Jack O’Connor: ‘It’s the fear of losing the jersey that drives fellas on’

The problem, relatively speaking, with winning three All-Ireland minor titles in a row is that people expect that success to automatically translate itself to U21 level.

Kerry started last night’s game with 14 players who had featured in the minor victories of 2014, ’15 or ’16 – the other, Matthew O’Sullivan, scored 1-1 – but they were still up against a Cork team laden with survivors from last year’s run to the U21 final.

Though the Kingdom were favourites, a victory of the magnitude which transpired wasn’t predicted by many. Naturally, manager Jack O’Connor was highly complimentary about what he had seen.

“It’s great,” he said.

“We were under a bit of pressure, everybody’s talking up this team but you still have to go out and perform.

“Our attitude was spot-on. We got a nice tough game from Clare at home, that ironed out any issues we had. I thought our tackling was top-class tonight.

“The bottom line is fellas have to go out and perform because they know that someone else will get the jersey if they’re not performing. I think it’s the fear of losing the jersey that drives fellas on more than anything else.

“Well, whatever about the future, we’re interested in the present, which is to try and go the distance with these fellas. They tasted success with minors and they’re mad for road.

“Winning breeds confidence and these guys want to go further.” Leading by six points at half-time, Kerry soon extended that to ten, putting the game out of sight.

“That was the key to it,” O’Connor said.

“We said at half-time, we’d won the first half by six points, so we’ll go hell for leather in the second half. It was important we got a good start because that killed the game after 10. We expected a huge challenge from Cork, on the night it didn’t materialise but I think our fellas played very well.

“We really set the tone by stopping Cork coming out of their own defence, time and again turning them over.

“I think the tackling and work rate by our players really was the cornerstone of the victory.”

Páirc Uí Rinn hasn’t been a happy ground for some Kerry U21 sides, with O’Connor well aware of that.

“We haven’t won up here for a long time,” he said.

“I remember up in that upper goal (Temple Hill end), David Moloney saved a penalty from Philip Clifford to win the last game for us in 1997, 20 years ago.

“It was great to comeback and have a good victory tonight. We’ll enjoy this one but our focus tomorrow morning will be on the All-Ireland semi-final. I think we’re meeting Connacht, that’s another hurdle but we’ll certainly savour this one tonight.” O’Connor’s counterpart, Cork boss Seán Hayes couldn’t explain why it hadn’t happened for his side: “Very disappointed, they’re better than that,” he said.

“I can’t put a finger on why they were so poor, we had the right attitude and the build-up was good, but from the minute they ball was thrown in we just flopped. Whether it was fear or nerves or what, I don’t know, we’ll have to analyse it, but it’s very disappointing to go down like that in a Munster final.

“We gave away stupid balls, the stats in the first half were frightening and we didn’t really improve in the second half either. I don’t have any reason why we did so poorly.

“There’s no real reason for it that I can put my finger on at the present time, it’s too soon after the game to be honest.

“I’m disappointed for the lads as well, they’ve tried and worked a lot harder than they played today.”