Donaghy’s return ticket
For five years, the Austin Stacks man had known nothing but seasons that stretched as far as September and it would take more than their six-point All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to rewire a thought process that had trouble computing the detour that lay ahead.
“All of a sudden you have guys from the county board coming up and saying to us ‘you are playing county championship next week’ and in our heads we were going back training on the Tuesday night. That was the rhythm we had got into for the last five years so it was strange.”
The assumption for those outside Kerry was that troops accustomed to lengthy and gruelling campaigns were at least afforded the opportunity to dispense with their marching boots.
But Donaghy kept on putting one foot in front of the other through November with the club.
He mentions that by way of explanation rather than complaint. The only disappointment was that Stacks eventually lost out to Dr Crokes in the county final but there was at least the added consolation that such a full diary left limited time to dwell on that Down defeat.
Plenty of others ruminated for him.
There was talk of a great Kerry team having reached the end of the line after that August Bank Holiday weekend, murmurings about the end of an era and the need to set out on a potentially long and painful bout of reconstruction that could delay their reacquaintance with the Big Day indefinitely.
“I never feared that,” Donaghy insists. “If you think like that it is negative straight away and it’s not good for the brain to be thinking like that. Our goal was the same as it always was this year: to get to an All-Ireland final.
“If you get there you have a 50-50 chance of winning a medal and that’s what we’re judged on. Never once after we were beaten last year did I think we would never get back here, although it’s not an easy thing to do.”
If Kerry needed a template — not that they ever have — they were handed it two Sundays ago when Kilkenny gave the lie to rumours of their demise through their dominance of Tipperary.
Donaghy raised a wry smile when the comparison was made.
“We’re around a long time too and people keep telling us we’re old and Kilkenny are old too so it’s nice to see that the auld fellas can still cut the mustard.”
Donaghy’s abilities are not in question but the former Footballer of the Year approaches the final on the back of a less-than-stellar summer, with some observers suggesting he should either be dropped or reeled permanently back to midfield and others countering that the supply line to him simply hasn’t been of the required standard.
The fact is, as he says himself, that football has changed since 2006 when he announced his arrival as the game’s next big thing, in every sense, at full-forward against Longford in a move that prompted copycats and pale imitations across the land. Teams have learned to live with the long ball into the square again and Donaghy and Kerry have had to adapt accordingly.
He sees his role now as something of a catch-all, doing a bit here and more there, but enquiries as to his form are deflected away with the expected mantra about the importance of the team.
“It’s not about Kieran Donaghy getting 10 out of 10 in the paper,” he says, but the sight of the Dubs in an All-Ireland final offers plenty of motivation to provide the headlines.
“It certainly adds something different,” he agrees.
“We’ve played Mayo and Cork twice so this is something new. It will live long in the memory if it goes well and will be forgotten quickly if it goes bad. That’s the beauty of a final and we grew up watching the glory years of Kerry-Dublin. Even as a young fella, I remember being out the back with my uncle Brian. He would be Paddy Cullen and I would be Mikey Sheehy shooting for goals.
“It’s great to think that I will be going into a game — with the help of God — to take on Dublin in the biggest day for Irish sport.”
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