No dispute over Kerry goal king’s hawk eye
Hawk-Eye will never replace the Kerry hawk’s eye.
Seven years ago in an All-Ireland final against Mayo, Cooper didn’t so much visit as lodge himself into the GAA’s ever-loving embrace. The constituency that yearns for football to be football — not basketball or wrestling.
He electrified an All-Ireland final against Mayo with a goal at the Canal End off Pat Kelly that had those wizened hacks in the press box telling us to forget the minute, just record the time and place.
Ever since he has decorated his career with Croke Park highs and the succour for football men and women of reason is that there’s more to come. At 28, plenty more, thus the temptation to not exactly under-appreciate him, but consider him still a work in progress.
The truth is that he’s immeasurably good, one of the greatest assets the GAA possesses. His 53rd-minute goal in yesterday’s All-Ireland semi-final was less important for its outrageous sense of calm than it was in dousing stubborn resistance from James Horan’s Mayo. Seventy-odd seconds earlier Cillian O’Connor had buried a goal to turn an eight-point parade into a five-point melting pot (0-16 to 1-8). This Kerry side have already shown this season they’re not the greatest at riding out a storm, but Cooper’s facility to think lucidly, let alone conjure a match-winning goal, in pressure moments, exonerates him from any such charge.
He’s lucky too, because he has the smarts and humility to appreciate not just the stage on which he performs but the heaviness of the jersey he wears. Recently we were talking golf before he veered back to the importance of Kerry’s green and gold.
When Gooch had a Kerry minor trial, he took the previous day off work to be properly focused and prepared. Now? Well, they shrug.
“I’m playing football since six, and with the tradition of Kerry, it’s something I always aspired to. But every single day I think of players from smaller counties and wonder what drives them. They make the same effort — in fact more of an effort — but they have no big day out, no exposure.
“Why do they do it? We get the rewards, if you’re doing well, you’re in the spotlight. But what’s their reward? That’s when you see the pure love of the game.”
That’s Cooper’s reward — holding the joystick on a flawless performance that delivered 1-7 for himself and another four points for colleagues. It might be a tad excessive to suggest Kerry would have come a cropper in Croke Park but for the presence of their captain. But there is no better footballer in this country at turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse, and not everything that came his way yesterday was delivered with white gloves. All Jack O’Connor and his management need to do now is keep him just below the boil for the next month. The rest of the Kingdom would prefer about six kilos of cotton wool, mind.
The 36-time All-Ireland winners have pushed their weight and reputation around Jones’ Road long enough now to use it as currency in difficult times. For the opening 20 minutes of this semi-final — Kerry’s seventh in a row — Mayo had the capacity if not the confidence to put them on the back foot. But playing wing-forward Kevin McLoughlin as a deep lying security man — understandable though it was — was not calculated to take advantage of Kerry’s vulnerable state.
O’Connor had nothing but training and a poor quarter-final to sustain them for seven weeks and their rustiness showed in the opening quarter. Countless and ill-advised deliveries into Kieran Donaghy failed to stick but Mayo could still only summon a 0-4 to 0-3 lead after 20 minutes. Fifteen minutes later Kerry were 0-8 to 0-5 in front but, more importantly, they had found their stride before any terminal damage was done.
Tom O’Sullivan was symptomatic of their early stupor but he roared into life before half time and continued that improvement into the second period. Ditto the Ó Sé warriors. Tomás spent the week being woken at 1am, 3am and 5am for ice baths to nurse a disobedient hamstring but you wouldn’t think it yesterday. And Marc, seriously troubled by Andy Moran throughout the semi-final, seems to bristle at vulnerability. Someone alleged too that Paul Galvin had lost his mojo and his strut. Bah.
However, the real delight for Kerry’s brains trust will be in the performance of the support acts, Kieran O’Leary and Anthony Maher in particular.
It won’t be that much comfort to James Horan that the final scoreline was harsh on the Connacht champions. Mayo bagged one goal but had the chances for four more. Horan felt afterwards that Mayo committed too many errors in possession, underlining the value of course and distance to experienced soldiers like Kerry.
Their coach said afterwards he had never seen a Mayo side provide such robust opposition but secretly he was thrilled that his own players were able to resist and overcome it. The change in personnel since 2009 may have weakened Kerry but their ability to retain possession and break the tackle is much better now. Plaudits to Alan O’Sullivan and latterly Donie Buckley.
O’Connor provided a convincing defence of his rearguard in the press interviews, but the view remains that there are starting jerseys up for grabs for the final in four weeks’ time. The full-back line is fundamentally sound but there are weaknesses in the half-back line that will provide an incentive for the likes of Shane Enright and Daniel Bohan.
For long stages Maher and Sheehan controlled midfield, but going backwards, Kerry’s defence needs more help. It is Galvin’s strongest card in terms of final selection. On several occasions in the second half he was mopping up moments that George Hamilton might label “Danger Here”.
And so to another September, O’Connor’s favourite time. The autumn weeks in Killarney between semi-final and final. Kerry have been doing it for nine of the last 12 campaigns. Astonishing.
The shortened evenings of September, the cackle of voices as daylight slips over the horizon in Fitzgerald Stadium. And Colm Cooper sharpening his arrows.
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