The 'painful' February morning that put Kerry's road to redemption in motion

Declan Quill admits that the hangover from last year’s All-Ireland final was one that lasted through the winter.

Sun, 13 Aug, 2023 - 07:43

Murt Murphy

It seemed a massive admission on the part of Kerry's management to say that the starting point of this season's march to Croke Park on Sunday was looking back at last year’s second-half collapse to Meath in their All-Ireland final failure.

But as joint-manager Declan Quill quickly explained, failure doesn’t automatically mean that the end is in sight.

Not with his group of girls anyway, who Louise Galvin described as “the best group of girls I have ever been involved with either professionally or as an amateur”.

Quill admits that the hangover from last year’s All-Ireland final was one that lasted through the winter and it was nearly February before the management team thawed out and realised that despite the loss to Meath, all was not doom and gloom and it was time to start the journey back to Croke Park.

So how did the management view last year’s loss to Meath?

"Brilliant start, terrible finish," was Declan’s succinct reply. "I suppose we got off to an ideal start when we had 1-2 on the board. We then maybe drifted away from our game plan, especially in the second half. But with ten minutes to go that game was still in the melting pot really.

"I think a lot of it was down to a lack of experience on the big day. I suppose that was Meath’s fifth or sixth time being in Croke Park for the intermediates and the leagues as well as All-Irelands so they just stuck to their plan. We looked back over the game on a very painful morning in Brosna in February and we highlighted some of the things we didn’t do that we promised we would do, and we were very disappointed with that.

"I suppose we looked at when you play Meath and their style of football, you just do not take the ball into the tackle or run the ball into dead ends. If you look back at the second half that is exactly what we did. We had practiced hard in not doing that but I suppose maybe the pressure and the whole sense of occasion got to some of the girls and we did not stick to the plan that we had set out to do.

"Our kick-outs came under scrutiny but I reckon our kick-outs were not all that bad when you look back at it. Ciara Butler was nearly spot on with a lot of her kick outs into space. It’s about what happens when the ball hits the ground too.

"Ciara hit her targets a lot of times but we were just not good enough on breaking ball. We just were not quick enough to react. To suggest that Ciara had a meltdown or anything is not accurate."

Quill concluded: "Now having said that we are not silly enough to realise that Ciara had a few bad ones, and she knows that herself and she has dealt with that. We are now more mature and I think it showed against Meath in the quarterfinal, especially in the second half in atrocious conditions where we had to really mind the ball and not take it into the tackle. I think the team in that game in particular showed how much the girls have evolved in the last year."

Quill's partner-in-crime, Darragh Long admitted to being impressed with Dublin in the semi-final despite all the noise about how uncouth the Kerry girls were when they met in Parnell Park.

“I was very impressed with Dublin. Look we got up close and personal with them in Parnell Park a month ago so we are well aware of what they are going to bring to the table. They are a very powerful aggressive unit that come at you in drove and come at you in waves.

"They have some fantastic individual players Lauren Magee, Leah Caffrey, Jennifer Dunne, Carla Rowe, Hannah Tyrrell and a host of other names. I think their trajectory since our meeting in Parnell Park has been on an upward curve but I think nobody could dispute the fact that we have not been too bad ourselves this year. "

Long continued: "We are very comfortable where we are at but with impressed with Mick and his group in Thurles and well aware of the challenge ahead of us.

"I think our girls will give Mick’s girls as many headaches as his girls are giving our girls so it will be decided on the pitch not on the sideline. We are not going to change what we do and we have picked up very few yellow cards this year.

"We don’t mind being called a physical team but we are not a dirty team to use an old expression. In our four years in charge there is nothing that any of our girls did on the field that we would be disappointed with.

"We will match the opponent’s physicality in the tackle and that is what players enjoy so no I am not expecting any problems on that front.”

KERRY: C Butler; É Lynch, K Cronin, C Murphy; A O’Connell, E Costello, C Lynch; L Scanlon, L Galvin; N Carmody, N Ní Chonchúir, A Galvin; H O’Donoghue, D O’Leary, L Ní Mhuircheartaigh.

DUBLIN: A Shiels; N Crowley, L Caffrey, A Kane; L Magee, M Byrne, N Donlon; J Dunne, E O’Dowd; C O’Connor, O Nolan, K Sullivan; H Tyrrell, C Rowe, J Egan.