Back door draught was eye opener

BACK in June, just days after Kerry had pilfered a draw against Conor Counihan’s men in Killarney, Jack O’Connor sat into his car in South Kerry and pointed it in the direction of Cork city.

His destination was the Courthouse Tavern where Aidan O’Mahony was waiting to chew the fat over a cup of tea ahead of the replayed Munster semi-final in Páirc Uí Chaoimh the following weekend.

Some of what was said was enough to turn the air blue. O’Connor picked the defender’s brains about this, that and the other but, underneath the Kerry manager’s agitation was an unshakeable belief.

“Remember,” he said to the Rathmore man. “The time to peak isn’t May or June, it’s September. We will improve but will Cork?”

As it happened, Cork did.

An eight-point win in the replay on Leeside triggered a deeply troubled mid-summer spell for the Kingdom but, with the dust settled yesterday, O’Connor’s words had taken on an air of the prophetic.

“When you look back, that was the best thing to happen to us that day in Páirc Uí Chaoimh,” said O’Mahony. “Had we beaten Cork that first day in Killarney we would have learned nothing.

“That’s the one good thing about the back door. You learn new things and you try out new people. We brought back Mike (McCarthy) back in as well and that was massive for us. We scraped by a few times.

“In the Sligo and Longford games especially, but it bonded this team and that showed here. We were going well in training coming up to the Dublin game but we weren’t bringing it onto the field until then.

“There is a lot of fighting character in this team though.”

It’s hard to believe that it is just two months since Kerry snuck a win over Sligo thanks to Diarmuid Murphy’s save. By then, the whole country and its mother was ready to write them off as serious contenders.

Their form improved after that, but the vapours from that dip in form shadowed them all the way through to yesterday’s final and left Kerry in the unfamiliar position of underdogs against their old rivals.

“That is sweet alright,” said O’Mahony, “especially after last year’s All-Ireland final defeat.

“A lot of people were writing us off, saying the team was finished but we regrouped again. You have to take your hat off to lads like Darragh O Sé who has, I don’t know, six All-Irelands now. We made a pact, saying that man deserved an All-Ireland medal.

“The O Sé clan are tough and they showed that again today. They are an inspiration. That was a good All-Ireland to win. We were the underdogs coming up here and a lot of people thought it was Cork ‘s time. Their time will come but we were determined to get a result today.

Kieran Donaghy was even more emphatic about the doubting Thomases.

“It was great for us. This team doesn’t deserve to be put down like it was but I thought we answered all our critics there today. There is only one way to answer them and that is by bringing the silver home.”

We heard much about Kerry’s vaunted depth in strength earlier this year and, if it was overplayed somewhat for a while there, there was proof in yesterday’s pudding with guys like O’Mahony and Donaghy sitting on the bench.

Okay, so it was loss of form and injury that kept them out of the starting mix here but both came on yesterday to nail down Cork ‘s coffin in the final minutes. As second waves go, Kerry’s was pretty powerful.

“Everyone wants to be playing but there are only 15 jerseys,” said O’Mahony. “We have our part to play as well. There are A and B games there every night in training and they are every bit as good as championship games.

“That’s what you need to keep boys on their toes. Whether you get on for five, ten or 15 minutes it doesn’t matter. We are all in this together. There are 32 players in that panel and we were all in it for the long haul.”

Added Donaghy: “It’s about Kerry winning and that was important because it had been a tough enough year. It’s such a good team now that, when I got the injury back in July, I said I would try to get fit for the final because that’s how good a team they are.”

Should we ever have doubted them? Even if it was their sixth final in-a-row? Even if they had been so lethargic for so long? Any doubts about their stomach for the battle were dispelled almost as soon as Colm O’Neill found the net.

“We knew we had the team, the players, the panel,” said Donaghy. ” Cork were always going to be very tough but we got the breaks when we needed them.

“Had they got a small bit more ahead of us, like we did against Dublin in the quarter-final, it could have been over but we stuck to our guns.”