With their dander up, Kerry put Dubs downer behind them

KILLARNEY SCENES: Tyrone's Darren McCurry and Adrian Spillane of Kerry. Pic: Bryan Keane, Inpho

Allianz FL Division 1: Kerry 0-18 Tyrone 1-11 

GRADUALLY, Jack O’Connor warmed to the theory and the import of the first quarter pushing and shoving in terms of stirring something in his players.

The Kerry manager wouldn’t go all-in and concede David Clifford might have known what he was doing when he barrelled into Tyrone’s sizeable midfielder Conn Kilpatrick on the Fitzgerald Stadium sideline, but there was a tacit acceptance that all was not right with the Kingdom in the opening 13 minutes. They needed a rattle.

It’s easy, of course, to distil complex tactical equations down to the simplistic but the incident undoubtedly had a disproportionate influence on the meeting of these old foes. And perhaps, if it wasn’t Tyrone, Kerry mightn’t have raised their dander to all-too-infrequent levels.

“I don’t think it’s in David Clifford’s interests to go boxing, what do you reckon lads?” O’Connor wondered. “He would rather stick to the football. You’re making a big deal out of it (the fracas), but maybe you’re right, you just might be right.

“Maybe we were a bit nervous early on, a bit tentative — that’s the word I would use to describe it. After that I thought we played with a bit of fury, a bit of drive, and played off the cuff a bit. We got the ball forward a bit quicker. I just thought we were a bit cautious early on.”

They were. O’Connor used the word tentative and it’s as good as any. Ponderous, tempo-less, stilted. And most likely, all down to what happened in Croke Park eight days previous.

“Maybe we were a bit nervous,” O’Connor conceded, “you have to remember there’s big pressure on these players to perform, particularly after the display against Dublin, so maybe they threw off the shackles a bit after the fracas.

“It was a tough enough week, but I have to say that the players, and everybody in the backroom team, responded and stuck together. That’s all you can do in a week like that. A lot of soul-searching, a lot of conversations. You’re just hoping that the work you do then, two decent training sessions, is then transmitted onto the game.”

For the largest part of the game it did. Kerry looked liberated once
referee David
Coldrick and his assistants had
restored order with bookings for Paudie Clifford, Dara Moynihan, and Tyrone’s Peter Harte, but none for David Clifford. It was in keeping with what was a somewhat odd display by the All-Ireland final referee.

Once Seán O’Shea had kicked the equaliser at 0-3 each, the crowd of around 6,000 were shaken and stirred.

Tyrone selector Collie Holmes agreed that maybe Kerry got a bigger bounce off the moment, but he was still back at the prosecutorial stage. “People may look at how it started in the first place. We got a mark; how all the stuff that happened is for someone else, we’ve been on the wrong side of those calls quite a few times recently.”

Kerry led 0-11 to 0-6 at the break and the fluency of their display at that point was exemplified by a 20-pass-plus sequence that ended with an angled point from O’Shea to make it 0-14 to 0-7.

That was another thing about Kerry once they ironed the unease out of their system — their shooting was excellent. Up to the hour mark they only had two wides, and David Clifford was a perfect eight from eight all told.

His final free of the day, into the wind from the Hospital terrace side, put to bed a hint of late Tyrone impudence as a Ciaran Daly goal on 66 minutes made it a four-point game, 0-17 to 1-10.

“There were a lot of the things we were looking for, like attitude and work rate and we were better on the kickouts. We got a bit sloppy near the end, but I felt the game was a bit closer than it should have been, O’Connor said.

“So we have to learn from that. I think we were still trying to kick the ball through the lines in the second half when the surface had got greasy from the half-time shower. We needed to take that into consideration, maybe put the ball through the hands more. I’d say it happened four or five times, that just kept Tyrone in the game to a degree.”

Tyrone’s Padraig Hampsey and Ben Cullen tackle David Clifford of Kerry. Pic: Bryan Keane, Inpho

Not to any great extent, to be fair. Brian Dooher’s side started with great poise and a nice show of power and size. But by the third quarter, their tackling was sloppy and their shooting frustratingly ambitious: Conall Devlin, Pádraig Hampsey, and Joe Oguz all put wide from low-percentage efforts.

Darragh Canavan has been hitting bullseyes of late but he was well held after a bright opening by Kerry’s Paul Murphy. Tadhg Morley had his best outing of the campaign and though the television MVP went to Diarmuid O’Connor, the most influential player in green and gold, beyond David Clifford, was Gavin White, who slotted into the six role with Morley the plus-one.

“He was very good,” his manager agreed. “Gavin has played in that position. He played with the minors in 2015 there, and he played a lot of football with the Crokes there. He gave great cut coming out.”

Sean O’Brien and Adrian Spillane both got on the scoreboard, and they will be needed because Cillian Burke and Dylan Geaney picked up awkward-looking hamstring injuries in the loss to Dublin. Their league race may be run.

As Tyrone look over their shoulder with a trip to Monaghan on the horizon, Kerry can start to plan beyond spring. With that Dublin disaster put in the rearview mirror to boot.

“I think that we still have more room for improvement,” O’Connor mused. “We have to work on that now for the next two weeks. It was good to get back on the horse because if we had two or three weeks to be thinking about the display in Croke Park, I’d say we’d have to move out of the house. It was great to have a game so quick, and particularly here in the stadium. The lads like the stadium, it’s a good footballers’ pitch.”

Scorers for Kerry: D Clifford (0-8, 6 frees), S O’Shea (0-4, 1 free), P Clifford (0-3), S O’Brien, A Spillane, D Moynihan (0-1 each).

Scorers for Tyrone: C Daly (1-1), D Canavan (0-3), D McCurry (0-2, 1 free), B Cullen, C Kilpatrick, R Canavan, S O’Donnell, N Morgan (45) (0-1 each).

KERRY: S Ryan; G O’Sullivan, J Foley, P Murphy; Seán O’Brien, T Morley, G White; D O’Connor, J O’Connor; A Spillane, P Clifford, D Moynihan; D Clifford, S O’Shea, C Geaney.

Subs: T Brosnan for C Geaney (HT), R Buckley for Spillane (51), S Okunbor for Sean O’Brien (60), Stephen O’Brien for Moynihan (62), D Roche for P Clifford (66), D Casey for Foley (68) blood sub.

TYRONE: N Morgan; C Devlin, P Hampsey, C Quinn; B Cullen, P Harte, N Devlin; B Kennedy, C Kilpatrick; C Daly, D Mulgrew, J Oguz; D McCurry, D Canavan, S O’Donnell.

Subs: R Canavan for Harte (22), K McGeary for Mulgrew (39), A Donaghy for Kilpatrick (42), C McShane for D Canavan (61), L McGarrity for McCurry (67).

Referee: D Coldrick (Meath)