The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Buoyant Geaney shines brightest
Paul Geaney’s simply sensational performance was the highlight of a largely unspectacular Munster final, writes Damian Stack
YOU watch it and in the moment it all but catches your breath. It’s a ‘how the hell did he do that’ type reaction. It elicits gasps and laughter in almost equal measure. For us mere mortals to see skill like that is always a thrill.
Only the rare few can reach and have reached those heights. Up there in that rarefied air you’ll find Maurice Fitzgerald, Mikey Sheehy, Colm Cooper and, now, Dingle’s Paul Geaney.
Forget for a moment all the usual health warnings about how those moments of wonder came against ‘only’ Tipperary, this was one of the all time great Munster final performances. Don’t undermine it, don’t seek to qualify it, see it for what it was and rejoice.
Pretty much everything Geaney touched on Sunday turned to gold. Right from the off he was on it. Two early points slotted or, as Liam Kearns would later have it, sniped masterfully. Early portents of what was to come. Portents Tipperary either didn’t react to or were simply unable to and we suspect it’s more the latter than the former.
His first goal when it came was outrageously well taken. A pass from cousin Mikey. A dip of the shoulder and a turn before he brushed off full-back Alan Campbell and shot for goal through a host of Tipperary men to the back of the net. The accuracy, the poise, the power. It lacked for nothing.
Geaney’s second goal was a little more prosaic, if only just. It was stunning demonstration of his sheer pace. With forty seven minutes on the clock he left Ciarán McDonald, no slouch himself, for dead.
The full-forward’s performance was one of the few points of light on a day when illumination was hard to come by. There was an air of unreality about the whole thing from start to finish.
It never really got going, not the way you’d have wished and hoped it would. Not even an early goal for Tipperary could give this game the spark it needed. It was what it was. Flat, dull, boring, whatever word you’d like to throw at it.
The day was better than expected, the crowd at a respectable 21, 512 was bigger too. The Tipp faithful at times got behind their men with their traditional exhortation of ‘Tipp, Tipp, Tipp’.
The Kerry supporters, meanwhile, needed something special to get them geed up. They needed those moments of wonder from Geaney. They needed James O’Donoghue to come off the bench for his first appearance since the All Ireland final.
Other than that they seemed subdued all in all. These were men and women waiting for something to happen, fully confident of victory unable to feign too much enthusiasm for what was all but a one horse race.
The Kingdom were that much better. Without wanting to take away from their historic achievement of defeating Cork for the first time since the thirties, this is not the best Tipperary team Kerry have faced in recent years. Far from it.
For all the flaws of their performance in last year’s Munster semi-final Tipperary were a team better then, playing better football. The gap between the sides at the full-time whistle on Sunday was ten points. In Semple last
year it was six.
Tipp were lacking a certain self belief, a certain verve. Teams less talented than them have given Kerry more trouble over the years. So all consuming was their fear of coughing up possession to Kerry that they rarely gave themselves the opportunity to put Kerry on the back foot.
Their short kick-out strategy secured for them primary possession while simultaneously denying themselves any sort of a foot-hood on the game. In the first half especially, Kerry pressed the Premier high and turned over an amount of ball in and around the half-forward line.
As important as possession can be, territory is just as if not more important. One without the other, as Tipperary proved on the weekend is a recipe for going nowhere fast. For all their glut of primary possession Tipp created less than Kerry did – twenty two chances to their hosts’ twenty three.
To beat a team of Kerry’s quality – in defence and attack – you have to do much better than that and in Fitzgerald Stadium on Sunday Kerry were absolutely ruthless. From their twenty three scoring chances they converted twenty times. From their ten second half scoring chances the Kingdom took ten. A clean sweep.
Given all that why, then, were people less than buoyant as they made their way onto the pitch for the cup presentation and out of the ground thereafter? It’s probably got something to do with the lack of zip to a lot of Kerry’s play.
It felt one-paced, with a few notable exceptions. That Kerry didn’t have to get out of second or maybe third gear to see off Tipperary probably had something to do with it. As water finds its own level so too do Kerry by and large.
Sure there are those exceptions when they come out and absolutely blitz the opposition – Kildare in last year’s quarter-final springs to mind – more often than not, however, Kerry do just enough to get through.
This felt a hell of a lot like that. There’s more to come from Kerry have no doubt about that, even if we must caution that it might not be enough. Kearns was onto something when he lamented Kerry’s seeming lack of pace (although that being the case you’ve got to ask why didn’t the Austin Stacks man do more to exploit it?).
It’s a bit of a cliché at this stage that Kerry don’t like being ran at – who does? – but there is a truth to it. To challenge the big guns, and with Tyrone improving game on game that no longer means just Dublin, Kerry will need greater mobility and flexibility in the middle third of the pitch.
That’s why Paul Murphy is now playing in the forwards. His intelligence, his dogged determination and most importantly of all his pace. On any other day his performance would have earned rave reviews, such was Paul Geaney’s form, however, that he must be satisfied with second billing.
Look closely enough and there’s encouraging signs there for Kerry along with the warning lights. Glass half full or glass half empty, it all depends on your point of view.
Either way there’s work to be done. Lots of it.
This was one of the all time great Munster final performances, don’t undermine it, don’t seek to qualify it