All-Ireland Under-20 semi-final for Kingdom

ALL IRELAND UNDER 20 FC SEMI-FINAL

Kerry v Galway

Tuesday, March 17 Croke Park, 2pm

YOU could sense the giddiness of the crowd grow the longer the half went on.

It went from encouraging murmurs to raucous exaltation and exhortation. They sensed it in the bleachers: this was something very special indeed. Over the course of those thirty minutes the Kerry football public took this team to their heart.

They had both guts and glory this Kerry Under 20 side. After the first half they could have wilted away to insignificance; instead they grabbed the game and took their fate into their own hands and, boy, was it thrilling to see.

This wasn’t a victory fashioned solely from slick moves and silken skills, this was a victory fashioned of wrought iron. Take Seán O’Brien’s performance in the second half. He threw himself into the game with abandon, winning two marks and a break on Cork kick-outs. Sheer wilful defiance.

Take James McCarthy and Dylan Casey. Darragh Lyne and Michael O’Gara. Seán Horan and Eddie Horan. Craftsmen, artisans performing like ploughmen. The end result was that the Rebels simply couldn’t live with them, not with Ruaidhrí Ó Beaglaoich the tip of the spear, tormenting the Rebels at the back.

It was all the more encouraging for the fact the first half was a little disappointing. Here you were, in real time, watching the thing coalesce into something real, something capable of challenging for All Ireland honours.

That’s the next big test, of course. Kerry’s record at this level is quite disappointing. It’s over twelve years since the Kingdom claimed an All Ireland Under 20/21 title. It’s so long ago that the man of the match that day against Kildare in Semple Stadium, Kieran O’Leary, now prowls the line as a selector alongside John Sugrue and Brendan Guiney.

In the Kingdom’s path is a familiar foe for a lot of these players, Galway. Most of the Kerry squad will have fond memories of beating Galway in the 2018 All Ireland minor final – the day the famous five in-a-row was achieved – a handful more will have more reticence off the back of last year’s minor semi-final defeat.

Both sets of players – the 2018 crew and their 2019 counterparts – will know, however, that Galway are never anything less than competitive with Kerry. There was very little in that 2018 minor final, Kerry had to come back from four points down at half-time, and there was very little in last year’s semi-final either.

Aside from the common thread of players, this Galway side is managed by Donal Ó Fátharta the manager of those two minor sides. The Under 20 combination he’s put together looks particularly formidable if we’re to judge it on last weekend’s Connacht Under 20 final.

The Tribesmen utterly blitzed a well-regarded Roscommon side – they were the All Ireland Under 17 champions three years ago – by 4-13 to 0-5 with Ryan Monaghan and Matthew Tierney leading the way for the maroon and white.

Of course, this won’t be the first time the Kingdom have come up against Galway this year. As a matter of fact it will be

the third time the two counties have faced off after they played a pair of games in the Kerins Cup in January.

The Kingdom won both of those games, but you probably wouldn’t want to be reading a whole pile into those games either. Cork had beaten both Kerry and Galway before they played, meaning that they strictly speaking didn’t have anything to play for in either game and, besides, it was a development competition.

The sides which lined out in January will be quite different to the sides which will line out this weekend. There will be a certain amount of commonality, of course. Jonathan McGrath – scorer of a goal against Roscommon – Seán Fitzgerald, Conor Raftery, Jack Glynn (the captain), Tomo Culhane, Eoin Mannion, James McLaughlin and Tony Gill featured in January and featured at the weekend.

So which way is this particular ball going to break? The bookies have Galway installed as marginal favourites and that’s probably fair. Something tells us, however, that this Kerry side won’t fear the Tribesmen. Really and truly we’d be surprised if there was very much in it.

It’s 12 years since Kerry claimed an All-Ireland U20/21 title. It’s so long ago that the man of the match that day against Kildare, Kieran O’Leary, now prowls the sideine as a Kerry team selector