Kerry win because their managers are humble enough to learn
Kerry, you’ll remember, entered that game in Páirc Uí Chaoimh as underdogs and emerged from it having outplayed, outfought and especially out-thought Cork to the point of destroying them in the most lopsided Old Firm championship game in the province in nearly quarter of a century — yet tellingly, possibly not even the most lopsided game between the counties in 2014.
After their latest All-Ireland triumph on Sunday, Eamonn Fitzmaurice referenced their heavy defeat to Cork in Tralee in their last game of the league. That day they’d conceded 2-18, 0-8 alone to Brian Hurley, all but one of his points coming from play. The previous summer they’d given up 3-18 to Dublin. Instead of looking at those games as outliers, Fitzmaurice spotted an alarming trend. Against the better teams “we were too open, simple as.”
And so three months later when they’d face Cork again, Kerry were the ones scoring 24 points at one end and holding their opponents to 12 scores at the other, with their strike forward, one James O’Donoghue, being the one racking up eight scores – from play alone.
While they became men against Mayo and champions against Donegal, it was against Cork that they declared that they were contenders, making a statement not just about their All-Ireland intentions but indicating how they were going to go about it. While O’Donoghue last Sunday was never going to replicate the scoring feats he’d displayed by the Marquee in July, Kerry’s primacy on protecting their goal in numbers and their counter-attacking prowess was premiered against Cork.
One of the backroom members Kieran O’Leary thanked from the steps of the Hogan Stand was an enlightening man by the name of Liam Moggan. A coaching education officer with Coaching Ireland for almost two decades now, he’s been a performance coach to the Kerry players and management for the last two seasons. There’s a standard review process that he uses with all coaches and athletes he works with. When reflecting upon a training session or a match they’re to identify at least something that was done well, no matter how poor the performance was. And then, no matter how good the performance was, there’s always something that could be even better. That something he calls a PIG, a Personal Improvement Goal. No matter what, you always have something to PIG.
That goes a long way to explaining why Kerry are so successful and so annoyingly cute, especially under Fitzmaurice. They win and they’re cute because their managers are humble enough to learn. Last Sunday was a pig of a game but only because Fitzmaurice himself PIGGED it, in the Moggan and best possible sense.
You have to wonder now, did they win the league as well? They stayed up, gave serious game time to emerging players who needed it while resting and rotating veterans, and tried out different systems — what more from a spring would you want? While Dublin might have walked away with that trophy again, did they learn enough even though it was evident with some of the scores they were conceding – 1-17 to Cork, 2-17 to Mayo, 2-13 to Cork again – that they were vulnerable at the back in the wide open spaces of Croker? Cork certainly didn’t learn enough from the league despite topping the table, the concession of 4-9 to 0-2 in the space of 40 minutes in Castlebar a hint of how they’d be blitzed in the last half hour of the league semi-final and throughout the Munster final.
The other semi-finalists Mayo didn’t sufficiently adapt either. From the very start of the year they were struggling to hold onto leads and failing to throw up a defensive system to stem the tide, from Sligo IT scoring 1-9 without reply against them in the FBD to Dublin coming from behind three times to draw with them in the league to Cork’s late comeback in August; ever before either Donaghy intervention in the semi-final it was the year of every Mayo lead living dangerously to the point it resulted in the so-avoidable death of their All Ireland dream.
You would think all those sides will have learned from this year’s championship and league.
After being humbled in that Munster final Brian Cuthbert has shown he has the humility to adapt a system that strives to get that balance between defence and attack right, though he’ll need a league and even a full Munster championship to achieve that, the Mayo quarter-final coming too soon.
The contribution of Aidan O’Mahony, Marc Ó Sé and Kieran Donaghy will also have taught him that he let a couple of physical and savvy veterans too many retire last autumn and that if Cork are to break into the top four they might need to coax one of them back like Jack O’Connor did with Michael McCarthy and Eoin Brosnan.
Jim Gavin’s Dublin will become a little more respectful of and similar to Pat Gilroy’s; it’s forgotten now how Dublin 2010 as much as Tyrone 2003 to 2009 influenced how Jim McGuinness went about setting up his team.
Mayo are another side both craving for and suited to a sound counter-attacking style. Should The Sunday Game Team of the Championship become the All Star team and Keith Higgins and Colm Boyle are yet again walking up that podium next month, it will mean eight of the last 18 defensive All Stars have hailed from Mayo. That haul would indicate they have the best individual backs in the country but their All-Ireland count will only commence when they’re provided with something approaching the best collective defensive system in the country.
Jim McGuinness, being his reflective intelligent self, will also PIG last Sunday. When he does, he’ll probably realise that there wasn’t enough movement with his team’s short kick-outs and that he possibly overcooked some of the preparation which would explain why his side lacked that spark and energy he commented upon after the game.
The five-day camp for the Dublin game was obviously an inspired call but for the final maybe the one weekend would have done. When you combine those two camps along with the weekend of both games, that’s 12 days in the space of 32 being in hotels. It’s an increasing danger as a season goes on; while the level of preparation increases, you also have to guard against the dangers of becoming hoteled-out or talked-out. There’s only so much analysing of the opposition you should do and only so much queuing for chicken and pasta that you can do.
Now it will be Kerry seeing plenty of hotels in the coming months as the award-winning season commences. With Gooch and possibly Tommy Walsh back next year along with Moggan’s template and Fitzmaurice’s shrewd humility, they’ll improve even more. The good thing for the rest of us is with Jimmy being smart and Cork, Mayo and the Dubs smarting, they’ll need to.
