It’s Tyrone’s turn to plot an ambush but...

Football needs Kerry, but it needs Tyrone too’ (Mickey Harte) Writing in ‘Presence is the Only Thing’ about a decade locked in battle with Kerry, Mickey Harte sums up Tyrone’s attitude to their greatest rivals:

“I simply see two teams with a contrast in styles, sharing the same relentless ambition to win. We can look them in the eye. There’s respect, but no fear.” In the same book, the idea Kerry and others failed to give Tyrone the respect they deserved also emerges as a recurring theme and a key motivation.

Before the 2003 All-Ireland semi-final, Harte wondered how Kerry saw Tyrone. He concluded Kerry probably viewed his team “as a bunch of whippersnappers who did rightly in the league” but whose confidence would bend in Croke Park to the “traditional superiority” of the Kingdom.

This time around the notion Kerry disrespect Tyrone would be a much harder sell. The Kingdom’s reaction to their qualifier victory in Killarney in 2012 was final proof, if any was needed, of the high regard in which Tyrone and Mickey Harte are held in Kerry.

Put it this way, if Kerry were facing any other team with a similar recent pedigree to that of Tyrone, would their supporters be as anxious as some of them are about Sunday’s game? There’s respect alright, and, when it comes to Harte himself, whisper it, even a little fear.

A few weeks before the 2005 All-Ireland final, the Tyrone manager set once more to figuring out what Kerry were thinking. He gathered his players together, split them into groups, and asked them to compile a list of reasons why Kerry would want to beat Tyrone.

The upshot was the Kingdom, still raw from 2003, would be out to “redress the balance”.

Harte gives the impression figuring out what Kerry were thinking was always just as vital as knowing what made Tyrone tick. We don’t know whether or not the Tyrone manager gathered his players together last week to compile another list, but, if he did, they may have found the current Kerry team a more inscrutable proposition.

Explaining why football needed both Kerry and Tyrone, Harte offered that the game “thrives on variety and different styles”. The problem now facing Tyrone is how well Kerry have learned that lesson and how deeply Eamonn Fitzmaurice appreciates the benefits of variety.

In winning last year’s All-Ireland, Kerry’s greatest virtues were their adaptability and their humility in accepting that they had to be adaptable. As they continue to go about the business of defending their title, they have shown, especially during the replayed Munster final in the Killarney rain, enough to suggest that those virtues remain intact.

In those same weeks leading up the 2005 final, Mickey Harte predicted Kerry’s main focus would be on taking the game to Tyrone from the off by working the wings and playing quick angled balls to the inside forwards. Kerry, he decided, would not run at Tyrone down the middle.

He may well be expecting something similar tomorrow.

If so, containment will probably be Tyrone’s watchword at throw-in. It wouldn’t be unknown for the man to spring a surprise, but Harte’s comments during the week about how difficult it is to chase a game with an ultra- defensive system hinted at an acceptance keeping it as tight as possible, by whatever means possible, for as long as possible is Tyrone’s best hope of pulling off another famous win in Croke Park.

For Harte the 2005 All- Ireland final was all about showing that 2003 “wasn’t a freak accident”.

“Staging an ambush to catch Kerry might have been part of the plan, but we didn’t see ourselves as an ambush team. We were a team of real quality. We had to convince the wider world of that.” Seven years on since their last All-Ireland appearance, Harte and Tyrone have come full circle. It is their turn again to play ‘the ambush team’ out to convince the world.

That there is a sense that their reputation rather than the current reality has people second guessing the bookies ahead of Sunday’s semi-final is a measure of how successfully they changed the way the world looks at them.

Eamonn Fitzmaurice said earlier this summer when Kerry are “ordinary” they can be beaten by anyone. His team almost proved him right in the drawn Munster final, and, of course, Tyrone aren’t just ‘anyone’.

They are an expertly managed, quick, abrasive team with a clear game-plan, a number of promising young talents and a smattering of proven winners and performers.

All the chatter about their antics in the quarter final against Monaghan shouldn’t mask what was a very efficient performance. Many of the elements that we saw in their final league game in Omagh were there again a fortnight ago, only this time the approach was more refined, better rehearsed and more ruthless.

The direct, purposeful running when attacking the ‘D’ that drew 33 frees against Kerry in April was even more focused in the game against Monaghan. Watch how Aidan McRory won the free for Connor McAliskey in the 16th minute or how Ronan McNabb set up Peter Harte for his right legged point on 23 minutes. When Monaghan keeper, Rory Beggan injured himself in clearing the high ball three minutes later, it was corner-back, McRory, again who was contesting that ball at the edge of the square. These things don’t happen by chance. They appears too habitual and happen too often to be anything other than carefully planned operations.

Kerry learned from their spring encounter that Tyrone like to suck at least one defending player in before they offload possession. When done in a slick manner, these type of off-the-shoulder passing movements can result in goal chances at best and, at worst, in the type of ‘gimme’ frees from inside 30 yards that Tyrone have been winning with alarming regularity.

Kerry, for their part, will feel a patient, controlled build up will eventually expose gaps in the Tyrone defensive cover, but they should have learned from Monaghan’s first-half performance there is such a thing as being too patient. Kerry must realise it is not Donegal they are facing tomorrow and there will be times when a quick diagonal kick to change the direction of the play can bring the overlapping players into action more often than Monaghan chose to.

When the likes of Kieran Hughes, Dessie Mone, Fintan Kelly and Conor McManus got that split second to shoot from distance in the first-half of the quarter final, they managed to score some pretty spectacular points.

When similar opportunities came to Owen Duffy in the second-half, he too showed the value of getting your better kickers in small pockets of spspace against a crowded defensive system. It is hardly a strategy to live by when taking on Tyrone, but if executed cleverly enough, it can lead to some valuable scores from distance and draw Tyrone out of their shell.

The answers to three key questions will be the winning and losing of the game. Can Kerry get a goal to go ahead and force Tyrone to come out and chase a lead? Can Tyrone entice fouls from a Kerry team who seem to have learned from their league encounter in Omagh by only conceding four scoreable frees in their last two games? And, finally, will Kerry go long with their own kick-out often enough? Going long would be their preferred option and the one most likely to lead to scores if ball is won cleanly. One would imagine, however, Tyrone will attack Kerry’s perceived strengths just as they did in their last All Ireland win over the Kingdom in Croke Park.

Tyrone will look Kerry in the eye tomorrow. There will be respect, but no fear. But the reality is Kerry are the more mature, flexible and resourceful side. If James O’Donoghue is fully fit, and if Colm Cooper can rekindle the magic of his partnership with Kieran Donaghy, Kerry also have a more dangerous look about them. In short, they have the better team and, whatever anyone is thinking or not thinking, that still counts for something.