Brendan O'Brien.
At one point, talk had turned inevitably towards James O’Donoghue, the Killarney Legion forward whose total of 1-15 in games against Cork and Galway up to that point had proved to folk inside and outside the Kingdom that there is life without the Gooch.
Horan’s response was predictable.
“I’m sure Kerry are having similar conversations about Cillian O’Connor, Kevin McLoughlin, Aidan O’Shea, Jason Doherty. All those guys are playing very well and scoring very well, as you saw from our spread the last day. We have scorers from everywhere, we don’t depend on one guy to do our scoring for us, so that’s something that is definitely another string to our bow.”
Funny how things turn out.
When all was said and done in Croke Park last weekend, when the adrenalin had finally drained from everybody’s system and the ire over tomorrow’s diversion to Limerick normalised, the statistics showed that Mayo’s 1-16 had been delivered via six players and Kerry’s by a full dozen.
For all the talk of O’Donoghue, it was O’Connor who was deemed the standout player on show. The Ballintubber man carved 1-8 into his CV — 1-5 of it from dead balls — and picked up the man-of-the- match award. The verdicts on O’Donoghue were more tempered. His 1-3 was deemed, on the basis of reviews seen and heard by this column, just about average.
The question is, how exactly? The 24-year-old finished the game with 1-3, all from play. Same as O’Connor. Had he arched his back over a few degrees more with one second-half effort, and sent his late attempt a handful of centimetres to the left. then that would read 2-4 instead. Again, all from play. That alone needs to be put in perspective.
He hit 2-3 a year earlier in what was widely held to be a breakout individual performance against Dublin. One of his goals on that occasion had come from a penalty, though. Had his radar been a fraction better five days ago he would, in fact, have posted the single biggest personal tally from open play in an All-Ireland football semi-final this century.
Now, this is where it gets really scary.
Keith Higgins did very little wrong. Neither did Tom Cunniffe. Both men know their stuff. Between them they have 18 years of championship knowledge to draw on and yet, as O’Donoghue’s second-half goal showed, it takes just one mental tea-break to let the man in and pilfer the china.
Watching the Mayo pair shadow O’Donoghue last weekend was a joy in itself. Rarely did either lay a hand on him. They didn’t pull and drag, they watched and waited. O’Donoghue hovered a few paces behind Higgins’ back for most of it, the Ballyhaunis man whipping his head around expectantly every few seconds.
The amount of times the Kerryman got his hands on the ball was astonishing, given there were two men employed to keep him, well, unemployed. On Sunday night, Ciarán Whelan claimed he handled the leather 22 times. The manner in which he used the ball intrigued as much as anything. Most of us know him is a finisher but O’Donoghue’s movement out to the 45 and his clever, diagonal balls back into the red zone were exquisite.
What fascinated most was the effect his very presence seemed to have on Mayo. Tentative was how Horan summed up their first half. His very presence seemed to spook them. Or maybe it was just the simple knowledge that this was Kerry. Either way, the consequence was paralysis.
Joe Brolly, looking on from his perch in the RTÉ studio, talked about the cordon Mayo had attempted to place around O’Donoghue and how it sanitised the Connacht champions. He even exclaimed at one point that “O’Donoghue isn’t THAT good” when criticising the approach of the pre-match favourites.
Yet, on this evidence, he is. Did it escape anyone’s notice that 1-2 of O’Donoghue’s 1-3 came in the second half, when the loss to a red card of Lee Keegan forced Mayo to dispense their defensiveness? That O’Donoghue looked for all the world like a young Colm Cooper, when he read the runes of David Moran’s long ball in towards Kieran Donaghy and changed course accordingly? How Horan chooses to bottle Kerry’s new genie is just one of the many unknowables as the hours tick by to their rematch in Limerick but few will be of greater import. Who’d be a manager?
Email: brendan.obrien@examiner.ie Twitter: @Rackob
