Maybe there is another kick in Kerry

Munster SFC Semi-Final replay

THOSE who would see last weekend’s drawn Munster SFC semi-final diminished because of the amount of hand-passing, the reluctance to kick ball, the lateral movement and retention of possession should give it a rest. If we are to accept Jack O’Connor and Conor Counihan along with Mickey Harte as the pre-eminent strategists in the game today, then we must accept that the way their charges play the game as being the most effective way of winning a football match.

Those of us who still hark back to the good old days when the ball was kicked diagonally from distance into a big full forward with two satellite corner forwards orbiting him, don’t actually realise what an age of innocence we were all living in back then.

These days, no defender worth his salt and no coach is going to allow the game be played as full forward lines would wish it be played and as much as we all yearn for points such as that kicked by Declan O’Sullivan in the fourth minute last Sunday (diagonal ball by Donnchadh Walsh, into Gooch, another diagonal to Donaghy, out to O’Sullivan and over the bar) we should also be capable of seeing the inherent beauty in the fisted point scored by Paul Kerrigan a half an hour later.

Kerrigan’s point more than any other last Sunday illuminated the central truth of recent Cork/Kerry clashes – the teams are too familiar with one another and it’s beginning to show in what they don’t do (kick the ball) as much as it does in what they do.

It took Cork defenders 13 fist passes to get the ball from their 21 yard line out to midfield in the build-up. Under intense pressure from Kerry forwards, Ray Carey eventually managed to draw a free from Seamus Scanlon. A long raking ball was floated in from the resultant free and Kerrigan got on the end of it to get inside Marc O Sé and point with the fist.

Cork would not have had the patience, the savvy and the self belief to score that type of point last year. Indeed, Kerrigan wasn’t even playing where he could do maximum damage last year so there is a sense, too, that Cork are getting really familiar with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Much has been made in Cork of the fact that their three newcomers acquitted themselves quite well in Killarney. Jamie O’Sullivan had a relatively quiet day which is never a bad thing at corner back, Aidan Walsh grew into the game after being caught in possession three times in the first eight minutes and Ciarán Sheehan had his moments up front.

Of more concern for Cork though, is that three key forwards (Donncha O’Connor, Daniel Goulding and Pearse O’Neill) under-performed for the second championship match in a row against Kerry. A repeat performance from all three tomorrow and Kerry’s perceived lack of legs at the back will go untested again.

It has been suggested in these pages before that most of Kerry’s problems are in their legs, and that we should shortly be witnessing the core-cracking of a team and the end of an incredible run for the Kingdom. Based on the last five minutes in Killarney, that theory can be challenged.

When the fat was in the fire, it was the oldest members of the back-line, Tomás O Sé and Tommy Griffin, that led the charges into Cork territory and when the last kick-out was there to be won after Gooch’s equaliser, it was the oldest forward on the field, Paul Galvin who won the breaking ball.

Sometimes passages of play and a series of incidents can be used to frame an argument a certain way but I saw no evidence whatsoever last weekend to suggest that these Kerry players have stopped enjoying their football.

More pertinently perhaps, their survival instinct appears to have sharpened – as witnessed by their mastery of the fine art of damage limitation when they were on the back foot. Some will argue that this was down to Cork ineptitude in front of goal, but it will nevertheless be a source of great encouragement to Kerry supporters that they managed to stay in the type of game which in 2009 and particularly 2008, they were giving Cork apparently impossible lifelines.

Kerry’s recent replay history in Páirc Uí Chaoimh won’t fill them with any great confidence but leaving Killarney last Sunday, I was struck by the positivity of the Kerry supporters, by the genuine warmth in the round of applause for their team during warm-down and by their conviction that there’s more in the tank.

They head to Cork this time with their key forwards playing better than they were on previous visits in ‘09, ‘08 and ‘06. For them to emerge with a first win in five years from Páirc Uí Chaoimh they’re going to have to assume, as Tyrone constantly do, that they won’t break even around the middle against Cork, which will in turn demand a feral scrap for the breaking ball.

If Kerry get anything near break-even at midfield, if they find ways of getting more ball into Gooch, if they get Declan O’Sullivan more involved from restarts and if Kieran Donaghy approaches the game as he sees it panning out in front of him, as opposed to his ideal of a game (play what’s there, not what should be there) – then Kerry can break their Leeside hoodoo and book a date with Limerick in three weeks’ time.

Meanwhile, a new era dawns in Croke Park tomorrow as the unfamiliar Dublin team step out under the klieg lights for the first time this season against a Wexford team desperately struggling to avoid the road back to obscurity from whence they travelled not so long ago.

Radical overhaul of the Dublin team of 2009 was impossible for Pat Gilroy to resist with only Stephen Cluxton, Barry Cahill and Bernard Brogan of the starting XV tomorrow having anything like genuine championship credentials.

OTHER players like Ross McConnell, David Henry and Conal Keaney get another chance to deliver on latent potential but the real interest from a neutral and a partisan perspective will be in Rory O’Carroll’s performance at full back, Eamon Fennell’s at midfield and Kevin McManamon’s in the full forward line. All three have shown during the league that they are capable of making the step up.

With a less than capacity crowd expected and an acceptance among supporters of the game in the capital that long-term incremental improvement is the aspiration, the game itself needs these Dublin rookies to make the step up.

There were signs during the league that Dublin were keen to shed the tag of entertaining losers and if genuine leaders are yet to emerge, at least Gilroy has Dublin playing in such a way now that they’re more difficult to score against. Considering where they’re coming from, that in itself is a start.