Kerry too smart
Expert analysis from All-Ireland winner Sean O’Sullivan
FOR a team in Kerry’s position – that is not having played in the championship since the Munster final win over Cork all of nearly four weeks ago – facing into an All Ireland quarter-final can be a potential landmine.
You start to question yourself as an individual player and the group as a whole.
Am I fit? Yes challenge games will have been played and a decent block of training under the belt, but nothing to compare to the full intensity of a championship game.
Have we as a team enough time to prepare for the opposition that await us in Croke Park on Sunday? Most likely you haven’t. Eamonn Fitzmaurice and the players only found out on Saturday evening last that Galway would be the team that stands between them and yet another semi-final so it would have been all hands to the pump since then in focusing their preparation with the tribesmen in mind.
Padraig (or Paudie as we know him) McCarthy looks after all the opposition analysis for Kerry and is one of the top men in the country in his area of expertise. Paudie is also a proud Cromane man and togs out for our senior team.
We travelled to play in a county league game at the weekend and afterwards once we had heard of Galway’s superb display to blow Donegal out of the championship Paudie straight away had his work hat on.
As the rest of us headed for the local to celebrate a good win for the club, Paudie headed for his ‘lab’ as I like to call it to start dissecting Galway and their main men.
By late Saturday night or early Sunday morning that info was ready and waiting for the Kerry management and players for them to look at whatever aspects of Galway’s play they wanted to zone in on.
So even though they only have the bones of a week to prepare when you have that type of professionalism within your set up it should help cover most if not all of your bases.
That is the level the game is gone to. Back in 2007 we could have done with someone like Paudie. It could have saved us a really tough day out against Monaghan in the quarter-final that season.
Similar to this year we had beaten Cork in the Munster decider and then had a long break