Farewell to the beauty pageant

When under threat in the past, Kerry’s catwalk strut would come to the rescue but this Dublin side has their measure

‘DUBLIN ARE NOT A STORM FRONT, THEY ARE CLIMATIC CHANGE’

SOMETIMES the measure of a rumour is not to be found in veracity but by its very existence. Two weeks prior to their biggest game of the season, football’s most sober tribe was reduced to lapping up not just what dogs were barking on the street, but in the end what local papers were peddling as speculation.

Bryan Sheehan was going to dust down gloves he has not worn since he last played minor in 2002, and resurrect himself as a goalkeeper. It would ensure the Kerry team today would come armed with the dead-ball kicking skills they will be deprived of in their captain’s absence having failed to make the cut out the field.

The chances of that coming to pass – and there is a seductive logic due to Kerry’s lack of confidence in the goalkeeping slot and their dire need for a reliable kicker – given the likelihood of Éamonn Fitzmaurice ever rolling such a reckless dice this late in the year was something less than slim, and yet the traction it gained offers a window into the sense of desperation that has gripped the county.

They are joining all kinds of dots in Kerry for the past 18 weeks since they were humbled in the Allianz National League final, but none of them amount to drawing a pathway that can truly convince their own that there is a logical way of them finding a way through Dublin today.

Outside of their dressing room, even among their own supporters, belief has been diluted into hope and it is a long time since the game’s greatest force travelled to Croke Park at this time of year clinging to betting dockets that advertise their status as long-shots rather than big shots.

There is a reason for that and it is one that discomforts them. This Dublin team is better than Kerry. They are faster, they are stronger, they are more comfortable in dealing with what we now call ‘the transition’, while they have a bench designed to torch grass in the final quarter.

Above all, Kerry’s core comfort, when faced with opponents who were equipped with both the audacity and the method to serially oppress them, was that if they lost on every other count, they could lean on the belief that if the Championship was run as a football beauty pageant, they could still strut the cat walk in the Dome carrying an O’Neill’s like no one else without having to wear a body hugging ‘Repeal the Eighth’ tee-shirt to grab the eye.

Their capacity to produce gifted, technical footballers allowed them that, but now when they look at a Dublin team that contains footballers like James McCarthy, Brian Fenton, Paul Flynn, Diarmuid Connolly, Ciarán Kilkenny, Bernard Brogan, Paddy Andrews, Kevin McManamon and Paul Mannion, making that assumption is more of a leap than a badge of faith.

That’s a bitter truth which takes stomaching in the deep south, where such acceptance never comes easy. But then when you are natural born winners, it never should.

Being under the cosh is nothing new for Kerry. They may be the game’s greatest power, but they have been put in their place over a period of time by others. It has taken great teams to do that but the view from the Kingdom suggested those storms would eventually blow themselves out.

In the main, and with the freakish exception of Down whose two wins since the 1960s (1991 and 2010) have felt more like ambushes from the same bush rather than offering any lingering sense of superiority, that has always been the case.

This feels different, though. The only thing that compares for Kerry in their modern history is their bowing of the knee to Tyrone in the last decade, but there was always the feeling, brutal as those defeats were, it was going to be short-lived.

In each of the three Championship defeats they closed the gap – from being open-mouthed victims in the shock and awe of 2003 semi-final, to being razor-edge competitive in 2005 to being within Pascal McConnell’s flick of the boot from winning in 2008. They did what Kerry have always done when forced to take a lesson, they learned well.

They might not have beaten Tyrone in the noughties, but they beat everyone else to stake a claim to their own greatness.

The narrative here, though, is different. Far from getting a handle on Dublin, they are getting hammered.

From the misfortune of 2011 – and they had real reason to reflect on some curious refereeing calls – it has only gone one way.

Dublin might have been flattered by their seven-point win in 2013 but their victory was totally merited, while Kerry were left blushing by coming within a score of them in last September’s monsoon dance.

IT may have only been a league final back in April, but the 11 points which separated the teams at the death had the feel of proper measure between them and nothing has happened in the interim to demand that to be reassessed. But that is only half of the reason why Kerry’s concern is tinged with desperation this week.

Dublin do not represent a storm front, they represent climatic change. They are blessed by a great team but they are cemented in the certainty afforded by strategic planning, fuelled by superior financial and human resources.

That does not just match Kerry’s tradition but it also represents a rising of the stakes. Dublin have not only had the audacity to put down, in black and white, their target to win three All-Irelands every decade, but they have also borrowed Kerry’s cuteness while doing so by standing accused of under-estimating their potency.

Those three All-Irelands, which have become Dublin’s bottom line, roughly averages out as Kerry’s strike rate through the decades. Of course Kerry will and have, as ever, found a response, not least in a string of minor teams that today will continue their quest for a third All-Ireland minor title.

They have flexed their own financial muscles in the past few years to ensure they have the resources to make the most of what they have. They need to now. Their place at the top is being squeezed like never before.

Adapting this time to a changed landscape would be their greatest trick.