KERRY’S SAME OLD SONG

Failing to learn from errors, Kingdom are fated to repeat them 26

THESE days, Kerry must feel that they are locked into some kind of freakish, miserable Groundhog Day existence with Dublin.

It is not just that they keep losing — ahead of tonight’s showdown in Tralee they have lost an astonishing 10 of their 12 games in all competitions to Dublin this decade — but they somehow manage to keep doing it the same way.

Nothing underlines this better than their meeting last August. Once more they were offered a brief sight of the winning line coming down the home straight, before being brutally swatted aside by a cocktail of Dublin’s superior depth, poor decision making, lack of discipline and getting short-changed on the big refereeing calls.

That has been pretty much the story of the five big meetings this decade — the 2011 and 2015 All-Ireland finals, and the 2013 and 2016 semi-finals as well as last year’s Allianz League decider.

Examine the corpses of all those contests and each post-mortem report is likely to make for eerily familiar and depressing reading for Kerry folk.

Here are five recurring themes that have served to haunt Kerry.

THE FINAL 10 MINUTES

Every one of those five games have been one-score contests at the 60-minute mark, but each time it was Dublin who pushed ahead, scorching the grass in getting over the winning line.

Here is the stat that should leave Kerry blushing: Dublin’s aggregate lead from the final 10 minutes in those five key games stands at 5-18 to 0-7.

That is a whopping 26 points – an average five-point swing at the business end of those games. It has told, too. Dublin have reversed four (2011), three (2016) and one (2013) point deficits in the final 10 minutes to turn likely defeats into glorious wins.

THE BENCH

Unsurprisingly, the trend here is in keeping with how strongly Dublin have finished.

In terms of scores Dublin have gleaned 4-8 from the players they have introduced in those games, while Kerry managed a mere 0-7.

But it goes deeper than that. It is those players that have come from the bench that have stuck the dagger deepest into Kerry.

The most celebrated is obviously Kevin McManamon who struck for the goal that flipped the 2011 final on its head, repeating the dose two years later in the semi-final. Ironically, Kerry have outscored Dublin from the bench in their last two Championship games (0-3 to 0-1) both times, yet it is still the latter’s bench who made the lasting impression. Alan Brogan slammed the door shut on Kerry in the 2015 final with a point into the Hill, while it was Eoghan O’Gara who struck for the critical lead score in the third minute of injury time in last year’s semi-final.

SIDE-LINE CALLS

Jim Gavin and Eamon Fitzmaurice have been in charge for four of those five games and while it has seemed that every time Gavin has rolled the dice he has hit the jackpot, Fitzmaurice has left the casino shirtless.

That has particularly been the case when it has come to their use of the bench, which extends beyond what both teams have gleaned in terms of scores.

Even back in 2011, Kerry erred when bringing on Daniel Bohane to shore up a defence when Shane Enright seemed a far better fit to counter the threat presented by McManamon.

It has continued; the withdrawal of both James O’Donoghue and Paul Geaney in 2015 — who between them had amassed 0-5, more than half of Kerry’s final tally — puzzled, as did the introduction of Paul Galvin. But that paled with the decision to take off Geaney – Kerry’s best player and principal strike forward – with last August’s semi-final in the mix, replacing him with Marc Ó Sé.

DISCIPLINE

It is harder to get a read on this, but with the exception of the 2013 semi-final, Dublin have outscored Kerry in the other four games from placed balls.

The cumulative score from frees conceded stands at 0-26 to Dublin, compared to Kerry’s 1-14.

On top of that, Kerry have seen two players red-carded; Anthony Maher (2013) and Aidan O’Mahony, whose dismissal in last year’s League final proved a pivotal moment.

REFEREE CALLS

No matter how this is weighed up, Kerry have consistently come out the worst.

Joe McQuillan’s performance in the 2011 final was such that it prompted a letter of complaint from the Kingdom after a string of decisions, including the award of the contentious last-gasp wining free, all went against Kerry.

They have got the short-end ever since, although Dublin can point to an outrageous penalty call against Stephen Cluxton in 2013 who, if anything, was the player who was fouled.

But Kerry have consistently come out worse on the big calls. Kieran Donaghy had a decent claim for a penalty and a certain one for a free turned down in 2015, while last year Kerry were denied the chance of a replay when David Gough failed to call a free after McManamon fouled Peter Crowley in injury time.

It’s time Kerry learn from some of their many lessons in defeat.