O’Donoghue shines as 14-man Kerry pushed hard by rising Banner

MUNSTER SFC SEMI-FINAL

Kerry 1-18 Clare 1-12

IN the end the six-point winning margin was just about right and fair. As much of the chasm in class between Kerry and Clare remains yawning, gone are the days when we can expect Kerry teams to rock up to Ennis and make an omelette of the home side without breaking some sweat. There’s a reason why Clare have managed just two wins over Kerry in 47 Championship meetings and it’s that Kerry are, almost always, the better team: more skilful, better prepared and greater self-belief.

While the preparedness of inter-county teams is evening out more and more each year, producing enough skilful footballers and instilling the self-belief to buck that trend from Clare’s point of view is a different matter. Last Sunday Clare were well prepared to take on the Munster champions and for the most part they seemed to believe they could engineer the Banner’s third win over the Kingdom in senior championship football. As always, though, it was in the raw football department that they fell down.

This Kerry team would have at least one more All-Ireland title if Gary Brennan was a Kerry man, but while the Clondegad man was his usual influential self (alongside the equally impressive Cathal O’Connor in midfield) Clare lacked the class of James O’Donoghue up front.

They also lacked a defender of Peter Crowley’s ilk, and they had no one to come off the bench and contribute like Stephen O’Brien did for the visitors. In the end, despite Kerry being reduced to fourteen men by dint of Donnchadh Walsh’s 33rd minute red card, class won out.

Would the outcome have been different had Jamie Malone’s 44th minute shot beaten Brian Kelly in the Kerry goal and not cannoned back off the crossbar, to put Clare 2-8 to 0-10 ahead? Elementary now, my dear boy, but that’s the point. That’s always been the point: a team like Clare playing against a team like Kerry has to take every one of those opportunities. Hard enough for any Clare team to beat any Kerry team without smacking the ball off the crossbar with the Kerry goalkeeper beaten.

It’s no coincidence or accident that the next five points after Malone’s miss came from Kerry. Five from play in seven minutes. When a team such as Clare doesn’t put its foot on Kerry’s throat and keep it there, Kerry will do it to them, make no mistake. In that seven minutes, as Clare were undoubtedly wondering what might have been had Malone’s shot gone in, Kerry were doing. Central to that little shell-burst of scores was a hat trick of points from O’Donoghue, the Legion man displaying much of what made him the Footballer of the Year three seasons ago. The skill, the pace, the spatial awareness and the accuracy were all there, but as important as all that was the return of the fiery attitude that can escape him some days.

Crowley brought that energy - anger, even - in the early stages when Clare flew at Kerry and the visitors didn’t seem quite sure how to respond. Crowley, an intelligent man and a cerebral footballer, quite often invokes the basics: grab the football, solo hard into the opposition and make things happen. Kerry needed that type of aggressive approach after going 1-4 to 0-2 behind by the 18th minute, with David Tubridy mining two excellent early points and converting a 16th minute penalty after Walsh had felled

Keelan

Sexton in the square.

It was an early warning shot to the champions who had beaten Clare twice in last year’s Championship, and though Kerry did haul themselves back into the contest courtesy of three converted O’Donoghue frees and one from Paul Geaney, Clare were full value for being level, 1-5 to 0-8, at half time. Indeed, with whatever advantage the wind afforded, along with the numerical advantage after Walsh picked up a somewhat harsh second yellow, Clare would have felt good about themselves going in for the break.

As clichéd as it is, Clare needed the better start to the second half and they got it. Eoin Cleary converted a close-in free and Cathal O’Connor raked over another from 55-metres and the Banner was up and flying.

Stephen O’Brien, on as a halftime replacement for Barry John Keane, exchanged a point with Cleary (free) but then Clare got the break they needed but fluffed it. Sexton did brilliantly to set Malone through after the former was grounded with the ball, but after doing everything right to break the cover and get into range, the latter crashed his shot off the woodwork.

We’ll never know if Clare would have held out against the 14 men of Kerry had they gone four points up then, but it would have been interesting to see how the last twenty minutes unfolded. Instead, true to form Kerry ramped it up a gear or two, kicked those five unanswered points, and closed the game out to its inevitable conclusion with Stephen O’Brien scoring a brilliant solo goal and corner back Shane Enright getting forward to underline what was a decent collective effort by the champions.

KERRY: Brian Kelly, Fionn Fitzgerald, Mark Griffin, Shane Enright (0-1), Peter Crowley, Tadhg Morley, Paul Murphy, Jack Barry, Anthony Maher (0-1), Mikey Geaney (0-1), Kevin McCarthy, Donnchadh Walsh, Barry John Keane, Paul Geaney (0-4, 2f), James O’Donoghue (09, 5f). Subs: Stephen O’Brien for (1-1) BJ Keane, half-time, Jack Savage for K McCarthy, 44, Jonathan Lyne for M Geaney, 56, Kieran Donaghy for A Maher, 60, Bryan Sheehan (0-1f) for J Barry, 63, Johnny Buckley for P Geaney, 68

CLARE: Joe Hayes, Dean Ryan, Kevin Harnett, Martin McMahon, Pearse Lillis, Gordon Kelly, Ciarán Russell (0-1), Gary Brennan, Cathal O’Connor (0-1), Jamie Malone (0-1), Sean Collins, Shane Brennan, Eoin Cleary (0-6, 4f), David Tubridy (1-3, 1-0 penalty), Keelan Sexton. Subs: Cian O’Dea for S Brennan, 49, John Hayes for P Lillis, 55, Eoghan Collins for K Harnett, 66, Gearóid O’Brien for C O’Connor, 70

REFEREE: Padraig Hughes (Armagh)