Diarmuid O’Connor’s rich vein of form points to another sterling performance

New rules are suiting Kerry midfielder Diarmuid O'Connor whose performances have been praised by manager Jack O'Connor.

FLYING FORM: Diarmuid O'Connor is showing great form for Kerry. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

If plaudits were a currency, they would stay firmly in Jack O’Connor’s pockets.

Age is not mellowing the Kerry manager but twice in the space of six days he was moved to hail his namesake Diarmuid. First, after the daylight robbery win over Derry. “I thought Diarmuid O’Connor was immense,” he gushed about his midfielder, who claim a hefty nine kick-outs in Celtic Park. “Really showed his mettle because he was up against a big man in [Conor] Glass and a monster in [Anton] Tohill.” 

As former AFL players, Glass and Tohill would know all the tricks of the trade in winning a dropping ball but O’Connor was able to stand up to them. There were the fetches but his overall readiness was exemplary.

Despite the home defeat to Donegal in Killarney last Saturday, he was again excellent. The genesis of his second-half goal was a restart he won. His aerial ability meant the kick-outs weren’t completely defined by the radar of Shaun Patton. “Diarmuid is having a great patch and we were looking for him to step up and be a dominant midfielder and he was great today,” the manager lauded.

Since David Moran’s retirement before last season, manager O’Connor has gone out of his way to protect his midfield men. After Diarmuid’s excellent display against Tyrone in the 2023 All-Ireland quarter-final, he volunteered: “Look, there's no one harder on Kerry, than our own people like, you know. I mean, the narrative all year is that we don't have a midfield, you know. We thought the two boys did really well out there today. And if people write us off a bit, sure we're only delighted with that.” 

But now O’Connor is comfortable enough to praise. While there is more than a kernel of truth in what Marc Ó Sé said last month, that Kerry have never replaced his brother Darragh, the Na Gaeil man is going to make himself indispensable.

Few doubted these days would come but consistency had been the issue. In 2022, he was in spectacular form up to the Munster semi-final win over Cork but then suffered a dip. As Moran said of his old midfield partner, O’Connor has given “fantastic performances” in a senior Kerry jersey but they have come “sporadically”.

Having said that, O’Connor was Kerry’s best player across their last two All-Ireland semi-finals, giving an exhibition of winning possession against Dublin in 2023 and was everywhere in the defeat to Armagh last year.

It's not merely coincidental that the 25-year-old’s outstanding performances these past two weekends come under the new rules. In the discourse around which footballers are most suited to them, most of the focus has been on the exponents of the long-range kick and how their value has doubled with that of the score outside the 40-metre arc. What has been sidelined is those fielders who thrive on the contested kick-out.

Some managers have bemoaned the decrease in clean ball won from restarts now that they have to travel beyond the 40m arc – indeed, watching some games you’d wonder if the midfield mark has become obsolete – but O’Connor is one footballer who enjoys the battle on and off the ground.

Speaking about the new rules last month, he didn’t give too much away only to say there will be more contested kick-outs and the longer restart will be an attacking tool. “With the new rules you have to be more offensively minded in keeping the three up. That will have benefits in terms of kicking and long kick-outs. Overall, it will makes thing more competitive.” 

A good example of that came in Fitzgerald Stadium in the form of his latest goal. O’Connor broke down Shane Ryan’s kick-out to Tom O’Sullivan. As the play built up around the fringes of the 40m arc, he ambled through the middle, loitered on the 20m line, then the 13m before he moved to the edge of the square where Paudie Clifford found him with a squared hand-pass to palm the ball to the net. Allowed one or two more players back and Donegal would have snuffed out the danger.

Saturday’s date with Dublin presents a chance to make up for last year’s league hammering in Croke Park when Con O’Callaghan claimed a hat-trick of goals and Kerry were battered on kick-outs. If it was an evening that haunted O’Connor, he wasn’t telling. “We always knew we were going to get a tough game up there and if we were any bit off they could do what they did to us,” he said a few weeks later. 

“It was a combination of the Dubs being quite good and us being quite poor but I wouldn’t say it was a shock. You know what you’re going to get from the Dubs in Croker.” 

What Dublin provide in Tralee, a place they haven’t beaten Kerry in 44 years, and without Brian Fenton is uncertain but O’Connor’s rich vein of form points to another sterling performance.