O’Connor and Clifford issue rallying call to irritable Kerry fans
URGING SUPPORTERS: David Clifford ask for the Kerry supporters to rally behind them when they take to Croke Park. Pic: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
IF it wasn’t quite Cape Town harbour Páidí and the ‘roughest f*cking animals’, it was nonetheless an unvarnished message to the Kerry faithful from manager Jack O’Connor.
Get off our backs and get behind us.
At around the same time that O’Connor was addressing the ‘difficult environment’ his players were operating in at Fitzgerald Stadium on Saturday, his talisman David Clifford was doing pitchside interviews extolling the virtue and advantage of a noisy Kerry support in Croke Park next weekend.
It all had the feeling of synchronisation about it, with the unambiguous message to the demanding Kerry public.
Stop carping, get realistic and book your tickets for the quarter final.
“There was a lot of pressure on the Kerry players from the supporters after last week,” O’Connor reflected. “That was a difficult environment for the lads to play football after what happened in the Meath game.”
He added: “Often times, it’s easier to go to Croke Park, away from home, and express yourself and play without fear and abandon. That’s what we want. It’s a great footballer’s pitch, a huge pitch, there is space there and that is why you want to play football. I just felt there were times against Cavan when the pressure got to the lads a bit and they didn’t express themselves the way they could.”
Clifford didn’t put a tooth in it. “I’d like to call for our supporters to get behind us. I’m not sure they realise the impact they can have on us in Croke Park. When we hear that Kerry crowd behind you it’s worth five and six points to you in a game.”
The nine-point loss to Meath was Kerry’s biggest championship defeat in 24 years and stirred a mood of irritability around the county. It made the returns of key players to the starting line up against Cavan key for O’Connor and how he sighed when Diarmuid O’Connor crumpled in a heap from the game’s first action. Kerry might look about upgrading their health insurance if this continues.
However, Sean O’Shea started and finished the game and Paudie Clifford was introduced to take the sting out of a Cavan resurgence in the fourth quarter that momentarily reduced a yawning chasm to a four-point game, 2-16 to 1-15. Kerry had led by ten at the break (2-12 to 0-8).
“Seánie is the spiritual leader of that group, no question about it,” O’Connor said of Kenmare’s O’Shea. “We missed him last week, big time. It's not just that he plays well himself, he gets other fellas around him to play as well.” And then there’s David Clifford who on the longest day of the year made it an exhausting 70-odd minutes for the Cavan defence. He finished with 3-7 and is playing the best football of his life in his manager’s opinion. With Clifford, we have come to normalise the exceptional but this timely tour de force should be part of the canon when they accumulate the championship evidence from 2025. Kerry needed someone to light the way for them on Saturday.
Mike Breen and Tony Brosnan (both hamstring issues) did a light training session in Currans on Saturday morning and will be given every chance for a quarter final, but O’Connor knows now he will be planning without midfielders Barry Dan O’Sullivan and Diarmuid O’Connor and probably scoresmith Paul Geaney. The sharpness of Conor Geaney was a plus on the day.
“We’ll gather the troops during the week. Obviously there’ll be a bit of doom and gloom around with the injuries and all the rest of it, but the lads are very determined to give it a good cut next weekend.
“The weekend will then tell that tale, won’t it? I thought we started here with good intent, with a lot of energy and intensity, and we tackled well. We tackled much more than we did last weekend, that’s for sure, and we got a few scores on the board.
“But we got a bit frantic at times, and made poor decisions with the ball up front, and we forced it a bit. There are times when you need to take the sting out of the game, and just work it. Then other times you can go route one. I suppose that’s understandable, because confidence mightn’t have been what it should have been after last week.
“It’s very important to kill the ball in the modern game. Giving the ball away is a no-no because, if you kill it, you have a 50 per cent chance of getting the kick-out back.”
Paddy Lynch delivered an exhibition of point-kicking for Cavan and for ten second half minutes they looked to have Kerry on the run. Had Padraig Faulkner not blazed over the bar from a clear goal chance in the 53rd minute, we might have been presented with the unedifying sight of a Kerry collapse in front of their own, but David Clifford completed his hat-trick with a tap-in on 59 minutes to put the issue beyond dispute.
There was time too for a fast-tracking of Tomás Kennedy’s education, the Leaving Cert from Strand Road fisting over the final point a day after finishing his exams in Mounthawk.
Kennedy and co. have a bigger test of their credentials on Jones’ Road next weekend with - their leading lights hope - a boisterous and fervent following.
D Clifford (3-7, 2 2p, 1f), S O’Shea (0-4, 1 2p), S Ryan (0-3, 1 2pf), D Geaney (0-2), G O’Sullivan, C Geaney, K Spillane, T Kennedy (0-1 each)
P Lynch (0-12, 2 2pfs, 2 2ps), E Crowe (1-0) J McLoughlin (0-3, 1 2p), P Faulkner, R O’Neill (0-1 each)
: S Ryan; P Murphy, J Foley, T O’Sullivan; B O’Beaglaoich, T Morley, G White; D O’Connor, S O’Brien; J O’Connor, S O’Shea, G O’Sullivan; D Clifford, C Geaney, D Geaney.
: M O’Shea for D O’Connor (1), D Casey for Morley (44), P Clifford for C Geaney, K Spillane for D Geaney (both 56), E Looney for O’Sullivan (blood sub, 61), T Kennedy for O’Beaglaoich (65)
: L Brady; N Carolan, C Reilly, B O’Connell, C Brady, P Faulkner, O Kiernan; J McLoughlin, E Crowe; G Smith, D McVeety, O Brady; C O’Reilly, P Lynch, S McEvoy.
: L Fortune for C Reilly (7), C Madden for McEvoy (44), R O’Neill for O Brady (56), R Donohue for McLoughlin (60), K Brady for O’Connell (63, blood sub).
J Henry (Mayo)
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