Why Kerry may need Eoin goals
If Tyrone manage to manacle Colm Cooper at Croke Park, at least two other forwards must fill in the missing blanks on the scoreboard. And centre-forward Eoin Brosnan appears the most likely candidate beyond Dara Ó Cinnéide.
The portents are encouraging. Brosnan may have played in three different positions this summer, but he has still harvested 2-9 in the championship.
It seems some time - perhaps because it’s three years - since he torched Kildare’s defence for a howitzer goal in Thurles in an All-Ireland qualifier. You sensed it would become his trademark, but too often he’s skinned posts. Remember the one that zipped past Benny Tierney’s post when Kerry had a lead to protect in the 2002 final? Not to mention the effort for an equalising point that drifted into history. There’s one due.
“I did get a goal in the semi-final,” he protests half-heartedly, a simple matter of mopping up his club colleague, Cooper’s effort that rattled the Cork post in the second half.
Part of Brosnan’s problem is that once he gets his 6’3’’, 13 stone frame moving, he takes on the appearance of a runaway juggernaut.
Little wonder he’s considered the fastest Kerry player over 100 metres.
“When you are going at pace, it’s difficult to control the ball, to keep it down. When you’re going that fast, the ball tends o fly off your foot and go high. I’ve got to be more conscious of keeping the ball down. Murph (keeper Diarmuid Murphy), or any keeper will tell you that the ones at their feet are the most difficult to get your hands to,” Brosnan says.
It took this articulate Killarney solicitor quite a while to get his hands on something else important - an All-Ireland medal with Kerry.
“These things are cyclical. When I was eight and getting interested in football, Cork were beating Kerry nearly every year. Those were bad times. After 1986 (when Brosnan was six), we had to wait another eleven years for an All-Ireland.”
Understandably then, he didn’t check the state of his first medal last September - nor that Kerry’s opponents hadn’t travelled from Ulster.
“You have to remember that All-Ireland last year was very sweet. Having no winners medal was a huge motivating factor, so it wasn’t diluted in any way that we didn’t defeat an Armagh or a Tyrone in the final. Of course, it was said that both counties ‘took a year off’ - nobody takes a year off, everyone sets out with the same goal. Admittedly, though, winning on Sunday might quieten people for another while.”
Brosnan is, by nature, reserved. This week he’ll only take work-related calls at work, ducking off at 3pm to the Lakes, the driving range, even the cinema. A quiet place, his own space.
“You can’t be thinking about this every hour, because you could let it get to you. As Jack (O’Connor) says, in weeks like these you keep within your close circle, and you don’t socialise.”
Even those within the circle are kept at arm’s length. Neither his charming girlfriend, Mary Collins, nor his parents are privvy to training ground manoeuvres at Fitzgerald Stadium.
“She’s always giving out that I don’t tell her what goes on at training. I’d tend to keep most things to myself, but there’s a bond between that group of thirty fellas that people won’t understand. What goes on in a meeting stays in the meeting - that sort of thing. I’m sure Tyrone will have a few tactics to spring on us, and we’ll possibly have a few up our sleeves as well. These are things you have to keep to yourself, you can’t even tell your family or your girlfriend.”
As we spoke, his friend Maurice O’Donoghue was sharing his wedding festivities with hundreds of guests in the Gleneagle Hotel. Brosnan was heading upstairs to The Late, Late Show and Marc Ó Sé.
He started at midfield in the Munster final, at wing-forward in the quarter final success over Mayo and on the ‘40’ for the annihilation of Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final.
“I honestly didn’t know enough about the newer Cork players before the Munster final, but once a county emerges from a province into the national glare, the video scrutiny cranks up a notch. I’m sure there are rooms full of videos of every Kerry player at this stage, so it’s a dangerous thing!”
He’s not cursing his flexibility.
“At this level, you just want to get on the first fifteen, whereas with the club, you take on a bit more responsibility. Now you are playing with fifteen top notch fellas who sacrifice their individual games for the sake of the team. That’s why we’ve been so successful.”
He is buoyed by the contribution of half-forward in the semi-final (1-9), and by the fact that Kerry’s form has again been on an upward slope since June. Not that he expects a repeat of the fluidity the champions showed in last year’s final against Mayo.
“The first thing the management said to us when all the celebrations had died down was that the Mayo game had created a skewed picture of things. That kind of performance is never going to happen again, and it certainly won’t on Sunday.”
Unless of course a certain high-speed bullet finds its target.
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