O’Connor relaxed as bullet dodged

JACK O’CONNOR’S back was up against the wall yesterday.

Literally.

In seeking a quiet corner to face the media, the Kerry manager opted for the concrete bench up against O’Connor Park’s perimeter. At 15-feet high, and with a dozen bodies hemming him in, there was no escape.

As it turned out, he was more than willing to talk about, well, you know what.

We danced around it before someone lobbed in the curve ball. Ye were under pressure this week, Jack? “Do you think so?” he laughed.

How tough was it though? “Sure it was ye who was writing that stuff. We didn’t say a word. I was going to go away out to the Skelligs for a week.”

Compared to Longford where he grumped his way through 90 seconds of a post-match interview, O’Connor was positively buoyant. Jokes too? Hallelujah! Let’s probe further.

There must have been a lot of pressure on everyone? “There actually wasn’t, believe it or not. The only thing that I was concerned about was that the squad would stick together. That’s all that matters really. The stuff that’s written by ye fellas doesn’t affect us as much as ye think it does. I’m only joking. I think we’ll park it now lads and drive on.”

Fun while it lasted but move on we must.

With an All-Ireland quarter-final fast approaching it was put to the Kerry manager whether this was something of a corner turned, body and soul cleansed, so to speak.

“I honestly don’t know. All I know is that we have had three very competitive games now in the last three weeks and if anything is going to stand to us, those will. But we don’t know.”

O’Connor returned home last night with plenty to ponder, not least the identity of his best first 15. He juggled his deck yet again yesterday and, not for the first time this season, followed that up by sending on five reserves.

“One of the problems we have had all year is injuries. Donaghy is key for us and he has been unlucky with injuries. Tadhgy and Galvin were injured, lots of others, and it’s hard to settle a team if you’re picking up injuries.”

Micheál Quirke again proved his worth as a 20-minute man at game’s end, Paul O’Connor and Donncha Walsh fared well after coming on too while the Gooch’s fragile confidence received a boost with some routine frees.

“You have to say that Mike (Quirke) baled us out up in Longford and he ruled the skies there for the last quarter of an hour. He was vital for us to get sway in midfield.”

The substitutes helped halt one of Kerry’s most alarming recent trends, that which has seen them start games well before fading out and Lord knows that was badly needed after an abysmal first half. Kerry took the interval a point down and it should have been more. With 44 minutes played, they had scored just 1-3.

“They were playing with a sweeper back and he was making it hard on us. I thought we came to grips with it better in the second half. It was a very tough match and Antrim can be very proud of the way they played.”

Kerry will probably be happy enough too.

Another bullet dodged.