Something to savour

SO THIS Dublin-Kerry thing isn’t just frivolous froth after all. Other rivalries sparkled occasionally this year, but it took until the penultimate game of the football championship – and a bone-shuddering clash of the code’s most successful teams – to serve up a footballing smorgasbord worth stocking beyond September.

The margins at the end of August can be tissue-thin and in applauding Kerry’s nous and poise on and without the ball in yesterday’s All-Ireland semi-final, it’s difficult to identify what more Dublin and their management could have done. Perhaps Bryan Cullen isn’t a centre-back, maybe particular forwards don’t have the assassin’s steady trigger-finger, but they’ve come up short in successive semi-finals by margins measured in seconds and inches, bootlaces and fingertips.

“Disappointment wouldn’t do any justice to the feelings in that dressing room,” sighed Paul Caffrey after their 1-15 to 0-16 defeat in front of the 82,000-plus attendance.

They were outlasted in the game of the season by a Kerry side playing close to its optimum.

Darragh Ó Sé was the victor’s least effective player over 70 minutes, and that’s not just a reference to the talisman’s hip flexor injury which threatens his participation in the All-Ireland final against Cork three weeks hence. It underlines how each of his colleagues, including those who came in from the bench, stood up to be counted when many – and many of their own – doubted they had the ability to do so.

Foremost among these was Eoin Brosnan, Aidan O’Mahony, Kieran Donaghy and especially rookie corner-back Padraig Reidy, who didn’t need the media and the chattering classes to tell him his place – and season – was in jeopardy if he under-performed.

“The likes of Tom (O’Sullivan), Marc (Ó Sé) and Aidan O’Mahony have been carrying me up to now; it was about time I started paying them back,” admitted the Scartaglen man.

Reidy looked up at the giant monitor after five minutes and swallowed hard at the thought of 65 more. His colleagues catapulted from the blocks – Paul Galvin claimed as many points in the opening four minutes as he had all season (two), but by the 20th minute, Reidy’s company for the afternoon, Mark Vaughan, had put Dublin 0-4 to 0-3 ahead.

That wasn’t all. Moments before that, Kerry fans in the Hogan Stand were swallowing hard at the sight of Darragh Ó Sé crossing his arms frantically in a manner that is the field-sport equivalent of an SOS. There was little room for ambiguity – he was goosed.

Kerry’s management – which hardly covered itself in glory in the quarter-final – had options but chose that of Tommy Griffin, who hasn’t been seen at full tilt since last year.

It is hard to overstate his influence over 45 gruelling minutes. When he was called ashore, he was shattered and Ó Sé managed to steady the turbulence in that closing spell.

Dublin changed ends a point to the good (0-8 to 0-7), but if those same Kerry selectors had a plan to employ the genius of Colm Cooper to any significant degree, the players outside him clearly ignored it. Only when Kieran Donaghy began straying out from the full-forward line (part by decree, part by the fact he was scalding Ross MacConnell in every foot race) did anyone remember Gooch was in Croke Park. His first pair of serious interventions, in the 30th and 34th minutes, led to points and offered the champions a flattering platform from which to launch their defence in the second period. They may not have mentioned it at the time, but they were also fighting to give Darragh Ó Sé one last trip on the September merry-go-round. What did merit mention was the rather bizarre critique of Kerry in one Sunday newspaper yesterday from a columnist who should know better.

“When it comes to the knockout stages of the championship, every 35 minutes is your last 35 minutes,” reflected Pat O’Shea from the perspective of victory. “I couldn’t give enough respect to the players, particularly in the first 15-20 minutes of the second half, where we built up the lead that kept us in front until the end.”

Donaghy was slightly more blue collar – “we could have folded (after Darragh went off), we could have turned our arses to it, but we stuck together.”

And then some. Two minutes after the interval, the game’s only goal had a sublime symmetry to it in terms of a Kerry side now facing its fourth successive All-Ireland final.

Killian Young is one of those rare subjects the sages of the south west agreed on from get-go. When they nodded approvingly of the Renard man, no-one demurred.

Young’s poise in stitching together the triangle of Cooper, Declan O’Sullivan and himself was impressive enough, but his last delivery, tucked inside the Dublin cover for O’Sullivan to finish, was a piece of poetry. Little wonder he literally bounded back to his defensive station.

Within seven minutes Kerry were gone 1-10 to 0-8 in front, and those who decry the Dubs lost faith. The gap increased to six points by the 50th minute, but by the time substitute Ray Cosgrove slipped inside the cover and headed towards Diarmuid Murphy, it was down to four (1-12 to 0-11). However Cosgrove tanked the chance and Dublin’s blue faithful haemorrhaged more believers.

However they didn’t die. Ciarán Whelan got serious and Bryan Cullen claimed the first of two points from centre back to make it 1-12 to 0-14. Dublin had the momentum but another Kerry change, Sean O’Sullivan settled his side and Declan O’Sullivan claimed the game’s last point.

That was significant in itself. O’Sullivan finished with 1-3 but confirmed his stature as a leader in more ways than any armband confers. If the season stopped now, he would be Kerry’s player of the year, and the decision to start him on the 40 benefited not only O’Sullivan but Eoin Brosnan also. He thrived on the wing.

When the post-mortems conclude in Dublin, the one point of agreement may be that Bryan Cullen is no centre back.

His two points mask the fact he was beaten up a stick by O’Sullivan in terms of his primary duties. Cullen is a super footballer but that’s not the kind of defensive linchpin his side needs.

Cork’s Ger Spillane is one such stopper. And his confrontation with O’Sullivan is only one Munster mash to be occupying ourselves with over the coming weeks.

After last year’s semi-final success, Kerry manager Jack O’Connor licked his lips at the thought of preparing for a final as the September nights closed in.

The final can wait a day or two. This semi was worth pausing a while over.