Kingdom’s lethargic start returned to haunt them

Three ways to win an All-Ireland

1: A poor opening half hour by Kerry

DUBLIN were there for the taking in the first quarter and Kerry failed to exploit it. Appearing in their first final against a very experienced team, the Leinster champions looked nervous and failed to bring the expected intensity to the occasion. Kerry had huge amounts of possession and enough time on the ball, winning 4/7 Dublin kickouts and 8/12 of their own. The Kingdom had all the match-ups in their favour — Kieran Donaghy flourishing aerially at wing-forward on James McCarthy, Darran O’Sullivan a handful for Ger Brennan and Eoin Brosnan negating Paul Flynn for kickouts. With Dublin’s three attackers being outnumbered, their movement needed to be good but it was poor, in particular Bernard Brogan who looked very low in energy. Marc Ó Sé had a fine game but Bernard didn’t ask many questions of him. With all this in their favour Kerry failed to show their customary ruthlessness and conviction and had only 1-1 on the board after half an hour. Compared with the blitz in 2009 this gave Dublin massive encouragement. Darran O’Sullivan in fairness cut Dublin apart to set up a brilliant goal for Colm Cooper but surely it was part of the plan to get Darran to run at Ger Brennan more than once but Kerry failed to exploit this before Brennan swapped with the pacier James McCarthy. Kerry failed to build on their goal and instead Dublin replied with the next four points. Paul Galvin’s first involvements, instead of bringing direction to the Kerry forward play, were to concede three free-kicks in scoreable positions. For Dublin to go in at half-time a point up was hugely important.