Tommy Martin: The only worry for Kerry now is that they're backing themselves
Kerry undoubtedly look like the best team right now but the script has been torn up several times this season already. Pic: ©INPHO/James Crombie
“But I do think, right now, in terms of kickouts, in terms of attack, defence, I don’t see another team who are at their level, no.”
It wasn’t a dream. You really did hear Tomás Ó Sé say those words to round off The Sunday Game’s segment on Kerry’s win over Armagh last week. I know, it seems hard to believe. A Kerry legend talking up the Kingdom while the fight for All-Ireland senior football title remains a live issue? There must be some other explanation.
An AI deepfake? The liberal woke media agenda? Maybe it wasn’t Tomás at all, but a shapeshifting replicant from an alien civilisation bent on taking over Ireland’s preeminent Sunday evening GAA highlights show as a prelude to wider galactic domination?
A people so technologically advanced as to be able to generate an apparently perfect biological replica of a retired Kerry legend in thought, word and deed, apart from one, tiny, fatal giveaway, namely that no real Kerry human would ever say that Kerry were the best team in the country until such time as the Sam Maguire Cup had been safely bundled onto the Killarney-bound rattler from Heuston Station?
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Yes, that must be what happened.
The alternative to GAA-loving aliens is that Kerry are so much better than anyone else that even they cannot be bothered to pretend otherwise.
To be fair, Tomás has always been on the more straightforward wing of the Kerry media faction. You can generally take what he says as honest opinion as opposed to the sort of 5D psychological chess that some of his countymen are able to pull off to convince you that the Kerry team of the moment are a hopeless rabble likely to only bring shame to the county.
But it was still a jaw-dropping TV moment when what you suspected to be true about Kerry’s standing among the All-Ireland runners and riders had been confirmed by the last people who would normally dare to do so – themselves.
Tomás had just forensically broken down how Kerry destroyed Armagh in all aspects of the game, from kickout strategy in both directions, to the speed and ruthlessness of their attack, to the organisation of their defence.
He had mentioned that four All-Stars past and present returning to fitness – Shane Ryan, Seán O’Shea, Gavin White and Tom O’Sullivan – would struggle to get back in the team. The two teams long considered their most serious rivals, Armagh and Donegal, lay in a mangled heap. There was nowhere credible left to go, even for a Kerryman, other than anoint Kerry the class of the field.
The bookies agree – they have Kerry odds on, even with that nemesis of yore, Tyrone, lying in wait and games coming three weeks on the bounce. Anyone with eyes will tell you that if they get a reasonable amount of ball to David Clifford in any given game, it’s goodnight. Kerry are indisputably the best team in the country. Right now. Which is the only worry.
The whole thing about Kerry always playing down their chances is not just old skool GAA banter, it’s because they understand All-Ireland championships are exercises in timing as much as anything else. It’s ultra precision stuff, to be just good enough to win every game you need to win, and at your very best on All-Ireland final day.
It’s a flimsy bit of hope for all their rivals to hold onto, but this is still early for Kerry to be as good as they currently are. Take last year, when, you’ll remember, Darragh Ó Sé, another of the Kerry media tribe, famously said that the team needed to be “put out of their misery” following the nine-point defeat to Meath in the final All-Ireland group game.
That dark day fell on June 14th, 2025. In other words, a year and a week before their dismemberment of Armagh last Saturday. Last year they found form in the quarter-finals, held steady in the semi-finals and soared for the skies in the final. Either they’ve peaked too early this year, or we are in for something special from here on in.
The moral component to how we judge Gaelic football teams post-FRC has added to the holy glow over the Kingdom. Kerry – along with other teams who’ve done well this season – are praised for kicking the ball because kicking the ball is right and good.
Teams like Donegal and Armagh are scorned for not kicking the ball and their exits last weekend are therefore assigned a moral judgement as if they had been struck down by a vengeful GAA god. It all creates a misleading sense of inevitability heading into the final stages of the All-Ireland, as if Kerry winning is written in scripture, when this year’s championship tells us scripture is not worth the parchment it’s written on.
Donegal did seem to feed off negative energy this year, right from Jim McGuinness’ sour post-match press conference following their opening league match against Dublin. Michael Murphy’s stiff upper cut on Dylan Casey in the league final, the furore of McGuinness getting away with it in Killarney, Murphy losing the rag at full-time last Sunday – there has been bad juju around Donegal all year, which in turn made Kerry look like the goodies. Really though, Donegal’s issue was simply a problem of timing. Too good, too early.
Look at the others. Roscommon were brilliant in May, gone in June. Cork flaccid in a Munster final, majestic in Ballybofey. Monaghan rock bottom of the league, rocking in the championship. Dublin with the greatest comeback since Lazarus. Louth mustered 10 points in a Leinster semi-final, but six weeks later were plunging a dagger into Armagh. Mayo go from sublime to ridiculous and back again in a single game.
If there is a theme to take into the final stages of this year’s bucking bronco of a football championship it is that the winners will probably be the team that can harness the wild swings of momentum now synonymous with the new era of Gaelic football. And no one takes the tide of men at its flood like Kerry, right?
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Probably. But then again, the desperately sad news about the passing of Paul Clancy this week did, in tiny consolation, give us the pleasure of rewatching clips from the great Galway team he played on, specifically his wonderful kick pass to Declan Meehan for his goal in the 2000 final replay against Kerry.
Could the modern version of Galway be timing things just right? Their 2001 predecessors lost to Roscommon in Connacht too and they are equally replete with buckos with the latent stores of confidence to cut loose on the big day in Croke Park. Ending the Dubs’ brave revival on Sunday could ignite something.
The reforming zeal that has redeemed Gaelic football this last two years had, at its unspoken heart, the wish to return the game to the state of moral purity last seen in Galway’s 2001 triumph. The game has regained a level of simplicity. You win the kickouts and the breaking ball, you take scores and you defend your goal. It’s for this reason that Kerry are worthy favourites, but when Clancy’s compadres take the field without him as the jubilee team on All-Ireland final day this year, don’t be surprised if their spirit lives on.
