Joe Kernan tells Irish players to cast off the shackles
The visiting side only have 22 players with them, one short of the maximum number. “We have 23, we weren’t told different, so that’s the rule,” said a defiant Kernan yesterday. “I am not telling any Irish player he is not togging out tomorrow.”
Kernan has put it to his players to show they can outwork a set of the AFL’s top professional sportsmen. “We just want players to take the handcuffs off. That means hard work. We have to work harder than the Australians to win this. You’re not going to win it on speed or skill; you have to work hard. That’s what bred into them (Australians) and we have to come off here (the pitch) knowing that we emptied the tank.
“If a player comes on and comes off after five minutes, he empties the tank for that five minutes. He doesn’t f***ing just take his position and run every now and then. We have to be alert for the full four quarters or we’ll be in trouble. That’s new to us because we have had 12 weeks to get ready and these boys are ready all of the time.”
The respective camps met for a dinner in Clontarf Castle on Thursday night, a practice that was introduced as part of the resolution to the violent scenes that marred the series and threatened its future in the mid-2000s.
Pleasantries and compliments were exchanged between the camps at yesterday’s captain’s run in Croke Park but Kernan maintained they only go so far. “You can respect your own worst enemy but you are still going to go to battle with him. They are lovely fellas and we had a lovely night last night (but) we wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. It’s not what we are used to.”
Kernan made no secret of what game-plan he expects his players to execute. “From day one, when I got the job, I said that we would be playing an attacking game. We cannot afford to let Australia to come at us with the speed and the power and the slick handpass, they will be getting in for shots, and we cannot afford that.
“But the other thing is that if we can kick the ball the way we should be able to, and we have worked on it hard over the last 12 weeks, hopefully that will help us get out of trouble and change the play.”
Backed by his captain Luke Hodge and to a certain extent by Kernan and Bernard Brogan, Australian coach Alastair Clarkson reiterated his support to see the series brought to New York. “I think there are some real fantastic features of this game. We play a different type of game to the Irish but there are similarities and we’ve made up this hybrid type of game. It requires use of the hands, use of the feet, our athleticism — in both games we’re very, very similar.
“We’re really keen to put that on as a spectacle to the world. Australia’s a long, long way away. It’s not very often that people are going to travel to Australia to watch our game so if we can somehow bring our game or elements of it to the rest of the world and part of that is this series which has been going for 30 years.
“It’s had its moments and it’s waned at different stages as we talked about before but if we’ve got a genuine belief we want to grow our code then we need to travel abroad. New York has a huge ex-pat Irish population and the east coast as there is an Australian contingent so there’s support for both countries in that part of the world so I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t try to capitalise on that and have one of the games there.”
A crowd of up to 40,000 is expected to attend this evening’s test, with the 95th anniversary of Bloody Sunday at the stadium to be commemorated by GAA president Aogán Ó Fearghail and director general Páraic Duffy, followed by a moment of silence. The pair will lay a wreath at the Nally Stand end where Michael Hogan was shot dead on this day in 1920 and a moment of silence will follow the short ceremony. All 14 people who were killed in Croke Park that day will be acknowledged.
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