Jack O'Connor: Maybe the favourites tag weighed heavy on us in the first half

JOYOUS: Kerry manager Jack O'Connor celebrates after the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship Final match between Kerry and Galway at Croke Park in Dublin. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

Jack O’Connor admitted he let out “a couple of yahoos” at half-time in this All-Ireland final having seen his team kick seven wides and trail by a point.

“I was quite animated myself at half-time,” he acknowledged sitting beside Gavin White in the media auditorium afterwards. “I felt that we weren’t playing to our potential out there. There were players who had more to give.

“We’ve always been pretty composed in the dressing room at half-time. But I think today was one where we needed a bit of a jolt. And we left a couple of yahoos alright, did we Gavin? One or two yahoos.” 

David Moran and Paul Geaney was hauled off at the break and replaced by Spillanes, Adrian and Killian. O’Connor explained the rationale behind those early calls: “David spent a week there after the Dublin game, he had a bit of illness, he did not train and we felt he was not going to last the game. I had the same dose myself and it took a good bit out of myself. 

“Paul (Geaney) was playing quite well, he was just a bit unsettled and snatching at stuff. We just thought Killian would settle things down but look what is the point of having subs if you don’t put them in?” 

O’Connor always anticipated Galway would push them for the duration of the game and suggested that being heavily fancied did upset Kerry. 

“This was never going to be an easy game. I’m not sure what the odds were because I’m not a betting man. But we never took Galway lightly. I thought Galway played very very well. Maybe the tag of favouritism rested heavily on our fellas’ shoulders, particularly in the first half I thought we were very jiggy and not composed on the ball. I think we had seven wides kicked before Galway registered a wide. So they looked like they were nailing everything down into the Hill 16 end, and we were very wasteful up the other end.

“In general play, I thought we were doing okay. We were turning Galway over. And we were doing very well on the Galway kick-out. I just thought we were lacking composure and just needed to be more clinical. And that was the message at half-time. They kicked the first point of the second half and you know their game plan was working for them but I think our fellows just showed a lot of metal in the second half and we had the experience of the Dublin game to fall back on.

“Dublin came back within two points of us with 25 minutes with the wind behind them and all the momentum. So, I think that probably stood to us in the last 15 to 20 minutes that we had that to fall back on.” 

Again, O’Connor pointed to the work the players done with performance coach Tony Griffin. “It had to be ground out and we spoke about that on Thursday night. There are many ways to win a game. We feel that all the work we have done on the mental side of the game with the lads we can dig out a game, we can dog it out. As it turned out, that was the way.

“A lot of people thought this might be an easy game for us. We never bought into that for one minute. We felt that we would be in a dogfight and we referred to league games when we played and it looked like we were going to lose and we just found something in the last ten or fifteen minutes. I think there is a lot of belief in the dressing room, a lot of belief in each other.

“We have worked incredibly hard on the mental side of the game this year with Tony Griffin. I just think we needed everything in the end to get over the line because that was a really good Galway display today.” Producing five assists, scoring a point and keeping his two markers scoreless, Graham O’Sullivan had a phenomenal game for a man who wasn’t a certain start up to the championship.

“I had a couple of meetings with him earlier on this year,” O’Connor recounted. “At the start, he wasn’t making the team. Just spoke about what he needed to do to progress and he is some transformed player. Very athletic.

“At the start of the year he wasn’t kicking the ball for love or money. Now he is one of our best foot passers, right and left, kicked a great score, made two or three other scores, absolute revelation. I am very proud of the way a fellow Dromid (Pearses) man has developed this year.”