BLUES RELY ON NET GAIN
Fitzmaurice is keen to stop Gavin’s goal rush
EAMONN Fitzmaurice’s fear is that Dublin’s goal threat possesses all the characteristics of their city’s bus service. That old hackneyed line about how you might have to wait an age for one, but then two arrive together pretty much sums up how Dublin have been running teams over all summer.
It is stretching the gag to its limit to suggest that the Hill has had much of a wait in the first instance as Jim Gavin’s team have bagged 18 goals in their six games to date.
They have scored at least two goals per game and their ability to sting for three-pointers is one of the main reasons they are favourites to win a third All-Ireland title in five years.
Kerry’s leakage of goals and the frequency with which they have coughed up goal chances, most notably against Tyrone in the All-Ireland semi-final, has added to concerns in the Kingdom that they could be exposed by Dublin’s fluid and powerful running-based attack.
Kerry manager Fitzmaurice concedes that stopping Dublin from finding the net has to be a priority f or his charges.
‘It’s something we have to protect against, and we’ve conceded goals in the Championship this year,’ admitted the Kerry boss.
‘They go for goals — it’s part of their game. When they get a goal they get life from that, and the Hill really gets involved. It’s no coincidence that they often get their second goal soon after their first one.
‘If they get a goal, we have to ensure they don’t get too much momentum from that because in many ways they are similar to the Kilkenny hurlers a couple of years back — getting a couple of goals to kill the game in a short space of time. We’ll have to mind it,’ added Fitzmaurice.
While Dublin’s capacity to find the net is unrivalled, so is their ability to capitalise on those goals to thieve momentum.
On five separate occasions this summer, they have followed up a goal with another within a fiveminute window.
And while that statistic is diluted given the benign nature of the opposition they faced in Leinster — they managed the feat in all three provincial games against Longford, Kildare and Westmeath — the Dubs also showed that they could scramble the heads of elite opposition. Philly McMahon’s goal within two minutes of Bernard Brogan’s initial strike was the tipping point in the semifinal-replay win over Mayo.
That ability to strike fast and often has been a feature of the team in Gavin’s three-year tenure — Diarmuid Connolly and Brogan found the net within two minutes of each other to kill off Monaghan in last year’s quarter-final.
Kerry, of all teams, will hardly need reminding of how one Dublin goal tends to beget another; Kevin McManamon’s strike in the penultimate minute of their epic 2013 semi-final was followed by another from Eoghan O’Gara in injury-time to skew the winning margin to seven in Dublin’s favour. And the momentum which a Dublin goal gifts does not always have to depend on a second coming along to have an impact. It is easy to forget that Dublin still trailed after McManamon fired home a late goal in the 2011 decider against the Kingdom, but the lift it provided still carried them over the line.
Those experiences would suggest that Kerry will want to partake in a shootout this time as they may be particularly mindful of what happened in 2013 — Fitzmaurice’s first season in charge of the Kingdom.
The Kerry boss was non-commital on such an attacking suggestion, but remains open to the possibility.
‘I don’t mind as long as we come out the right side of it. We didn’t in 2013, when it was a shootout.
‘If you’re conceding three goals to Dublin, you’re probably not going to win the game.
‘You give yourself a great chance of winning if you can stop them scoring goals, but if you go back over the last few years, there aren’t too many games when they didn’t score goals,’ added Fitzmaurice.
Under Gavin’s tenure, only once in 17 Championship games have they been shut out and significantly that also happens to be the only time they were beaten — in last year’s semi-final exit to Donegal.
And even, then, the outcome of that game was deemed to have hinged on a crucial first-half save made by Paul Durcan to deny Diarmuid Connolly.
The consensus afterwards was that had Connolly found a way to get that ball into the net, Dublin would have gone on to win.
It may be a cliché, but the old line about how goals win games has been proved time and again by this Dublin team. Their three green flags in the replay has taken their tally to an incredible 40 in Gavin’s Championship reign.
The battle lines are drawn; Fitzmaurice and Kerry know that to win on Sunday, they have to find a way to stop the bleeding, a task that has been beyond so many others.