Hold fire on the celebrations, Kerry – there’s still a final to be playedMartin Breheny
As the rest of Kerry rocketed into celebratory orbit, he remained in the ground control centre, plotting the next move. The target was clear, the threats equally so.
“You have to go the distance. Getting there (to the final) isn’t enough. That’ll be a big, big incentive for us over the next two weeks to finish the job,” he said.
Then came the timing miscalculation.
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“At Christmas, this game will be forgotten about if we don’t get over the line in the final.”
Christmas? It will be forgotten at 5.05 on July 24, unless the green-and-gold colours are being pinned to the Sam Maguire Cup.
Similar to Maurice Fitzgerald’s equaliser from the sideline against Dublin in the 2001 quarter-final, O’Shea’s last-second winner on Sunday will always feature high on super-score lists, but on Kerry’s vast canvas it will be no more than yet another colourful dot unless it contributes to All-Ireland success.
It certainly won’t shorten the winter if Sam Maguire is rocking around Galway for the first time in 21 years. According to the odds, that can’t happen. Galway are 100/30 outsiders, Kerry 1/3 certainties.
It was easy to understand why Dublin were short-odds favourites in their glory years, but much more difficult to figure out why Kerry have replaced them as overwhelming fancies.
Where’s the convincing evidence to back it up? Dublin are a long way from the powerhouses of 2011-2020, so beating them now isn’t anything like the big deal it would have been a few years ago.
In addition, their case was seriously weakened by the absence of Con O’Callaghan. He scored a total of 4-10 in the previous five semi-finals, more than enough to suggest he would have made a game-changing impact on Sunday.
Still, beating Dublin after six failed attempts was so liberating for Kerry that it’s inevitable supporters will feel the 38th title is on its way, perhaps even with a comfortable win over Galway.
O’Connor spotted the risks even before he left Croke Park.
“Maybe I know some of the pitfalls in the build-up. Especially in Kerry – they tend to get a bit carried away. But maybe my experience of being in a good share of finals (as manager). I was in a couple with Páidí Ó Sé as well, as a selector,” he said.
He will need all his experience to prevent a sense that the hard work is done seeping into the camp. In contrast, Pádraic Joyce is in a position he knows well from his playing days.
In 1998, Kildare were the warmest of favourites to beat Galway in the final, while three years later Meath were even hotter fancies after beating Kerry by 15 points in an extraordinary semi-final.
Galway beat Kildare by four points and Meath by eight, a defeat which began the Royal descent into a very dark tunnel from which they have yet to emerge. Underdog territory won’t bother Joyce.
Whoever beat Dublin were always going to be All-Ireland favourites, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot in real terms. Even without O’Callaghan, Dublin had the capacity to test Kerry, which they duly did. Galway though faced tougher tests in the earlier rounds.
They had to beat Mayo (in Castlebar) and Roscommon in heavyweight Connacht challenges, which were far stiffer than what Kerry faced in Munster at a time when Cork are at an embarrassing all-time low and the rest continue suffer from psychological paralysis after decades under the giant green-and-gold thumb.
Kerry drew Mayo in the quarter-final, a task made all the easier by the year’s events. A big defeat by Kerry in the league final and confirmation of their decline when losing to Galway in the Connacht first round left Mayo as relatively easy pickings.
Galway had to deal with a far more confident and competent Armagh, who had beaten Tyrone and Donegal with enough to spare to suggest they were realistic All-Ireland contenders.
Derry had also beaten Tyrone and Donegal – as well as Monaghan and Clare – yet looked completely out of their depth last Saturday. Granted, their approach was unfathomably inflexible and, ultimately, utterly sterile, but Galway still deserve credit for working patiently through the maze.
The argument that they should have figured out a way of scoring more than 2-8 (with one goal gifted to them by Derry’s misguided belief that a goalkeeper can double up as a forward) ignores an important lesson from history.
In 2011, Dublin won the semi-final with 0-8 when Donegal (0-6) unleashed their version of football hell for the first time. Dublin did what they had to do and went on to win the All-Ireland final, followed by six more in the next nine seasons.
So while the bookies and Kerry supporters may believe that All-Ireland final day is more about a coronation than a contest, O’Connor knows better, which is why he started ringing the warning bells on Sunday evening.
“So maybe I might be able to pass on a bit of advice to avoid all the noise, and just concentrate on getting a performance,” he said.
He’ll keep clanging those bells all the way to throw-in on Sunday week. But will they be heard? That’s the question.
Hawk-Eye now has major trust issue
Words from Father Ted following chicanery in a ‘King of the Sheep’ contest on Craggy Island come to mind in the wake of the Hawk-Eye fiasco with Shane Walsh’s ’45 in Croke Park last Saturday.
“He has lost the trust of his sheep. That’s punishment enough for a farmer who deals primarily with sheep,” said a disgusted Father Ted about the miscreant involved.
Hawk-Eye is facing similar embarrassment. The technology solution introduced to remove human error has lost the trust of everyone who trusted technology to solve the human error problem.
That’s a big difficulty for the GAA and the
Hawk-Eye providers. If the technology malfunctions to such a degree that it misreads the flight of the ball while having the post as a physical reference point, how can there be any confidence that it’s accurate for shots that soar above post level?
Apparently, it won’t be used for this year’s Craggy Island championships pending further investigation!
Cynicism thrives in another form
THE 10-minute sin-bin sanction isn’t working anymore. Why? Because the rule to discourage cynical fouling is undermined by another form of cynicism.
For reasons that have no basis in medical probability, there has been an obvious increase in the number of players seeking treatment while one of their team-mates is in the bin.
This is designed to limit the impact of being short-handed and since the sin-bin period ends after 10 minutes, irrespective of stoppages during that time, the disadvantage is less than it should be.
“That’s a rule that needs to be tweaked,” remarked Jack O’Connor on Sunday. He’s right, but how? Unlike rugby, where the clock is stopped for injuries, it continues in GAA, with time added on later. That makes it impossible to keep track of actual sin-bin time. And since referees must assume a player is injured – as opposed to faking it – they have to stop play.
A possible solution would be to award a 13-metre free for a cynical foul, regardless of how far up the pitch it’s committed. That way the offender would concede a point. It’s a better option than what’s happening now.