Walsh: Only way to beat the swarm is to kick it quick

Among the 6,230 football followers who shook and rattled with the cold and rolled their eyes at the sub-standard fare in Tralee’s Austin Stack Park on Sunday, one question endured.

And we asked it of Kerry’s Donnchadh Walsh, a thoughtful individual not given to the ways of the cliché. Can a team still win an All-Ireland playing football?

“It is a challenge,” he mused. “I’d love to play the game where it was all kick, catch and score, where you take on your one man. But that’s not the way it is anymore. What are you going to do?” he pondered, offering the unspoken, ridiculous notion of a Roberto Duran ‘no mas’.