A sublime slugfest, as Dubs again land the haymaker
It has to be diverse in style and opinion.
Otherwise it’s syrup and marshmallows. But only a curmudgeon could leave yesterday’s All-Ireland football semi-final and not experience an overwhelming urge to look back and inhale the laughing gas that Dublin and Kerry smothered everyone with for 70 odd minutes.
Only a curmudgeonly Kerryman or woman can deny that Dublin’s relentlessness, their zest and zeal ultimately deserved to carry the day at Croke Park. But only a stone or a dead man would not feel sorry for the losers Kerry. And it isn’t normally easy to feel sorry for a county that has accumulated 36 All-Ireland senior football titles.
With a minute of regular time remaining, the allure of a semi-final replay loomed enticingly large. Then Declan O’Sullivan danced infield onto his favoured left foot and September 22nd drifted out to sea for Dublin supporters. Surprisingly O’Sullivan missed, and a mid-air faux pas from the kick-out between David Moran and Marc Ó Sé swung the game dramatically and irreversibly in Dublin’s favour. Such are the vagaries. Kevin McManamon’s goal was the sweet and sour of the 2011 final all over again, and the manner of its execution had a feeling of Seamus Darby about it.
It would be hard to convince Eamonn Fitzmaurice this morning that Croke Park dances to Kerry’s autumn rhythms any more. The statistics from yesterday are cruel on them. A seven-point margin at the call of time distorts Kerry’s input and an exhilarating slugfest that unfurled the moment Cormac Reilly rang the bell, just as the 3-12 to 1-13 Dublin victory did in another classic semi-final in 1977.
Thus it’s wonderfully ironic a match that lurched so many ways eventually provided the narrative many predicted it would — with Dublin’s greater pace, youth and bench options carrying the day.
Fitzmaurice correctly invoked the rule of fact and birth certs afterwards to dispute the notion this 3-18 to 3-11 defeat was the end of an era for the Kingdom. But it closed a chapter of Kerry football.
Granted only Tomás Ó Sé (at 35) is of an age where another season looks unlikely but others might prove difficult to persuade back. Since they last carried the cannister south-west in 2009, Kerry have had some wounding afternoons on Jones’ Road, and the silver symbol of success won’t return this September either. It’s the famine days of the late 80’s and early 90’s since Kerry went that long without Sam.
Stephen Cluxton doesn’t have a lot to say for himself in the after-match press auditorium — one wonders why he presents himself at all — but he nodded approvingly when Dublin coach Jim Gavin spoke in glowing terms of their victims yesterday.
“I’d be disappointed if any of the (Kerry lads) retired. They’re fantastic footballers. There is great respect in Dublin for the way Kerry people play their football and, technically, they’re such skilful players. Their balance and technique...they just play a very attractive brand of football. I would be disappointed because they have given so much to Gaelic football down through the years.”
The Dublin man directs his footballers well too. Another 21 scores yesterday, 3-14 of it from play and 2-3 off a bench that presents welcome headaches for the final. Of course the pay-off is a conventional defensive system — current football thinking might deem it reckless — that permits the likes of Colm Cooper to pick holes in it at will.
“That is the kind of tradition we were brought up on and that is the way that club football is played in Dublin, the way I was thought to play growing up as well,” shrugged Gavin. “Whether that gets a team success is a different matter, but it is the way we believe it should be played and we didn’t change our philosophy at any stage during the game, we kept to our core principles and we kept to our game plan. The players stuck with that and they got their reward.”
There were several second-half moments when Kerry craved a time-out, to clear their heads as Dublin threw the hammer after the hatchet at them. That they were in the game was primarily attributable to the Hollywood exhibition of forward play from Cooper, Donnchadh Walsh and James O’Donoghue in the first-half. They were cutting Dublin open but the rub was the half time score — only two up, 3-5 to 1-9.
If Kerry were dying in the last quarter, their boots were staying on. Shane Enright and Paul Galvin had recovered from uncertain first halves to steady the ship, and Darran O’Sullivan, James O’Donoghue and especially Cooper were still turning rations into results. The latter is right to give some pundits the charity of his silence.
However Cian O’Sullivan — reverting to centre back upon Ger Brennan’s interval withdrawal — was becoming more influential for Dublin, and, as Tomás Ó Sé faded, Connolly also upped the ante.
Fingers and dykes. Around the middle third, Kerry’s fault-lines were becoming cracks. With the rapier, Dean Rock, adding to Dublin’s forward momentum, Kerry’s possession was more erratic. They were blowing hard. By the 50th minute Dublin were level with four points in a row before Connolly nosed them 1-15 to 3-8 ahead.
With one bull-thick — as Dara Ó Cinnéide might call it — surge, Fitzmaurice’s men came again, courtesy of James O’Donoghue and Darran O’Sullivan points. We began to wonder if any flakey remnants of Dublin’s past would re-emerge, but their response was tidal. Kerry suddenly had more dykes than fingers. Their young defender, Jack Sherwood — a man from Firies with a great future at centre back — has missed the entire season with injury problems, but he was the only defender on the bench as the clock ticked into the last five minutes.
Before long, the Hill was in heaven.
“I thought a defender was going to come to me,” smiled McManamon afterwards as he recounted his goal, “but they kind of played half between myself and the two boys on the wing so I said I’d try to aim for the cross-bar and it might squeeze under it or it’ll go over and we might get something out of it.”
We’ll all get something from it — the promise of a final that should be characterised by power and precision, expectation and trepidation. It’ll have some way, though, to better this classic.
Ó Claisicó. Once the storm subsided, we asked the managers had they the head space to appreciate the mardi gras they’d lavished on 81,553 spectators. Neither had.
“Was it a good game?” mused Fitzmaurice. “I’d have taken a dirty win, to be honest.”
Of course he would. But may we respectfully disagree?
