was stopped in preference for long, high, predominantly non-directional deliveries.
This change occurred right from the start of the second half, let there be no confusion or blame placed on the introduction of Kieran Donaghy for the new approach.
Dublin struggled with the first half attacking style, of that there is no doubt. Had Kerry been able to maintain this style they would have beaten Dublin.
Dublin were under pressure throughout the entire 70 minutes. Their options coming out of defence remain abysmal. They move the ball too slowly and always favour the running game which was in complete contrast to the Kerry first half style. This style is extremely energy intensive, is prone to error, and most importantly it left spaces in the defence which Colm Cooper exposed.
The inside forward line of Paul Mannion, Bernard Brogan and Paddy Andrews was incredibly static. But ask yourself why should they run? What is the point when every ball is being carried at pace through the middle and the only chance that they have of receiving a pass is when the ball carrier is in trouble or if their options run out. However this changed for the second half.
The instructions from Jim Gavin were clear. Pass the ball early and accurately in front of the full forward line and support these players. It transformed the Dublin attack. They created many more opportunities, were able to pressurise further up the field and crucially when Kerry defenders made mistakes Dublin were able to capitalise with minimal effort.
Dublin have many areas for improvement as outlined above but the one that nearly lost them the match was Stephen Cluxton’s kick-outs. Normally an outstanding example of someone who finds a man, yesterday he had huge problems particularly in the first half. Time after time he made misjudgements which were hugely costly while the penalty incident was a sequence of errors culminating in dragging down the Kerry player while there were three Dublin defenders assisting him. He is of course missing an aerial target to aim for in midfield. This is a major cause of concern against Mayo.
Dublin has three weeks to decide what way they want to play the final. Jim Gavin is an intelligent manager who will know that they used up their get-out-of-jail free card against Kerry.
It is nice to have a number of technical and tactical areas to work on.
He now has a panel of players fighting for a starting position and only 10 of these are nailed on.
The scrap for places starts now.
