Mark O’Connor quick to find groove but Tom O’Sullian runs the show for Dingle
COOL, CALM: Dingle's Tom O'Sullivan clears his lines.
PADRAIG Corcoran, the Dingle manager, tried hard to suppress the devious grin when asked afterwards what position Mark O’Connor had actually played in Saturday's Kerry SFC quarter-final victory over Dr Crokes in Tralee.
“Ah, he was around half back, a bit of half forward,” Corcoran offered. “Sure, he covers ground.”
Watched by a gaggle of his AFL Grand final-winning Geelong colleagues at Austin Stack Park, O’Connor folded into the Dingle starting set-up like a tidy handkerchief and kicked a booming first half point to boot. He was a willing outlet to begin attacks and was involved in the top end of the pitch as much as his colleagues demanded.
Not that Dingle are short of offensive weaponry. Down to the last four now and the only club left in the competition, it will take a good side to stop them.
“Mark is a class act but he is also very much part of this group. It’s not like he’s been dropped in from nowhere to the lads,” Corcoran explained. “Whenever he’s home he is with the lads, they are his friends, he is constant contact with them and the lads respect that. They know that if he wasn’t in Australia, he would be with us. He came off the plane into Dublin and eight or nine hours later, he is below in the field in Dingle.”
If O’Connor was the headline act, he was among the also-rans in comparison to Kerry’s Tom O’Sullivan, who sauntered through the hour like the Rolls Royce performer he is.
He began the evening putting the shackles on his inter-county colleague, Tony Brosnan, but advanced to a sweeper role – an unhindered one it should be said – from where he kicked five points at his ease.
Whoever Dingle’s semi-final opponent are, they will surely pin down O’Sullivan’s movements as part of their plan to derail the west Kerry men.
“We’ve seen it before, teams put someone on Tom, pull and drag and try to stop him getting up the field, that’s something he has to deal with. He was influential going forward, but he also had started trying to put the shackles on Tony Brosnan.”
Twenty-three minutes into Saturday’s quarter final, Austin Stack Park was bracing itself for a classic. The football was more poetic than prose, there’d been a spectacular goalline clearance from Dr Crokes, via Mark Cooper, and they’d had a goal chalked off for a questionable square ball. The sides had shared ten points, many of them sumptuous, and the ground cosied up for a shootout. How uplifting to watch possession and the ball move in a north-south direction.
However, here’s the rub. Dr Crokes came into the quarter-final minus three significant personalities, never mind football talents, in Kerry’s Micheal Burns, Gavin White and their erstwhile inter-county colleague, Fionn Fitzgerald, who suffered a cruciate injury last week. Given the transition this season towards a new generation of talent, their big game experience was a telling miss.
Eventually it would show.
David Shaw produced a sublime piece of technique to edge Crokes 0-5 to 0-4 in front after 15 minutes but worryingly for them it was their final score of the half. Tom O’Sullivan begin to dictate the game’s tempo and when Mark O’Connor found him behind the Crokes cover to add a mark in the 28th minute, the west Kerry men had eased into a 0-8 to 0-5 half time lead.
That gradual shift in control accelerated into a dam burst in the decisive minutes after the break. Paul Geaney again had a point within twenty seconds and then held off his man to tee up Dylan Geaney for a simple tap-in goal a minute later. Crokes were still clearing their heads as Tom O’Sullivan added a point, and without a pause, there was eight points between the sides, 1-10 to 0-5.
By the end, it had stretched to ten points, and Dingle went out the gate with their self-belief enhanced. Even in recent campaigns, Dingle has succumbed to their Achilles heel of not delivering what the occasion demands, but there have been gains from the bad days too, manager Corcoran pointed out.
“We are a bit more battle-hardened, we have had some difficult days. I’d like to think they have driven us on a small bit. They are of a good age now too and with that comes a nice bit of experience.”
P Geaney (0-5), T. O’Sullivan (0-5), D Geaney (1-2, one mark), B O’Sullivan (0-2), C Flannery (0-2), M Flaherty, M O’Connor (0-1).
: T Brosnan (0-5, 4 frees), D Shaw (0-2), M Potts, M O’Shea, T Doyle, M Fitzgerald (0-1 each).
: G Curran; C Flannery, C O’Sullivan, P O’Connor; N Geaney, T O’Sullivan, R McCarthy; B. O’Sullivan, L O’Connor; G Durrant, M O’Connor, M Geaney; D Geaney, P Geaney, M Flaherty.
: T Leo O’Sullivan for C O’Sullivan (42), M Flannery for M Geaney (50), D O’Sullivan for L O’Connor, D Uosis for N Geaney (56), T de Brun for B O’Sullivan (60).
S Murphy; J Payne, N O’Shea, M Potts; M Fitzgerald, M Cooper, E Looney; M O’Shea, D Shaw; C O’Regan, T Doyle, B Looney; T Brosnan, K O’Leary, C McMahon.
: D Casey for K O’Leary (40), D Naughton for N O’Shea (45), L Randles for O’Regan (60).
B Griffin, Clounmacon.
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