The final twist on September road

IF WE have learnt anything from the last few All-Ireland finals we know that the eventual champion isn’t always the best team over the course of the summer but rather the best team over the course of an hour and a half in late September.

It has been a legacy of both Kerry and Tyrone to provide us with definitive proof these last six seasons that the team who perform best under the klieg lights between 3.30pm and 5pm on the third Sunday always wins the All-Ireland title and anything that happens before or after that period of time is of no consequence.

That is why the beguiling form lines coming into tomorrow’s season finale are in reality so meaningless as to render them redundant. This is a game where all the clichés will apply. This is Cork and Kerry. It really is all on the day and it probably will go down to the wire. Sometimes you realise that clichés are clichés because they’re true.

Sometimes too though, the winning team will reveal enough of itself in the post match analysis to inform our opinions about their formation, their evolution and their motivations over the course of a season. Like after the 2006 final when Jack O’Connor suggested that Kerry’s hunger derived one year of anguish after losing to Tyrone could dwarf Mayo’s 55-year famine. Or after the 2007 final against tomorrow’s opponents when Paul Galvin revealed that the thought of losing to their nearest neighbour and greatest adversary was sufficient to raise the levels of motivation to a level beyond anything Cork could hope to reach back then. One wonders where Kerry’s Big Why is coming from this time out having seen their greatest motivational device evaporate before their eyes last month.

Maybe Kerry really are competing against themselves, against their own history and against standards of excellence set by those that wore the jersey before them but there must be something even more than that, something more microscopic, more primal driving this extraordinary team. I have no doubt all will be revealed should they manage to get their hands on Sam again.

It is unusual for a Kerry team facing into their sixth final in a row with a clean bill of health for the first time all season to still have huge question marks about them. The All-Ireland quarter final against Dublin — the one swallow in a strange and stumbling summer can’t dispel these doubts. We doubt Darragh Ó Sé’s ability to get up and down the field and to put heat on the Cork ball out of the backs. In what will most likely be the big fella’s swansong, the need for him to time his input to coincide with the hour of Kerry’s greatest need is stark. But what if Cork do as Tyrone did last year and play the game at such a tempo that the need for Darragh’s contributions becomes too great and too incessant for his input to make a difference? The battle between the sidelines will be crucial in this regard. I have no doubt that Fintan Goold will have patches of football when introduced that will rattle Ó Sé just like Kevin Hughes had upon his introduction last year. Ó Sé is no ordinary veteran, however, and he has never failed to perform on a big day. Doubts about his ability that seem to bother other mortals, merely serve to drive him on. He should be fine.

There are doubts too, about Kerry’s ability to vary their game when there is a big man at the edge of the square.

The variety of Kerry’s attacks is crucial but what if the pressure out the field is so great that the likes of Tomás Ó Sé, Mike McCarthy, Paul Galvin and Tadhg Kennelly — normally assured in their delivery, decide that the heat is such that it demands the ignorant, unsophisticated hoofers sent into the full forward line last year? If Kerry’s attacking ploy malfunctions to the extent that it did in last year’s final will the outfield players have the patience and the forbearance to toughen and think their way through the storm?

The other nagging concern for Kerry is the incredible reality that they still have nobody to take the long range frees and 50’s. You might say that Cork’s defence is so disciplined that they won’t be giving up too many frees but after 12 minutes of last year’s final against an even more disciplined Tyrone unit, the score was 0-3 apiece with two points or 66% coming from frees on either side. Many people point to Pascal McConell’s save from Declan O’Sullivan on 67 minutes as the defining moment of the game but few recall the resultant 50 being missed — as well as another 50 a few minutes earlier. In games like this, the small things are critical.

HERE’S SOME of what makes Cork uneasy: In the absence of genuine doubts about their defence after such a dogged display against Tyrone, the central question about this final is what can Cork do up front this time? We suspect that the likes of the two O’Neills, Patrick Kelly and Daniel Goulding have big matches in them but the reality is that only Limerick and Tyrone put it up to them this year. Only Donnacha O’Connor emerged with reputation intact after the final indignities of two years ago but it may be a bit unfair to burden those that had no real part in that. This is a different Cork team and 2009 is a different year but much like Tyrone’s emergence in 2003, we can only accept Cork’s credentials when we see Graham Canty on the podium and the truth is Cork are as fearful at this stage of the year as they appear fearsome up to now.

For obvious reasons, mainly tribal and parochial, fear of losing is a characteristic common to both counties but only Kerry have in past meetings shown an ability to channel that fear into something un-inhibiting and liberating.

Players and management often talk about turning points in a season when the collective realise that a year’s work is pointing to one end. In that regard Cork’s semi-final win over Tyrone could prove to be a seminal moment in their development as a team. When a team wins a game of that magnitude played at that intensity, the possibilities for growth are endless and if Cork win tomorrow we may well begin to view the overthrowing of Tyrone as the turning point not alone in Cork’s season but in their long term football fortunes.

Ultimately the kings of September these last few seasons have been those who did the simple things well most often between half past three and five o’ clock. When all things are equal and the margins are so fine that could mean Kerry figuring out Alan Quirke’s kickouts as well as they did Stephen Cluxton’s in early August. It could also on the other hand mean Anthony Lynch beating Colm Cooper as comprehensively as he did in June.

At this stage last year Kerry were on the cusp of a glorious three-in-a-row but in the end it was that small bit of magic, from Seán Cavanagh and Brian Dooher allied to the collective will that swung it away from them. It has always been thus in a battle between equals. That bit of genius, that X-factor from truly gifted forwards becomes the decisive factor.

In 2004 it was Gooch’s goal, 2005 Canavan’s slide-rule precision, 2006 Donaghy’s catch and swivel, 2007 Gooch’s fist and 2008 the irrepressible Cavanagh’s five points from play. In Colm O’Neill and Daniel Goulding Cork have the capacity for special moments but in Declan O’Sullivan and Colm Cooper, Kerry have men who have done it more often before. That for me is the balancing theory and that’s why when genius arrives to announce itself once again on All-Ireland final Sunday, I expect it to have a Kerry accent.