‘It’ll be a game of cat and mouse’

All-Ireland MFC final

Kerry minor manager Jack O’Connor expects Sunday’s curtain-raiser to be “a game of cat and mouse”, revealing his intrigue at facing Donegal’s “northern, defensive style.”

O’Connor acknowledges the poor record of southern teams against the blanket defence, but is confident his charges won’t be fazed by their opponent’s “contrasting” brand of football.

“They play defensively and counter-attack well so it’s the old thing of a northern team and contrasting styles. It’s a great challenge for us as management to figure a way of getting around them,” said O’Connor.

“It’s nothing new to us, but it might be a bit new to the players. Games are played a bit more open down here. It’ll be a game of cat and mouse because we certainly won’t be leaving ourselves wide open at the back. It would be a big mistake for us to get sucked up the field following the play and then leave our defence exposed.

“I suspect it will be a low-scoring game, it won’t be as free-flowing as a lot of the games we played this year. We’re not worried, this is all about trying to get a result. We’d all love to go out and play toe-to-toe and man-on-man but the way the game has gone nowadays, that’s an illusion. There’s a bit of craic in trying to match up tactically against this type of system. It’s a great challenge to get everybody to be patient, to wait for openings and not be trying to force them.

“You have to keep a structure in your back line. I think that was probably the mistake the Dublin seniors made, they were all pulled down the field and left a lot of gaps.

“It’s a big challenge for players on any given day when they see space in front of them to move the ball on rather than move into the space. It’s the first instinct to run into that space but sometimes it’s not the cleverest thing to do.”

Twenty years have passed since a Kerry captain last stood over the Tom Markham Cup. Too long, insists O’Connor.

“Jack Ferriter, Denis Dwyer and Mike Frank Russell, who are long since finished playing inter-county senior football, were on the last Kerry team that won it. That will tell you that it’s well overdue. For a county like Kerry, with the tradition, not to win a minor in 20 years is like the Kilkenny hurlers not winning a minor.

“I’m not sure why it has been so long, but it would be fantastic for this group to bridge that gap. My only aim is to try and win it with this group because they have worked fierce hard. We have got great satisfaction the whole year but the bottom line is that we need to perform in the final and try and get a result.”

He added: “We are delighted the seniors will be there too. If our minors were in the final on their own, obviously the weight of expectation of the county would be on their shoulders. Thankfully we can fly under the radar and prepare outside of the spotlight.”