Kerry slam an exclamation mark down on the question marks
UPSIDE DOWN: Kerry's Sean O'Shea scores their second goal en route to a comprehensive 12-point win over Tyrone at Croke Park in Dublin.
WHEN the football summer got started for real, the All-Ireland champions dealt with the question marks with the emphatic rebuttal of an exclamation mark.
Not since the first 50 minutes of last year’s semi-final has Kerry stitched together a display of such depth and breadth, the totality of their dominance leaving their old nemesis fumbling around for their gumshields. It was that brutal. That the champions humbled Tyrone at their own game, feasting on no less than 19 turnovers, will be especially gratifying to the players. It wasn’t all down to the 2021 All-Ireland semi-final. Things are done and said in the heat of combat, but Kerry’s players were relentless to the extent that they seemed to be torching some old linen in the process.
Certainly, Paudie Clifford seemed excessively combative throughout and he eventually saw red with Conor Meyler in dead time. By way of fraternal backing, David Clifford stirred himself once more to force a fine save from Niall Morgan in the game’s final play. Truly, Kerry did not seem sated with their scoring sums at any point of this 2-18 to 0-12 evisceration.
Paudie’s dismissal was the only half-bum note of the day for Jack O’Connor but with Tyrone out of their system now – and the ghosts of Croke Park past with it – Kerry are looking like an outfit hitting their straps at the right moment.
In this campaign of change, O’Connor has always protested that only the back end of July would confirm whether the periodisation imperative had been properly calibrated. This week, he reminded championship watchers that no county had arrived at the quarter-finals without some question marks about their form. The Kingdom’s tour de force does not bestow sudden soothsayer qualities on their manager, but in his 20th year of inter-county football management, chances are he has a feel for how his string are going on the gallops. Noteworthy too that his, and Kerry’s performance director Jason McGahan has a PhD in load management, and two of the three selectors, Mike Quirke and Paddy Tally, have been inter-county bosses themselves. There aren’t many cobwebs on Diarmuid Murphy either.
These things are critical in the context of percentiles at this level, when the differences is measured in decimal points. Kerry hung their hat on Jason Foley quietening Darren McCurry, Tom O’Sullivan on Darragh Canavan and Graham O’Sullivan on Mattie Donnelly. All three did well, Foley especially, keeping McCurry scoreless from play. Though his inter-county campaign is done for this season, McCurry may still merit another visitor to Croke Park, this time a disciplinary forum, for his late gut-punch on Graham O’Sullivan.
In the matter of preambles on the midfield upper hand, Conn Kilpatrick and Brian Kennedy’s Tyrone dominance was so universal that it appeared Jack Barry and Diarmuid O’Connor only had to avoid tripping over each other to win some sympathy votes from the jurors. O’Connor finished the quarter-final with 1-2, the game’s decisive goal, and the best player award.
En route to a handy 1-5 of his own, Sean O’Shea put the finishing touch to the most outrageous act of giddiness from David Clifford under the Hogan Stand. Just watch it. At no point did O’Shea appear to be shuffling along like the weary foot soldier some feared they were watching a month ago.
It isn’t only the Kerry management that understands O’Shea is still only 24, but they have a better sense of how to handle what might have been a small dip in his confidence. His GPS numbers indicated O’Shea wasn’t struggling at all – far from it – but he might have been weighed down by a sense of disproportionate responsibility for Kerry’s wellbeing. Relieving him of such misconceptions was a good day’s work.
Kerry pillaged a stunning 1-10 off their ability to turn over Tyrone possession, a statistic that will only fuel hunger for more in a fortnight’s time. That the returning Briain Ó Beaglaoich and Mike Breen saw valuable minutes too can only enhance the sharpness in training. It might seem churlish to mention that Stephen O’Brien’s point was the first from a substitute in the All-Ireland series of games, but to do so only emphasises that Jack O’Connor and co will need a serious bit of gunpowder off the bench if they are to go back-to-back as champions for the first time since 2007.
In a double-scores landslide, it seems remarkable to point out that the teams were level at 0-6 apiece after 27 minutes, and nothing like the eventual margin seemed possible as Kerry repaired with a three-point half-time edge, having enjoyed the benefit of the capricious winds.
However, from the moment Diarmuid O’Connor nailed the catch from Brendan Cawley’s restart and teed up a goal chance that only the referee’s premature whistle denied, Tyrone looked like they had stumbled onto the wrong race track. Seeing the ultimate scrappers go through the motions in the final quarter was a strange sight, persistent turnovers draining their will to compete.
Maybe O’Connor called this one again: that a two-week break is ideal for a gradual build towards peak and that week-on-week momentum is over-rated. Even man of the match O’Connor admitted that they were in the headspace of “convincing” themselves that game-momentum would be a good thing before Cork’s timely intervention against Mayo in Limerick. Certainly, Tyrone looked dispiritingly sluggish and off the pace after the first 25 minutes, smacked of a side who, after winning in Ballybofey last week, had run out of road.
For all that, Kerry’s support play and strike running in both halves were tough to live with and showcased notable features in a display of precise manoeuvres. Their only moments of frustration were when they didn’t finish sweeping end-to-end passages of passing with a score. Tyrone went 27 minutes between their sixth and seventh points. In the same period the Kingdom accumulated 1-8.
Whatever the next month holds, it now feels appropriate to put Kerry’s performance at home to Mayo - if not necessarily the defeat as that would do a disservice to the visitors – into a revised context. There have been successful Kerry campaigns in O’Connor’s time where getting smacked around the place hasn’t been the worst thing. Showing varied competencies, they have handled Cork, Louth and Tyrone since the day Paddy Tally thought he was watching slapstick at Fitzgerald Stadium. Unquestionably, the coach from Tyrone has righted the shape and tempo of what Kerry do. And, as Jack O’Connor reminded us, these boys love Croke Park.
For anyone intent on relieving them of the cannister, that may be the most sobering fact of all.
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