Kingdom on the road to redemption?

“No matter how hard the loss, defeat might serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out” - Al Gore

IT HAS been a rotten week of turbulence and trial in Kerry football.

A key cornerstone of all team games, squad discipline and inherent trust, has been breached and a crossroads has been reached. The moral opprobrium raining down upon the transgressors, Tomás O Sé and Colm Cooper, while understandable and probably inevitable in a county as fanatical about its football as Kerry, is ill-advised and unhelpful. Kerry supporters and followers of the game within the county and beyond have every right to expect that players adhere to a strict code of discipline during the course of a championship season but it should not come as a surprise to them if a very different imperative sometimes informs the actions of some of their leading players.

A summary scratching of the surface often reveals a more compelling human argument and for all the whispering and sniggering that followed Donegal’s Ciarán Bonnar and Neil Gallagher recently, or the latest Mark Vaughan solecism, we must never lose sight of the fact that the public cannot and should not claim ownership of any GAA player. Unless they are in denial, the players in question will acknowledge the validity of the ritual condemnation from their tribe and the necessity of those charged with enforcing the disciplinary code acting accordingly.

Sometimes wrong is just wrong and a mistake is just a mistake but if Jack O’Connor and his management team are to have the requisite authority, the team that will take the field in Tullamore tomorrow will have to reflect their collective prerogatives and principles for what remains of championship 2009.

The community of the team have two simple choices to make now. They can accept the broad-stroke analysis that portrays them as an ego-driven, baggage-laden team in a place of disaffection, racked by in-fighting and apparently in terminal decline or they can allow the grilling they’ve been getting from friend and foe since early summer shape them, mould them and unite them like it did three years ago.

We watched from a distance in 2006 as hardened veterans infused with some younger blood emerged from a summer of doubt to dream the game of football up all over again. Kieran Donaghy’s transformation as a full forward grabbed the headlines but it was the unwavering work ethic of the team allied to the resolve of management that made them champions.

The following year they embellished their reputations and added the art of closing out tight games (vs Dublin & Monaghan) to their repertoire.

Yet, even on their ill-fated attempt at three-in-a-row last year there were worrying signs of a team who had the experience but had missed the meaning of all the medals won.

It was almost as if they had forgotten the great North Kerry truism oft repeated by its poet Gabriel Fitzmaurice that “there is more to football than doing battle and winning. Winning is only the beginning. It’s how you win that counts; it’s what’s revealed in the process that counts”.

THAT IS why the Tyrone model has been so enduring and endearing to all those beyond Kerry. I don’t know how the Tyrone team behave in the off season or in their rare periods of down-time but on the field, their football is based on playing the game without fear which in turn is based on an absolute trust in one another.

Kerry’s ability to trust the group dynamic may have been compromised two years ago by the publication of Jack O’Connor’s autobiography but that really is only a sub-plot in the this week’s drama and certainly doesn’t excuse or explain any lapses in discipline.

Trust is a funny thing on the field of play. It manifests itself in every line of the field. Goalkeepers can gamble on certain kick outs, full backs can play from the front, half backs can make forays into frontier country, midfielders can allow partners to jump un-aided, half forwards can change wings and full forwards can tackle like demons safe in the knowledge that a colleague will make the next run necessary to take care of the primary business of creating the score.

Apart from a few fleeting glimpses last August, this Kerry team appear to have stopped making sacrifices for one another and stopped trusting one another.

If you doubt me, watch the 15 times in the first half against Sligo that a ball was played into Kerry’s forwards only to be turned into a counter attack. Watch the 32 times over the course of the same game that hard won possession was coughed up cheaply and watch for the acts of petulance from players when the ball being delivered didn’t reach its intended target.

It seems that in the absence of a three-year-old worn out tactic (Donaghy at full forward) players don’t know how to play through the lines and have forgotten how to play it as they see and feel it.

Tomás O Sé and Colm Cooper will be missed tomorrow but maybe the cathartic events of Tuesday night will see good footballers play with freedom and without fear again. Maybe we will once again see the focus and the discipline from Paul Galvin that made him oblivious to some ridiculously harsh calls against him last Saturday.

Maybe we will once again see Declan O’Sullivan have an end product in mind when he runs at defences.

Maybe good old fashioned Kerry arrogance won’t allow Jack O’Connor ever again play Mike McCarthy as sweeper for his full back line when playing with a strong breeze and maybe the team as a unit won’t ever again go a full half an hour without scoring from play in the second half because of having too much respect for the opposition.

AT a time when big calls had to be made, dropping Kerry’s best performer in 2009 and the county’s best forward this decade was quite a statement. It is encouraging to hear that the two players are hurting and even more encouraging that they haven’t been isolated.

In the 1988 Seoul Olympics the Soviet Union had athletes in neither the 100 metres or 200 metres finals. They did however win the 4 x 100m relay gold. So it is with serious teams everywhere. Team is everything and the whole is always greater than the parts.

The communal spirit that nourishes and sustains a group of sportsmen over the course of a season or seasons has to be the over-riding factor in all decisions in relation to the group. The history, heritage and honour that goes with that spirit isn’t to be underestimated or abused. The bloodletting and cleansing of the last few days has hurt Kerry. How badly it has hurt the Kerry team spirit remains to be seen.