Jack O'Connor: 'We are off the life support, that's as much as we can say'

Graham O'Sullivan goes for a point in Newbridge. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

A 14-point win away to Kildare and a good clutch of players with badly-needed game time in their legs. Yep, if the hosts were nowhere near good enough to worry Kerry in Newbridge then Saturday still qualified as a good day’s work for the Kingdom.

The reigning All-Ireland champions strolling to such an easy win in Round 2B just after Donegal’s home loss to Cork in 2A showed again how changeable a summer can be in this evolving but always compelling championship.

For Jack O’Connor, things have certainly changed for the better. The Kerry boss was happy to accept the theory that his side is still playing a small bit of catch-up as things stand but that in itself counts as progress as they go on about their business.

“You still would think that we are a small bit undercooked, like,” he said. “But we are definitely in a healthier position than we were this time a month ago. I’d say we were on life support, so we are off the life support. That’s as much as we can say.” Kerry never felt threatened by a Kildare team that started slowly and coughed up three goals in the last 16 minutes and two of those goals early in the fourth quarter allowed the visitors to run their bench and prep for the next engagement to come.

Kerry manager Jack O'Connor looks on as his defending champions put Kildare to the sword. Picture: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Joe O’Connor, Brian Ó Beaglaoich and Paudie Clifford had all started. So had Paul Geaney and Graham O’Sullivan after some concerns over their fitness of late. Paul Murphy and Gavin White were among the others to come on.

Jason Foley, Paudie Clifford and O Beaglaoich all had to come off at different stages for various minor reasons but there doesn’t appear to be any major injury issues to pour over ahead of Monday’s draw for the third round.

Kerry will approach that without Micheal Burns who will serve the second of a two-match ban while O’Connor wasn’t sounding very confident that goalkeeper Shane Ryan, Tom O’Sullivan and Sean O’Shea would be back any time soon.

“They’re doing bits and pieces but they are not able to return to full training. That’s as much as I can say.” All that’s for another day. This was a good one.

“You would have to be happy with the way we played. We went into the game with a good attitude. We butchered a few goal chances in the first-half but we were happy enough at half-time, even though there was a bit of a wind there, but really happy with the way we controlled the second-half.

“I thought we controlled it really well and a lot of that was down to Shane Murphy’s kickouts, he had a great day in goal. Seventeen out of 20 on our own kickouts and I think we won 15 out of 26 Kildare kickouts. That’s a lot of possession so we were able to control the game mainly from restarts.”