Jack savours calm between storms
“I watched it when I went home,” admitted Kerry coach Jack O’Connor yesterday. “And I had another look at it this morning (Tuesday).
“I was too hyped up to go to bed when I got back from Dublin, didn’t hit the sack until four o’clock in the morning. The night after a game I never sleep too well although I slept very well on Sunday night. But I couldn’t turn up the volume with the lads upstairs in bed, so I watched it properly when I got up.”
And his double-considered verdict on one of the blowaways of the decade?
“We certainly played at a high tempo, that’s the big one, the thing we tried to get into our game over the last few weeks. Our big thing is moving the ball with pace. You had great movement in the forward line at Croke Park.
“People might have been surprised at the start at our inside forward line of ‘Gooch’, Declan and Darran, but we played that forward line at training for about a week or two before the Cork game because Tommy Walsh was injured with his ankle.
“There was ferocious movement by them, they worked really well together. And we thought Dublin would find it really hard to get the match-ups right with that inside line because, for instance, Denis Bastick is more suited to a big man than a smaller, mobile one.”
The game plan worked as well as O’Connor’s blueprint for the 2004 All-Ireland final against Mayo, when Kerry bombarded the opposition’s small and fast corner backs with an aerial barrage to Johnny Crowley and Dara O Cinnéide. This time, the reverse trick.
“Croke Park is such a big pitch you can play it either way. Once we got a good start, the inside fellas were showing, and the boys kept putting the ball in. We were very, very adamant about the need for a fast start. That was our No 1 priority, and the fact that Mike McCarthy went up and made the drive that he did for Gooch’s goal set the tone too.”
What was also evident was the improved quality of diagonal ball into space for the forwards, something that was missing in last year’s All-Ireland final defeat to Tyrone, when Donaghy and Tommy Walsh were the frustrated targets.
“You have to put that into context,” O’Connor maintained. “I’d say Tyrone were putting a lot more heat on the kickers in last year’s final than Dublin were yesterday. Tadhgie (Kennelly) put through some really good searching, diagonal balls. We’ve been emphasising that, it’s a kicker’s pitch. Look, we’ve been tipping away with things all year and yesterday was the day it came off.”
And all is right with the world in Kerry. For now.
“It’s always a shorter journey (back from Dublin) when you win. It’s been a tough few weeks for everyone with four games in that time. It was good to let off a bit of steam on the way down,” the Kerry coach said.
O’Connor can justifiably argue that their qualifier victims steeled Kerry for Croke Park, but that doesn’t explain some of the limp, lacklustre displays since they cruised to the National League title back in April.
“I would put some of it down to injuries but not all of it, mind you. Donaghy, Tommy Walsh, Galvin, Tadhgie, Killian, Scanlon, Marc and Anthony Maher all had fairly significant injuries this year. We’ve had to keep tinkering with the team and fellas were wondering about that. The management was as anxious as anybody to find a settled team. Those lads missed big chunks of training, so I don’t think we’ve done a bad job juggling and keeping all the balls in the air.”
NOW an appealing vista opens up, with a month to prepare for an All-Ireland semi-final against Mayo or Meath. And a possible return for Kieran Donaghy.
“That’s up to the medical guys in Dublin. He’s due to go back up there next week and while he’s mad for road, we’ll have to see what they say. Unless he’s 100% we’re not going to take any chances.
“Our big thing now is to see other fellas on the panel having a go. And there are lads who, for one reason or another, just haven’t got game time. Paul O’Connor has been going really, really well in training for a good while now and he’s got his chance. He’s given the ‘A’ backs a serious testing in training, so we wanted to give this guy his head. He’s a natural No 15 which maybe we haven’t had since Mike Frank Russell.”
What must have pleased O’Connor and his selectors Eamon Fitzmaurice and Ger O’Keeffe is the pressure Kerry exerted on Dublin possession, from the forwards, back through midfield – where Seamus Scanlon again provided the crucial blue collar input – and into the defence.
Seldom has a Kerry back line, with so many All-Ireland medal winners, been so scrutinised in advance of a championship 70 minutes. Unsurprisingly, the return of Mike McCarthy is now being hailed as a masterstroke, something the Kilcummin man would be very uncomfortable with.
“He’s a serious footballer with tremendous composure on the ball. After years in the full back line, he’s almost like a lion left out of the cage, much like Seamus Moynihan when he was at full-back. The big question was would he have lost the yard of pace, and we got our answer to that.
“He’s a very quiet fella but I saw something in Tullamore in the Antrim game where he was going around shaking his fist at fellas. Now I’d never seen that before in any of my years involved with Kerry. Mike Mac didn’t come back for any other reason other than to win an All-Ireland. He wasn’t coming back for personal glory.”
It took O’Connor more than one visit to McCarthy to convince him to return. “I chanced my arm with him two days after the Cork game and he agreed to come back. Maybe the timing was right this time. Earlier in the year he was a bit unsure he had the hunger for it. Maybe it was the defeat by Cork that triggered something.”
Talking of the old rivals over the county bounds, O’Connor may not have yet seen their destruction of Donegal, but he wasn’t surprised.
“So much for this talk about Cork not keeping their form after the Munster final! They put up a serious score, a hurling score. They’ve a big athletic team and they’ve always done well against Tyrone in the League. But Tyrone are past masters at closing games down and not having things as open as Cork did against Donegal. It’ll be a very interesting semi-final tactically.”
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