Superior Kerry skills should swing balance

AND so it has come to pass once more. The closer they get to a big game the more optimistic Mayo’s supporters get.

It’s in their genes to be this way. They truly are football people. As Darragh Ó Sé eloquently put it a couple of months ago: “Mayo was the only county you’d go to Mass in where they’d nearly be marking you in the communion line.”

It’s poignant that it should be Ó Sé who uttered such a precise description for he was the embodiment of Kerry in the eyes of the Mayo players during the 2000s. In him they saw a chief whose plain stubbornness and unyielding desire for battle had them rolling on their heels before a ball was thrown-in. What other man could dwarf his own 6ft frame in action?

Now that he’s gone, so too is Mayo’s fear factor and the quiet confidence within the county is with justification.

For Kerry, there is still the driving Tomás and there is still the defying Marc, men who unlike Darragh have won Footballer of the Year awards, but Darragh was Darragh. The fear láidir who symbolised as much as he played.

On the flip side, the challenge for Kerry is to demonstrate there is life after the great midfielder. A couple of Munster titles have been annexed since he stepped out after the 2009 season but his absence is still keenly felt.

Tyrone in 2008 demonstrated that Peter Canavan, who was so integral in 2003 and 05, wasn’t needed and it surely must be an incentive for Kerry now.

In truth, Jack O’Connor’s midfield pairing of Anthony Maher and Bryan Sheehan haven’t looked all that out of place this summer, with the latter one of the team’s best performers against Limerick.

It’s not as if they’re coming up against an established Mayo pairing either. The O’Shea brothers, Seamus and Aidan, only played once together for Mayo in the SFC until the Galway game this year.

Against Cork, they took a while to get to grips with Aidan Walsh and Alan O’Connor but when they did there was no stopping them and they appear to have the slight edge over Maher and Sheehan.

Behind and in front of the O’Sheas, they have workaholic half-back and forward lines but Kerry’s two lines have learned to be filling gaps in the centre and will match Mayo.

What has been most intriguing about Kerry this year is that they’ve got to this stage, admittedly with a nice quarter-final draw, with a number of their key men misfiring.

Not since the Munster semi-final against Limerick have Colm Cooper and Kieran Donaghy been on song but both men thrive on the big occasion, especially when, and it’s a rare phenomenon, questions are asked of them.

Darran O’Sullivan’s electric form has been compensating and Mayo will need a dog of a defender to snarl him out of the game.

Jack O’Connor’s match-ups have been spot-on this year and that tactical nous, combined with Paul Galvin being sprung from the bench, are two more big pluses in the Kerry account.

O’Connor’s opposite number James Horan has changed the face of the Mayo senior team, fashioning them into a grafting set of players who realise you must also stop a team to outscore them.

It would be fallacious to say he now has a team of Alan Dillons and Andy Morans but the work-rate of the pair is now replicated throughout the team. They named an unchanged side yesterday in the hope of doing just that.

But there doesn’t appear to be a lot of room for individual talent in the Mayo set up right now. As Dillon says, their style suits the type of player they have.

If both sides put an equal amount, the Munster champions’ skill-set is the stronger.

Kerry can’t prove tomorrow there’s life after Darragh but they should be able to get within 70 minutes of demonstrating as much. Unlike Cork, Mayo won’t find Kerry’s hunger lacking.

A repeat of their three-point win over Mayo in the 2005 All-Ireland quarter-final looks the most probable outcome.

Verdict: Kerry