CASE FOR THE DEFENCE
Kerry have personnel to shore up backline, says legend O’Mahony
IT can be taken either as a measure of their improvement or an indictment of their past failings, but Kerry managed to break a 13-game duck last weekend.
In shutting out Cavan, they avoided conceding goals in backto-back games for the first time since their 2017 All-Ireland quarter-final win over Galway.
In truth, what that reveals is minimal given that the first week of February offers little in the way of illumination. Shutting out Tyrone and Cavan — two teams not known for their attacking penetration — is hardly the acid test.
However, the integrity of the Kerry defence is likely to be tested for real tonight when All-Ireland champions Dublin roll into Tralee with intent in their hearts and goals on their mind.
If that is the case, they have reason to be hopeful.
For all of Kerry’s attacking talent, their defensive fragility continues to haunt them.
Over the past three seasons, they have fallen behind the other top teams in terms of protecting their goal. They have managed just 13 clean sheets in 38 League and Championship games, which works out as a 34 per cent shutout rate.
Tyrone’s average of shutting out the opposition is running at 50 per cent over the same period of time, while Dublin top the charts at a ridiculous 59 per cent.
Last year, it reached crisis point for the Kingdom as they managed just two clean sheets in 12 games, giving up 16 goals in the process.
Little wonder then that fixing the defence is likely to be at the top of Peter Keane’s list of things to do — but Kingdom football folk will be sensitive to how that is achieved.
The beginning of the end for his predecessor Eamonn Fitzmaurice was the 2017 All-Ireland semi-final replay against Mayo when he dropped James O’Donoghue and played Paul Murphy as a sweeper.
That encouraged the narrative that Kerry can’t play the sweeper game, something which got an airing last weekend on the local radio commentary from Breffni Park as Kerry, bunkered deep in the first half, trailed by four points at the interval. Kerry have shown in the past that they can play with a sweeper, a role filled with some authority by Aidan O’Mahony. ‘It is fine for lads looking in to be saying this is not the Kerry way, but when you are training and coaching you also have to take into account the team that you are playing and what way they are setting up. ‘You just watch Dublin. When they are under pressure, they drop 15 men behind the ball as well. ‘From that time we played them in 2016, we felt we needed to keep the heart of the defence closed down and I sat in the pocket at the edge of the D sweeping. I thought it worked well.
‘That day Paul Flynn and Diarmuid Connolly were dropping back and then joining the runners. They have this ability to hit pockets of space when they break so you have to be able to counter it,’ explains O’Mahony.
The problem for Fitzmaurice was the suspicion that he struggled both with the personnel and with the conviction need to put a defensive structure in place.
In short, there have been no replacements found for the likes of O’Mahony and Marc Ó Sé, who left together at the end of 2016.
And that has left a deficit in quality; you have to go back to Shane Enright in 2015 for the last time a Kerry defender won an All-Star.
Only Paul Murphy and Peter Crowley are likely to be in a position to start this summer from Kerry’s last All-Ireland winning defence in 2014, but Fitzmaurice has blooded the likes of Jason Foley, Tom O’Sullivan, Gavin White, Tadhg Morley and Brian O’Beaglaoich in recent seasons and that may yet yield a dividend.
For his part, Keane has rolled the dice by recalling Jack Sherwood to full-back and bringing back the defence-minded half-forward Jonathan Lyne.
The perception in recent years is that there is a soft centre through the Kerry defence, but O Mahony argues that has more to do with structure than individual failings.
‘People talk about how Kerry are weak through the centre when opponents run through but I don’t agree with that.
‘The problem that presents itself is who do you pick up when they are 13 behind the ball and suddenly they are all running at you.
‘I don’t think that Kerry are poor defensively. I have played with Paul Murphy and Peter Crowley and they would make any team.
‘I think the difficulty has been in adjusting to the systems they have been coming up against,’ suggests O’Mahony.
One of the reasons why they may have struggled to adjust has been down to that lack of conviction.
O’Mahony won his last All-Ireland medal in 2014 when Kerry held their tactical nerve, holding their half-backs in place to not give Donegal the space they exploited against Dublin on the counter attack in that year’s semi-final.
It was not pretty but it was effective, although it was incorrectly analysed by some as Kerry having played with double sweepers.
Yet, after both the Mayo defeat in 2017 and their opening round Super 8s loss to Galway last year, the Kerry public railed against Fitzmaurice’s perceived caution.
It was another reminder that the Kerry way is winning and that tradition is just a stick to beat losing teams with.
Fitzmaurice took the handbrake off after that Galway defeat and they went man-on-man against Monaghan, allowing Conor McManus to blitz them in the first half.
They have to find a middle
ground, where the structure is there to ensure that they can capitalise on what they possess at the other end of the field.
‘I know Kerry have this proud tradition but you can’t play man-for-man if you are a corner back and your man is inside in the other full-back line.
‘You can’t go up the field and leave this huge pocket of space because that is exactly what your opponents want you to do.
‘If you look at a lot of teams who might play Kerry, they may take the view that they can’t go man-on-man and come out the other side so they try and limit the damage to ensure that they are still in the game with 10 minutes to go.
‘The best way to counter that is to have good players on the ball who are intelligent and won’t give it away.
‘If you have that, you will find that teams have to come out and play you,’ argues the 38-year-old Rathmore man. And he believes that Kerry have those players. Tonight, they will face a team who are the masters of controlling games by controlling the ball.
It will present rookie senior boss Keane with a different challenge.
Dublin’s ambition should allow Kerry’s set-up to lean a little more to the orthodox, but that could amount to playing with fire.
But now is not the time to be fearful, argues the two-time All-Star.
‘Will they have fear,’ he wonders. ‘I doubt it. It will be up to the Kerry boys to say I need to lay down a marker here.
That is what Kerry football has been about for years, laying down markers in big games.
‘The result could go either way, but I have no fear for Kerry.’