Future looking bright for Fitzmaurice’s Kerry
Kingdom cruise as boss Éamonn hands out seven Championship debuts
THE kids are alright. Just how good they are remains to be tested, but for now we can say that supporters of Kerry football are entitled to be very excited.
There is no more beautiful place to watch a football match than Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney. The Bank Holiday Sunday brought humidity and grumpylooking clouds loitering around the tops of the mountains that fringe the ground.
Tourism season is open around these parts, and the 16,729 that had a Munster football semi-final as their priority on the long weekend had to be patient in reaching the stadium. The traffic was as thick as melting tar.
For Clare supporters, the best part of the day was spent in traffic. For Kerry fans, the wait was justified. And they have waited. Not merely in lines of cars dripping into Killarney, but for years now.
James O’Donoghue sounded wistful at the weekend as he recalled the years that have elapsed since the 2014 All-Ireland win. It’s coming up on half a decade. That counts as starvation in this county.
A 22-point win against a hapless opposition does not guarantee them a banquet come the first Sunday in September, but it does suggest Kerry should be targeting a place in the decisive stages of this Championship.
Éamonn Fitzmaurice gave seven players their debuts here, and most did well. Some were very good. Sean O’Shea was outstanding.
Most attention has pooled around David Clifford, but last year’s minor sensation was restricted by the oppressive attention of his marker, Gordon Kelly, and the willingness of referee Barry Cassidy to overlook a fair amount of pulling and dragging throughout the game.
O’Shea had more space to work in on the 40, and he thrived.
Five of his seven points came from placed balls, but that in itself is encouraging for Fitzmaurice given their importance. With James O’Donoghue kicking frees from the right and O’Shea on the left, Kerry were able to capitalise on Clare’s pervasive difficulties.
It was an older hand that was Kerry’s brightest star. Paul Geaney matched O’Shea’s seven points, but five of his came from play.
He provides a pivotal service in the inside line, and even the Dublin full-back line would find a day’s work in keeping Clifford, Geaney and O’Donoghue quiet.
When a team kicks 32 points, statistics to illuminate their dominance are plentiful. Fitzmaurice could not recall being involved with a team at any level that ever scored 32 times, and wise Kerry heads left Killarney last night confident that no team in their colours had ever done so in the Championship.
23 of their 32 points came from play. By the 17th minute, five of Kerry’s six forwards had scored from play. O’Donoghue should have joined them on 19 minutes but hammered an attempt at a point off the post. He recorded his opening score after 22 minutes, a point that put Kerry seven ahead, 0-10 to 0-3. They had the game already won.
Given the complete control exercised by Kerry, it wasn’t a result that will support too many grand pronouncements.
But this much we know to be true: this is a far more mobile Kerry side than the one that was swept aside at the semi-final stage last year.
Stephen O’Brien was prominent, his characteristic hard running rattling the Clare defence repeatedly, with Jack Barry and David Moran also ripping space in which O’Shea, Clifford and Geaney were able to kick score after score.
The last Kerry manager to hand out seven debuts in a Championship match was Mick O’Dwyer in 1975, the year his famous team of bachelors won a surprise All-Ireland and started a reign that would end with them hailed as the greatest team of all time.
That oppressive history is everywhere in the Kingdom, and Fitzmaurice and his young hopefuls go about their business in the shadows cast by wonders of the Irish world.
Clare could only watch as their opponents tore them to pieces.
After going two points up inside two minutes, they didn’t score for the next 13 minutes. They would wait 20 more for their fourth point, and they trailed by 12 at the break, 0-16 to 0-4.
Kerry mirrored their first-half tally in the second, a pleasing symmetry on a day of utter order.
Too much store can’t be put in a triumph of this magnitude, but Fitzmaurice’s reconditioned team could not have had a better start. The second half saw the arrival of replacements, with warm greetings for older hands and boisterous receptions for O’Shea and Clifford as they ran towards the stands.
The biggest ovation of the day was held back for the appearance of Kieran Donaghy with five minutes remaining. The occasion could only be sweetened further by a goal from the veteran, but the best he managed was a couple of catches from those familiar long balls in to the edge of the square.
From one of them he won a free that gave Geaney his seventh point of the match. But the cameos were reminiscent of glory years. It cast Kerry supporters’ minds back to winning times.
But Fitzmaurice tried to reach the future through the past. That didn’t work. He is set on a different way now, and the early signs look very good indeed.