The five that haunt Kerry
IN football’s land of plenty they are more used to terrorising than being terrorised.
There was a time before sports psychologists were on the pay roll, when the sight of Kerry’s green and gold shirts was believed to be enough to leave some beaten before a ball was kicked.
Put that down to the Kingdom’s aura backed up by their record of being serial winners, but not everyone bought it.
In fact, more than that, some even managed to flip the tables, pressing hard on Kerry’s necks for a sustained period down through the years.
They landed blows in the process that were psychological and physical which leaves scars to this day, some that run deeper than others.
Sportsmail counts down the five teams that caused Kerry more trouble than they would ever care to admit.
5
CORK (1987-95): In many ways it is an indictment of Cork given their large window of opportunity — they have effectively inhabited a two-team football state in Munster for the bones of a century — which this represented their only period of sustained domination.
They won seven Munster titles to Kerry’s one and while the latter were never more vulnerable — the price paid for going too long with Mick O’Dwyer’s great but ageing team — the Rebels were at their best.
The perfect moment for Cork arrived in the 1990 Munster final as they dished out a 14-point trimming to their one-time tormentors, famously leading to cat calls from the Rebel supporters as Kerry folk streamed out of Páirc Uí Chaoimh prematurely to ‘lock them in and make them watch.’
4
GALWAY (1963-65): Kerry won nine Munster championships in the 1960’s, but they managed to convert that into just two All-Ireland wins.
There were two reasons for that — Galway and Down.
Kerry were good, but they ran into great teams, something which Galway cemented with three All-Irelands in a row, which might have been four had they not lost out narrowly to Dublin in the 1963 final.
Kerry lost three years on the bounce to the same team — the only time that indignity was ever visited on them outside of Munster.
3
DOWN (1960- PRESENT): The original and most persistent of Kerry’s Ulster problem. There was reason at the start, Down were not just a great team when they beat Kerry in the 1960 final, but they also unleashed a new style — an upgrade on the Dublin possession game which the Kingdom had put manners on five years previously.
But Kerry had ample opportunity — and with teams full of great players (not least Mick O’Connell and O’Dwyer) to put that right, but even when they met for the third time that decade in the 1968 final, they still could not find a way.
And remarkably they continued to haunt Kerry — the 1991 semi-final win signalling the emergence of another great Down team, however their unfathomable but deserved victory in the 2010 quarter-final took their relationship into the twilight zone.
Five games over 60 years and Kerry failed to land a single blow.
2
TYRONE (2003-08): They may not boast Down’s flawless record, but what they did to Kerry’s self-esteem cut deeper than numbers, for two reasons.
Fristly, they didn’t just beat any Kerry team, but one regarded as the county’s most talented since O’Dwyer’s golden generation of the 1970s/80s.
In the battle for team of the decade Kerry may have outgunned Tyrone by four titles to three, but they lost the moral argument as to who was the better team by losing all three clashes between the two.
The second reason it stung is that Kerry’s capacity to absorb and adapt is key to their greatness, but it never worked here.
They changed tack in response to Tyrone’s pressure game in 2003, only to be out-footballed in 2005 and out-thought in 2008, when their twin tower approach was demolished.
Beaten anyway and every way, it left scars that will take erasing.
1
DUBLIN (2011- PRESENT) Few sporting rivalries have flipped so suddenly and brutally. For 33 years, Kerry were accused of paying lip-service to a rivalry which they dominated in a nine-game Championship unbeaten streak that extended from 1978 to 2011.
Since then, though, Kerry have been swallowed by a blue tsunami — not just losing, but losing big.
Their defeat in the 2015 final was the first time Kerry had lost in three successive Championship meetings, which has since been pushed out to four.
That does not include last year’s humbling in the League final, while this decade alone Dublin have won 10 of their 12 meetings in all competitions.
Dublin’s determination to make that 11 out of 13 has been underlined by a training weekend at Carton House to prepare for Saturday night’s clash, as they seek to equal the all-time unbeaten record of 34 games held by Kerry since 1933.
But it’s not so much that they are chasing an age old record that is gnawing at the hearts and minds of Kerry football folk this week, it is the realisation that the oppressive boot on their neck is like no other that they have ever experienced.
The reason is that this is not just cyclical, but rather something that has been — given their resources — built to stand the test of Kerry’s tradition.