Kerry manager Jack O'Connor: 'This job isn't done; this job is far from done'

O’Connor did not think Seán O’Shea’s match-winning free was a kickable one and so was mentally preparing himself for extra-time when his centre-forward stood over the 76th minute dead-ball effort

Sun, 10 Jul, 2022 - 20:54

Eoghan Cormican

Jack O’Connor did not think Seán O’Shea’s match-winning free was a kickable one and so was mentally preparing himself for extra-time when his centre-forward stood over the 76th minute dead-ball effort.

Of course, he was only too delighted that his number 11 proved him wrong.

“Personally, from the line, I didn't think it was kickable to be honest with you,” began Jack.

“I didn't think a man could get the distance because Seanie Shea had emptied the tank. That was the 76th minute. He had given a ferocious performance up to then.

“To have the resilience, the strength, and more importantly the technique to kick that with the in-step and just glide it in from the right-hand past, into the breeze and into the Hill. So that has to be one of the best pressure kicks we've seen here in Croke Park in a long, long time.”

It was even more impressive again when you consider that O’Shea had seen his 31st minute penalty saved, a green-flag opportunity that would have decided this semi-final long, long before he put the ball on the deck six minutes into second-half stoppages.

“I don't think the penalty affected him because he was playing very, very well. Seanie is a resilient character, that was never going to affect him.

“But like that last kick, there's very few players in the country… you go back to the Maurice Fitzs and the Bryan Sheehan's of this world to kick like that.”

O’Shea had to endure quite a wait before striking the aforementioned penalty, O’Connor none too pleased with the cynical wasting of time as he saw it by Evan Comerford. The goalkeeper was attended to by Dublin medical staff for several minutes after the spot-kick was awarded, with the Kerry boss viewing this as a deliberate attempt by Dublin to eat into John Small’s time in the sin bin.

“This craic that you can lie down and waste three minutes off a black card, that’s ridiculous. To what degree can you exploit that? If that’s the case, surely everyone could get players lying down for five minutes and waste half the black card. That’s a rule that needs to be tweaked.”

In the end, Kerry survived all that Dublin threw at them and, indeed, their own usual final quarter wobbles.

“Sure of course it’s significant psychologically,” replied Jack when asked how important it was to finally stem the tide of six championship games against Dublin without a win, “but Mayo were in this exact same position last year and I had the feeling that Mayo had made a huge breakthrough, but they didn’t get over the line in the final. You have to go the distance.

“Getting there isn’t enough. That’ll be a big, big incentive for us over the next two weeks to finish the job now. We have to do a lot of work on the boys in the next couple of weeks to convince them this job isn't done; this job is far from done.”

It is a two-week period that will allow David Clifford to put further distance between himself and recent ankle and calf injuries. The extent of those knocks were laid bare by the Kerry manager when he revealed that the full-forward didn’t train during the three weeks between their Munster semi-final and final and was further absent in the run in to the Mayo game.

“I’d say, minimum, he’s missed a month’s training in the last seven to eight weeks. He’s missed four out of the seven or eight weeks. So, you know, it’s a great sign of the man that he can play the way he did today, missing that much training.”