Dara Ó Cinnéide: Once Kerry are cold and dispassionate about their business...

The notion Kildare have nothing to lose in tomorrow’s All- Ireland SFC quarter-final is one I’ve heard bandied about a few times this week.

While I accept at face value what is meant by it, I would reject absolutely the idea a team in the last eight of the All-Ireland Championship has nothing to lose. Every team that has any type of ambition will know this weekend could be their last in Championship 2015 and thus the stakes are higher as everything they’ve prepared for this past year is on the line.

Both sets of players, Kildare’s and Kerry’s, are familiar with the rituals and the emotions attached to this stage of the season so tomorrow’s opener at Croke Park will be played on its merits alone and not on all the chatter that surrounds it.

The permutations for Kerry are simple and straightforward: if they play as they are capable of playing, they will win, regardless of what Kildare bring to the contest. If they amble up to the game, as they did against Galway last year and, more particularly, against Cavan two seasons ago, they can be turned over. But the imperatives are obvious — maintain the high work-rate of the replayed Munster final, be cold and dispassionate about their business and everything else falls into place.

For Kildare, an awful lot more is going to have to go to plan. Because nobody, bar the Cork players themselves, can answer the questions that need to be asked of them after last Saturday.

We can only guess at how Kildare might have fared in Thurles if their hunger, their eagerness and their honesty had been matched by a team more interested in battle than Cork. But, given the level of performance and the slick interplay they showed at times, my sense is Kildare might have beaten Cork even if the Rebels hadn’t suffered a series of misfortunes: an early black card, an injury to a key player and a glorious goal chance spurned.

Surely Kerry won’t fall into the trap of allowing key players such as Niall Kelly, Paul Cribbin, Tommy Moolick, Eoghan O’ Flaherty and Eoin Doyle dictate the terms as much as they did in the first-half against Cork, when the game actually resembled something like a close contest? Moolick and Cribbin, who dominated last Saturday, now get the chance to test themselves against the two best footballing midfielders left in the race for Sam.

Should they decide to take on Anthony Maher and David Moran in a game of buffeting and horsing, they might not come off that too well either, and although they may get some reward from testing the ‘legs’ of the Kerry duo, it is worth remembering in last year’s epic semi-final replay against Mayo, the Kerry duo outlasted almost every other player on the field. Together, Moran and Maher won 19 of Mayo’s 30 kick-outs as well as a fair share of their own. Nonetheless, Cribbin’s mobility and his tendency to attack down the flanks will pose challenges.

To suggest Kerry don’t concede scores down through the middle of the park anymore would be off the mark too. Tomás Flynn’s wonder-goal at the quarter final stage last year for Galway alerted Kerry to their vulnerabilities in this regard. For a while afterwards, they protected the scoring area in the Ulster fashion, but lately appeared uncertain again when players with genuine pace run directly at them.

It’s a problem that re-emerged in Omagh at the end of the league and continued against Tipperary and Cork in the championship, most obviously in the lead-up to Barry O’Driscoll’s goal in the Munster final and Paul Kerrigan’s strike in the replay. When it’s stated for the umpteenth time Kerry struggle when quick players run at them, it’s tempting to shrug one’s shoulders and ask, ‘What team doesn’t?’

Nevertheless, as the serious teams enter the picture this weekend, Eamonn Fitzmaurice and his selectors will be concerned if the pattern persists. The Kildare brains trust, for their part, will recognise two rogue passages of play from the first half of the Cork game for what they are. The first, in the 25th minute, started with a Paul Cribbin restart from a line ball, and ended with Paudie O’Neill winning a tap-over free to put Kildare ahead a full minute and 45 seconds later.

The second passage started with Paudie O’Neill turning over Paul Kerrigan in full flight on 32 minutes and finished with an O’Neill point off his left leg all of one minute and 17 seconds later. That first move involved 18 hand-passes and two foot-passes while the second featured 15 hand-passes and, again, two with the foot. In both sequences Cork’s failure to get near the ball at any stage was obvious, but more noteworthy still was the number of basic errors Kildare made — like spilling the ball and turning away from space into trouble — without ever once being punished.

Having reviewed the build up to Barry O’Driscoll’s goal in the drawn Munster final, Kerry won’t be as accommodating when defending in numbers and Kildare should expect the Kingdom to put huge pressure on recycled ball. The Lilywhites have some big decisions to make in terms of match-ups. In two successive games, full-backs have had some joy on Kieran Donaghy but the return to the happy hunting ground of Croke Park might see him rekindle the flame that burned so brightly end of last year.

Of all the Kildare backs, Peter Kelly seems best suited in terms of temperament and aggression to marking Donaghy but, if the big fella really catches fire, it might take a radical move like sending back Tommy Moolick to try and quell the flames. Ollie Lyons has the pace and stamina to stay with James O’Donoghue but he’s going to need help if he wants to go on those lightning darts of his as O’Donoghue is not a player to be left to be left to his own devices in Croke Park.

Eoin Doyle seems well matched with Bryan Sheehan but his half-back colleagues Emmet Bolton and Kevin Murnaghan will need to be tidier in the tackle than they were against Cork to prevent the centre-forward from having one of those days from frees.

Kildare’s recent form and scoring returns (4-60 in the three games since the Dublin defeat) tells us they have built up a nice head of steam, but they’re still a team that have gotten it wrong more often than not all year.

They have yet to show they’ve eliminated enough of the variables from their game to survive in a high intensity contest. In that respect, they are something of an unknown quantity tomorrow. But, it’s Kerry. It’s August. It’s Croke Park. Only twice since the quarter-finals began has that meant anything other than a win for the Kingdom.

Donegal must prove the fire still burns

Of the other games in Croke Park today and tomorrow, only the clash of Galway and Donegal holds any intrigue for the neutral supporter. Because Donegal kicked so many wides in the Ulster final against Monaghan, it was always going to be hard to get over the line in a tight, dour game.

We don’t know yet how much that defeat took out of Donegal, but whereas in the recent past they appeared vivified and unburdened by the prospect of escaping Ulster and heading to Croke Park, there now seems to be a heaviness to everything that they do do. Their county board set the tone a fortnight ago by requesting the game be played at a provincial venue.

While not for one moment trying to diminish the effect of a long evening journey on supporters’ pockets, surely every inter-county team wants to be in Croke Park this weekend? If I were a Donegal man, I’d be concerned today the energy of three years ago has dissipated to such an extent it can no longer be switched on when needed.

Sometimes players are the last to sense when the flame is gone from something, and it’s going to take a monumental effort from the leaders within this Donegal group to reignite their campaign.

Whether or not Galway are capable of capitalising on any drop in Donegal energy levels depends on their getting their defence right. When they took on Kerry at this stage and in this venue last year, it wasn’t just the 10 first-half wides (five in the first seven minutes alone!) that did for them, it was also their naiveté in going man-to-man against a full-forward line of James O’Donoghue, Declan O’Sullivan and Paul Geaney. The pace and exuberance of Michael Lundy, Danny Cummins, Damien Comer and, when introduced, Shane Walsh, might cause a bit of bother for the Donegal defence but ultimately it will be the Galway backs who decide the outcome.

I doubt they yet have the qualities needed to keep this a low-scoring game, and I expect Donegal to advance.