Éamonn Fitzmaurice: The delicate balance between confidence and competition for places
One area of concern for Kerry is the developing habit of letting teams back in to it late on. As the fitness levels increase and the squad continues to strengthen, I expect this to be less of a factor.
OUTTA THE WAY: Kerry's Joe O'Connor battles Brian Howard, Niall Scully and almost his own gaffer, Jack O'Connor, for possession at Croke Park on Saturday night. Pic: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
“Take Tom Sullivan's boot and hang it in the Louvre.”
Bín Bán - Pa Sheehy
SATURDAY night in Croke Park was proof positive that not every game under the new rules, and indeed every Kerry-Dublin encounter, is going to be a classic.
While filled with endeavour and physicality at times, facilitated by the one-on-one nature of the game, it never caught fire, with fatigue on both sides possibly a factor.
While Dublin’s late revival gave the Hill something to cheer about, Seanie O’Shea opened and closed the scoring with a pair of lovely two-pointers that enabled Kerry to keep the home side at arm’s length for the majority of the contest, but without ever really killing them off.
Last year, after an indifferent start to the league, Kerry’s season took off in Pomeroy with a gritty away win to Tyrone. That day, the story was the returning David Clifford, who bagged a hat-trick of goals. This time round, it was his older brother, Paudie, who made his seasonal bow.
For someone with so little football played since last July, he resumed where he left off: He got on the ball and controlled the Kerry attack. Technically, he is flawless, rarely making a skill error. He made the right decision in possession nearly all of the time, one or two excepted, on his first night back. It was interesting to see how willing he was to kick inside.
While he possesses the necessary accuracy, generally he doesn’t like to put much up for grabs. A sign of things to come, maybe? To emphasise the other side of the game, also a hallmark of his, he broke Evan Comerford’s long kickout off Peadar Ó Cofaigh Byrne, which led to Tony Brosnan’s decisive goal.
Tom O’Sullivan made a significant impact when he came on. Once upon a time it was the Dublin manager who had these trump cards to play. I know all about it. However, the wheel has turned and it is now Jack holding the cards. Tom was excellent. He seamlessly continued his club championship form with Dingle, kicking two great points at his leisure into the Hill.
The second one, in particular, was a beauty, off the outside of his boot from the wrong side, a Tom Sullivan special that inspired Pa Sheehy’s lyric.
It came immediately after Ó Cofaigh Byrne’s goal and was in stark contrast to the panic that ensued when Galway got the run on them last week.
The sheer depth of talent makes Kerry so hard to play against right now. When they set up a slow attack they have three players that can conduct those plays in Paudie Clifford, Seanie O’Shea, and Tom O’Sullivan. Depending on who is running the play, the other two become scoring options. It is some luxury for Jack to have at his disposal.
Mark O’Shea, getting his first start of the season, was similarly significant. He has made himself indispensable in the last 12 months, as a kickout target, as an opposition kickout disruptor, and as a fulcrum of slow attacks when he goes inside to allow David Clifford and co invert out.
As the game went on, his Dr Crokes clubmate Shane Murphy picked him out with regularity on restarts. Early in the match, Murphy had persisted with his kick to the 10 side — that had misfired last weekend — with mixed results. However, as the game went on, he settled and picked O’Shea out with a few long and he also managed to get a few that were short away in the second half.
Murphy is technically an excellent kicker, but his decision-making can be iffy at times. When he plays quick and on instinct, he is often at his best. We have seen this from him down the years with Dr Crokes, and it will have pleased the management to see more of that in the second half.
As Kerry move up through the gears, they now conveniently have back-to-back home games, first against Monaghan, next Sunday, and then Mayo, a fortnight later. They will continue to build slowly and steadily towards the championship. One area of concern for them is the developing habit of letting teams back in to it late on. As the fitness levels increase and the squad continues to strengthen, I expect this to be less of a factor.
Again, Keith Evans, Armin Heinrich and Cillian Trant did well and strengthened their status, and it was interesting to hear Jack speak about competition in the squad afterwards.
He wants the incumbents to make it as hard as possible for the returning players to regain their positions. There is a sound logic in this, in terms of guarding against any prospective comfort zone, particularly the year after winning the All-Ireland.
I would have also championed this in my time. However, I know from speaking to players afterwards that there is a balancing element to this.
As a manager, you don’t want a comfort zone to exist, but you do want your main men to be comfortable and confident and playing at the top of their game. The ferocious competition in the squad can dilute a player’s confidence because they are constantly looking over their shoulder.
They are thinking short term — getting on the team — rather than big picture, in terms of how they can strive for continuous improvement and development. Traditionally, while Jack might speak about picking on the basis of form, he tends to revert to the tried and trusted when it comes to the crunch.
For Ger Brennan, it feels like he has a road to travel. From a positive perspective, he will be happy with how his charges stuck at it for the duration. They were still there at the death in a game that could have easily got away from them, which is something to build on. That spirit has to be the foundation stone, but he will now need to start to settle his team selection and get the detail right, in terms of their style of play.
Primarily, he needs to get his attack moving. Conceding 1-16 in Croke Park against the All-Ireland champions isn’t the end of the world, but their attack was blunt and lacked shape and direction. They tried to be direct in the first half, but, similar to Mayo last weekend, they need to finesse their kicking game. Even Con O’Callaghan was guilty of a couple of aimless kick passes inside.
However, it is in their set attacks that they have most work to do, where currently they are predictable and inefficient.
Last year they were guilty of a dearth of two-point shooters and two-point scores. This may have been because of the years of working the ball patiently to the best kickers in the optimum slots. The game has moved on, though, and they now feel they need to move on with it.
IN a set attack it looks to me as if they have spent a lot of time in training lining up two-point shots. As a result, they tend to play laterally over and back across the two-point arc. They rarely go inside.
This makes it easy to defend. By not asking questions inside, the opposition can defend the arc aggressively and make it hard to get that two-point shot off. On Saturday, Dublin got two to Kerry’s three two-pointers. On the rare occasion when they did move inside and play quick one-twos, they looked dangerous.
Paddy Small’s early goal chance, which drew a great save from Shane Murphy, and Ó Cofaigh Byrne’s late goal were good illustrations of this. Dublin’s decision with their late free franked their current lack of attacking clarity. It was a two-score game with them four down and the clock stopped at 68:14 to allow Jason Foley to get treatment to an injury.
I felt Comerford could have had a cut at it off the ground or that they could have set up either Ciarán Kilkenny or Seán Bugler for a two-point effort from play. Instead, Niall Scully lobbed a speculative ball in towards the Kerry goals, which was well defended by Joe O’Connor.
They are away to a buzzing Roscommon next weekend. In a way, it might be a relief to get on the road and get out of Croke Park. They finish their league campaign off with a visit from Armagh and a trip to Salthill. There is nothing easy there.
They will do well to retain their Division 1 status. Because of their decade of dominance, it is still a challenge to get the head around a struggling Dublin, but that is the current reality.
