'Worth a month's training': Jack O'Connor delighted with Kerry's draw in Armagh
Jack O'Connor said Kerry and Armagh's league game at the Athletic Grounds was played at "championship pace". Pic: Ray McManus/Sportsfile
It said everything about the madness and the madhouse that was the BOX-IT Athletic Grounds just before tea time on Sunday that Jack O’Connor stood in the main tunnel minutes after the final whistle thinking Armagh had been relegated.
A fair swell of the 12,124 fans had spilled spontaneously on to the pitch as soon as the 70 minutes elapsed: some to try and touch the hem of the great DC, others maybe because a full pitch invasion was the only natural response after the epic they had witnessed.
“I got the wrong information,” said O’Connor when told of Dublin’s loss in Galway and Armagh’s reprieve. “I'm delighted with that though. Armagh didn't deserve to go down after [their] last two performances. We were looking to get our legs out of here, lads.”
For Kerry of course the draw earns them another Division One final, and another meeting with Donegal. Neither O’Connor nor Jim McGuinness sounded all that invested by the prospect of extending their campaign in recent weeks, but here they are now anyway.
Both counties make for the Algarve shortly after that as Championship preparations peak, and the narrative of two sides joined at the hip is only heightened by their meeting in last year’s All-Ireland final and Donegal’s win in Ballyshannon in early February.
“It's another good game for us,” said O’Connor. “That game today is worth a month's training, I'm telling you. That was played at Championship pace. It was a brilliant occasion. To come in here with a full house, massive entertainment… Sure, what's not to be happy about?” Very little.
Armagh would have survived the drop thanks to their head-to-head with Dublin even if they hadn’t managed to draw but the share of spoils here was the least they deserved after recovering from a dismal start that left them trailing 0-10 to no score.
“There's no lead safe,” said O’Connor, “and we were just glad to get home.” Kerry were sublime in that early spell. They won ten of the first eleven kickouts, all bar two of them on Armagh ball. Joe O’Connor was monstering the middle, David Clifford was roaming and rampaging to his heart's content and Dylan Geaney couldn’t miss.
The road back for the hosts was paved with a dramatic swing in that midfield battle – they won the last seven kickouts in the half - on the back of some carelessness from Kerry which O’Connor singled out later, and courtesy of a few changes made by Kieran McGeeney.
The Armagh manager drafted Oisin O’Neill and Conor Turbitt in before the break and, while the pair eventually contributed 1-5 from play, the immediate result to all this was just a two-point deficit for them at the break.
Kerry did have the wind in the second-half but they were in a battle now. This was a game tossing and turning to its own capricious mood. Armagh kicked on from the restart and took their first lead through O’Neill’s goal after 42 minutes.
It was hold-on-to-your-hat stuff from there all the way home.
Tom O’Sullivan did more than most to keep Kerry in it with five second-half points, four of them courtesy of two-pointers, but they needed another pair of long-range efforts of the same worth from Clifford and O’Connor to go along with it.
If the midfield battle in that half was more to and fro then Armagh will have their regrets. Conor Turbitt had a soft shot cleared off the line by Brian O Beaglaoich with seven minutes to go, and they couldn’t engineer a late winner after 90 seconds of possession.
“Once they got on a bit of a run… They’re a streaky team, and with that crowd behind them they were turbo-charged there after the first 20 or 25 minutes and really tested us,” said the Kerry manager.
It’s only a handful of weeks since O’Connor was tempering any giddiness in the county by suggesting they weren’t yet “pulling up any trees”. McGeeney was singing a similar song after Armagh’s escape from the drop. He certainly wasn’t doing any jigs.
The initial swamping of their midfield was just downright poor. They compounded it by standing off Kerry attackers and being consistently turned over in the opposition half on the few occasions they managed to engineer a route that far forward.
If the recovery from that false start was impressive, and the end result is another year in the top tier in 2027, then there was realism in McGeeney’s assessment that his side can ill afford to squander as many chances as passed them by here.
“It’s something we have to improve on because we had six more shots than them and 13 or 14 were missed from inside 25 metres, which paints a different picture because efficiency in front of goals has a big part to play in games.”
O O’Neill (1-2, 0-1 free); D McMullen (0-4, 1 2pt); C Turbitt (0-3, 1 2pt); R McQuillan (0-3); C McConville (0-3, 2f); O Conaty (0-2); J Og Burns, B Crealey, T McCormack, G McCabe (all 0-1).
D Clifford (0-10, 1 2pt, 1 2pt free, 1 free); T O’Sullivan (0-5, 2 2pts); J O’Connor (0-4, 1 2pt); D Geaney (0-4); S O’Shea (0-1).
B Hughes; G Murphy, A McKay, P McGrane; R McQuillan, T Kelly, J Og Burns; P Burns, B Crealey; T McCormack, D McMullen, G McCabe; C McConville, J Duffy, O Conaty.
O O’Neill for Burns (29); C Turbitt for Conaty (30); O Conaty for Duffy (38); J Og Burns for Crealey (temp), 44 and Burns (51); C O’Neill for Kelly (64).
S Murphy; P Murphy, J Foley, D Casey; T O’Sullivan, M Breen, A Heinrich; J O’Connor, S O’Brien; M O’Shea, S O’Shea, G O’Sullivan; D Geaney, D Clifford, K Evans.
B O Beaglaoich for Murphy (32); T Kennedy for Evans and M Burns for G O’Sullivan (both 46); K Spillane for Geaney (59); L Smith for O’Brien (68).
B Cawley (Kildare).
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