Can Kerry full-back line deal with Masters and O’Connor?

UNUSUALLY, Cork have delayed naming their team for the All-Ireland final until tonight.

The presumption is that the selectors want to explore every possible avenue for stalwart, Anthony Lynch to be involved. He deserves that and more. But the delay only serves to spice up the speculation that Skibbereen’s Conor McCarthy has forced his way back into the starting 15 at the expense of Daniel Goulding. That, in turn, would suggest James Masters will return from a broken jaw in his natural habitat of corner-forward.

And that’s a problem for Kerry.

Given the loss this year of Seamus Moynihan and especially Mike McCarthy, Kerry’s full back line has had a somewhat fragile look to it. Those who wear green and gold glasses breathed a sigh of relief when Pádraig Reidy came through his semi-final joust with Mark Vaughan unscathed, but the latter is no Donncha O’Connor. Or Masters for that matter.

Marc Ó Sé has been like a barnacle, stuck to the best attackers in the game this season, but he can only pick up one corner forward on Sunday. Do Kerry stick him on Masters again, or get him to shadow Cork’s form attacker, Donncha O’Connor?

Kerry can’t move Tom O’Sullivan from full-back, and even on the bench, Mossy Lyons is desperately short of game time. They have the option of shifting Killian Young back to the corner, but that’s unlikely. So it’s Ó Sé and Reidy in the corners. And Cork will fancy pairing them with Masters and O’Connor.

But Masters hasn’t got much change out of Marc Ó Sé in the past. Of his four Munster final points, only one was from play. But of Donncha O’Connor’s 1-4 off Reidy, only the goal was from open play.

However he did involve himself effectively in Cork’s spells of dominance. They know each other very well — they’re not only neighbours, peering across the county bounds at each other. The Scartaglen man is actually dating Donncha’s cousin! He’d love the challenge. It’s a risky strategy for Kerry though. Would they be better off giving Reidy the job of marking Masters, thereby placing him in his favoured No 4 position? The short answer is yes.

While we’re on the subject of naming teams, another question: how much longer can we expect inter-county management to honour the traditional practice of announcing selections as much as five days before a game? Hurling and football have become games of small margins, and anything a coach can keep hidden up his sleeve — like his formation and tactics — must be an advantage. There is an expectation that counties will provide a team for the official match programme, but there is no punishment for submitting a dud selection. The time can’t be too far away when counties will simply provide a list of names from one to 30 for the programme — as with most other codes.

Cork have been one of the few counties to traditionally name their sides on a Tuesday before a Championship match. But the likes of the Kilkenny hurlers wait until the Friday. It won’t be long before such announcements become the exception, not the norm.