Fenton has to see some lean times to mirror Mullins in greatness
Kerry must overwhelm Brian Fenton
they’ll just be thinking of trying to get back into the habit of competing against their oldest enemy, and perhaps beating them.
‘Losing the last four games in League and Championship is far more motivation than any record for Kerry,’ insisted the All-Time Champion of Midfielders. ‘They’ll be more worried about their own performance and result than any history.’
In other words, they couldn’t care less about Tim and John Joe Landers, Micko Doyle, Con Brosnan, Paul Russell or Joe Barrett, God bless them all. This Kerry team needs to put a halt to Dublin’s gallop.
They’ve got to stop being pushed aside. Taken for granted?
One or two more defeats and the greatest pairing in Gaelic football will indeed be calling out for a rebranding. This game is huge. The same as every time Kerry get beaten by Dublin is now huge.
However, if Kerry win this one, if they are the team that happens to call a halt to the gallop of the champions after 33 games unbeaten, what happens in Tralee this evening will have significance for later on this season.
Tralee, of course, is Kerry’s ‘back pitch’, but that is unlikely to discommode any of the young pups who have been showing up for jerseys in the Dublin dressing room this spring.
Lads like Eric Lowndes, who is playing every game like it might be his last in blue, have been to Ballybofey and to Cavan town. Tralee is just another football ground they may get to visit just once in their football careers.
All of the young men fighting to have just a slim chance of making the Dublin championship team don’t know the difference.
They have the honour of teaming up with Stephen Cluxton. They know they are in special company with Ciaran Kilkenny. The pair of them make this Dublin team click. Cluxton directs so much. Kilkenny enacts with calmness and total contentment. Each is vitally important to Dublin remaining unbeaten for a 34th time.
But if Kerry are to beat Dublin then they will have to overpower or overwhelm Fenton. They need a giant plan for him, and nothing something brazenly hatched.
And, to begin with, they’ve got to stop him getting the ball into hands.
Two or three years ago, David Moran looked the most productive midfielder in the modern game, and to have any chance of winning this evening it will be enormously helpful if he can neutralise Fenton’s impact by winning and taking on board an equal amount of the ball.
Still, however, Moran will not be as impeccably certain in using every ball he gets into his hands. Because, around Fenton two weeks ago in the destruction of Mayo, were so many runners at his shoulder and so many others offering themselves up front.
Fenton’s brilliant individual performance was contained within one of the finest team performances we have ever witnessed so early in a football year.
With 28 wins and five draws over the last two years and 17 days there’s no sign of Dublin hanging onto an unbeaten run. Neither is this a team chasing anybody. Dublin are busily forging history and ignoring everyone else.
The defeat will hardly come this evening. But it will arrive some day and rudely so, and the bad news for everyone waiting for this Dublin team to take a pause, is that such a happening will only make them stronger. For Brian Fenton it will be a distraction, and also a considerable help.
He needs to find something additional, something small, to make it onto the same stage as Mullins and O’Shea.