Record against Kingdom gives Farney a fillip
MONAGHAN have established themselves at Gaelic football’s top table over the past four years and in that time, Malachy O’Rourke’s side have proved to be a pest for Kerry. In the four times the sides have met in the Allianz League, the Farney County have won three times — with two of those games played in Fitzgerald Stadium and Austin Stack Park.
However, as Monaghan prepare to welcome Éamonn Fitzmaurice’s side to Clones this Sunday — with Kerry’s entire summer on the line — O’Rourke insists that their recent good record against the Kingdom will count for nothing and that his side will have to play their best football of the year to win.
‘No, I wouldn’t be too worried about that record because Kerry are a completely different team in the Championship than they are in the League,’ O’Rourke said. ‘They have proven that year after year, so we wouldn’t be putting that much stock into the League record.’
The Fermanagh man did accept that Monaghan’s three recent wins over Kerry will give his players some self-assurance ahead of next Sunday’s Super 8s match.
‘The fact that we have measured up against them recently, the boys will take a wee bit of confidence from that. But we know that it is going to be a completely different Kerry team in the middle of the summer. Hopefully, the weather will be warm and the pitch conditions will be good. We know that we are going to have to play really, really well to be competitive against them.’
Monaghan’s last two victories over Kerry have been by one-point and two-point margins. Last Sunday in Croke Park, they proved themselves to be the masters of eking out a tight win, as they had just two points to spare over Kildare.
And traditionally, going back to the 1980s, Monaghan sides have no fear of Kerry in the Championship. ‘I’m not going start talking about that – given Kerry’s record in Championship football, it’s not a case of going in and starting shouting about it or saying what you will do or won’t do.
‘All we’ll be concentrating on is getting a really solid team performance. No doubt we’ll have to play the best football we’ve played all year, so that’s a big challenge and we’ll try to address that during the week.’
Kieran Hughes, who had been struggling with a hamstring problem, will get another week’s training under his belt before the game. The powerful forward made a difference when sprung from the bench against Kildare and if he is available, he will test the youthful Kerry defenders.
‘Maybe they are young but all those boys are coming in after winning underage titles and they’ve a core of experienced players there too. I keep going back to it — this is where we want to be, these are the tests we want to be up against it. All the boys have trained really hard and made a lot of sacrifices over the last number of years so you want to go in and test yourself and no better team to test yourself against than Kerry.’
The hard-fought win over Kildare has put Monaghan in a great position. If they can end Kerry’s summer next weekend, they will be in an All-Ireland semi-final.
‘Possibly, we are one win away from a semi-final. You would think that if a team has four points, it would give them a good chance. But the way we are looking at it is the same as the National League. We are just taking each game on its merits. We don’t look further. We just concentrated on the Kildare game, now we’ll concentrate on next Sunday’s game, and when that’s over we’ll draw a line under it and see where we are — that’s the way we’re approaching it.’