Walsh unlikely to feature in replay

TOMMY WALSH is unlikely to feature in Kerry’s Munster Championship semi-final replay against Cork on Saturday despite undergoing a scan yesterday which showed no evidence of new damage to the attacker’s injured ankle.

The Kerins O’Rahilly club man first suffered the injury in training nine days before the drawn game and, though it responded well to treatment, he had to retire with the same complaint after ten minutes of the Killarney contest.

Speaking prior to the scan in Dublin yesterday he revealed that the ankle felt much the same as it did seven days previously, which would suggest a watching brief second time around, but the team management will take a ‘wait and see’ approach until later in the week.

“From the first ball I got, I took a stupid shot and I turned awkwardly on it,” said Walsh. “That was when I aggravated it. I tried to run it off but the pain was just getting worse so I had to come off. I had it strapped and all but it just didn’t hold up.”

Kerry struggled without the ‘Twin Towers’ of Walsh and Kieran Donaghy three days ago and the panel’s much vaunted strength in depth will be sorely tested yet again if Walsh sits out the replay in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

“They’re all good forwards and they can adapt to any situation. For Kerry there’s always been a big full forward in there for the last three years but Bryan Sheehan came in there and did the job so nobody is indispensable. We have a big panel and that’s what it’s there for. That option of just hoofing the ball in was gone but they adapted well and, in fairness to them, when it was put up to them in the end, they got the scores when they were needed.”

Much was made of Kerry’s below-par performance but there were positives to be gleaned from the outing too. Tadhg Kennelly excelled in his first championship game while Kerry reversed last year’s trend of letting big leads slip by reeling one in instead.

The bottom line however was that they must do better if they are to reach the provincial decider.

“We wouldn’t have been happy with the way we played at all. We didn’t get out of the starting blocks at all. They were far more intense than us from the start. They were just coming forward in droves.

“I suppose, had they taken their chances, then maybe we would have been out of it with ten minutes to go. But we were just happy to get another go at it and hopefully we can rectify things on Saturday.”