DERRY MEAN BUSINESS
Victory in Tralee is statement of intent from Harte’s men
A PHOTO OF Jack O’Connor and Mickey Harte in smiling conversation long before throw-in was an early dispatch from Tralee.
By the time the match got underway, the smiles were gone and suddenly, the football season was all around us, as quickly and irrepressibly as floodwater.
Harte in Derry was the sensation of the long close season, and on this evidence, he looks good to build on their remarkable progress of the past three seasons.
The big surprise was his decision to pick three of the Glen players who won the club championship six days earlier, as Ethan Doherty, Ciarán McFaul and, most importantly, Conor Glass were all named to start.
Derry were the better team for most of the match, with fatigue and Kerry desperation pulling the teams closer in the final quarter.
But the visitors were deserved winners, with a performance perhaps more open than some of their trademark resilient efforts of recent times.
Their eighth point, as the game ticked into its 35th minute, was a distillation of their most effective play.
The move was driven by Odhrán Lynch, breaking out through his own half-back line and into midfield, with no Kerry player close enough to check his progress.
He laid off a pass, the ball was moved quickly inside and for a second a goal chance shimmered. Instead, Brendan Rodgers checked back and hoisted over a point off his left to put Derry four points back in front for half time, 0-8 to 0-4.
The pace and accuracy of the counter was a sweet sight to behold, worthy of Croke Park in late July. In Tralee on the last Saturday of January, it was yet another booming statement of Derry’s ambition.
No game, or chance, will be wasted this year.
Lynch’s sallies forward could be misread as gimmickry, and in the wrong tactical framework, the advanced goalkeeper can expose a team.
The taunting roars of the Tralee crowd when Conor Geaney curled Kerry’s goal into an empty net after a turnover with 12 minutes to play also betrayed the relish that opponents take when a keeper is caught out, stranded.
That risk is built into the decision to deploy a goalkeeper that way, though, and Harte is content to take it.
Derry were furious, too, at Geaney’s goal, insisting Rodgers had been fouled in the build-up.
Pushing a keeper into the open field forces the opposition into a dilemma, having to choose between marking the goalkeeper and so freeing up an opponent elsewhere, or letting him go and risking the damage he may do.
Key to the move is the footballing ability of the goalkeeper – and Lynch is competent – but also their nous: they have to know when to go, when to play more conventionally, and have the wisdom to know the difference.
Lynch was important on Kerry ball, too, as he pushed up on Shane Ryan’s kick-outs and filled a large pocket of space between midfield and the Derry 45-metre line.
That denied his opposite number an inviting landing spot, forced him to go down the middle, and the result was Derry devastating the Kerry kick-out in the first half.
They won five of Ryan’s restarts in a row in a spell that also brought five unanswered points.
In the absence of the Cliffords, and in a Kerry forward line that was experimental, the burden on Seán O’Shea was clear.
He kicked five points of their total, including one excellent score from play.
Dara Moynihan was the only home player to add to O’Shea’s work in the first half, and it is tests like this, in inclement weather and against an opponent with a stronger line-up and a point to prove, that makes League football so interesting.
Cillian Burke provided sporadic flashes of promise in the Kingdom attack, looking fast and direct, but Derry’s defence was characteristically tight and tigerish.
Space wasn’t being easily offered up.
The nature of the modern season means League and Championship form can no longer be treated as distant cousins with little to tie them; one now becomes the other. The join is almost seamless.
That suits Harte just fine, as he has always been a champion of putting your best into the League.
That’s why the grumbles about player welfare around picking the three Glen men to start won’t have concerned him. Once they presented for duty, he was going to select them.
They rewarded him in the first half until even the peerless Glass started to tire in the later stages.
But Derry had built up a formidable lead that they stretched to six points with 20 minutes remaining.
The pressure may have been on the home team to come out swinging on the resumption, but it was Derry that reasserted control. Shane McGuigan kicked his fourth free and fifth point of the night, before the outstanding Gareth McKinless tore forward in familiar style to put Derry six ahead, 0-10 to 0-4.
Kerry were now chasing, and their pursuit was helped by a black card for McFaul, reducing Derry to 14 men for 10 minutes.
O’Connor’s team pushed up aggressively, seeking out turnovers, and kicked three points in a row to shave the gap to three points by the 53rd minute; two O’Shea frees and a point from Dylan Geaney got the home crowd invested again.
They had an even better opportunity to turn the game upside down when Jason Foley popped up on the edge of the Derry square, rather than his own, but his shot was too close to Lynch, who saved the eort well.
McGuigan pushed the lead back out to four before Geaney’s goal, and Derry’s fury.
With a point in it, the match took on the temper of a Championship shoot-out.
Derry kicked again, pulling three clear once more, before the Kerry full-back line attacked, with Graham O’Sullivan putting Dylan Casey in for the equalising goal.
McFaul nudged Derry back ahead, O’Sullivan countered, and the heat generated in a corner of Tralee could have kept the nation warm until Easter.
McGuigan kicked a nerveless free to win it.
Harte at Derry was said to be a convulsive move, but then upsetting established orders has always appealed to him, and them
Kerry: S Ryan; G O’Sullivan 0-1 (1 mark), J Foley, D Casey 1-0; B Ó Beaglaoich (P Murphy h-t), T O’Sullivan, G White; J O’Connor, S O’Brien (B O’Sullivan 28); D Moynihan 0-1, D Geaney 0-1, C Burke (S O’Brien 44); K Spillane (D O’Connor 50), S O’Shea 0-5 (4f), M Burns (C Geaney h-t, 1-0).
Derry: O Lynch; C McCluskey, C McKaigue 0-1, D Baker; P McGrogan, G McKinless 0-1, C Doherty 0-1; C Glass 0-1, B Rodgers 0-1; E Doherty, D Cassidy 0-1, C McFaul 0-1; N Loughlin (C Murphy 61), S McGuigan 0-7 (6f), P Cassidy (N Toner 49, 0-1).
BlacK carD: McFaul 44-54.
referee: Joe McQuillan (Cavan)