The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Moynihan excels in tough conditions
DARA Moynihan is a big game player, that we now know.
In the Hogan Cup Final the Spa man was most unlucky to miss out on the gong. On Sunday there was no mistake about it. He was in sensational form. He was central to Kerry’s second goal, he could have nabbed a goal for himself early in the second half, he scored two really fine points from play when his team really needed him to.
In short, impressive stuff, especially when you consider just how good this Galway team were, when you consider how strong their challenge was. Kerry got nothing easy on Sunday.
“Conditions were tough,” the Spa man explained.
“The ball kept slipping away which suited Galway I felt because they were hard and physical whereas we would prefer a fast and quicker ball. The goals were vital for us today particularly David’s [Clifford] one as they were right back in the game at that stage with 10 minutes left.”
The praise the forward line had been getting through the Minor campaign was pronounced, but the wing-forward agreed that a lot of the credit for last Sunday’s win really should go to the Kerry defence.
“They don’t get enough praise and people don’t really see the work that they do. The tackling and the intercepting that they did today was immense and to keep Galway to only nine scores was a great illustration of that,” he said.
While Moynihan will move on from the set-up from next year, he expects the 2017 class to be very competitive once more.
“There’s a good bunch of them underage again next year and I think they will give it a serious go. Peter [Keane] has done a great job this year especially after having to follow on from Jack O’Connor and the two sides that won the last two All-Irelands and this success is well earned.”
Along with the Man-of-theMatch award how will he remember the year?
“I’ll remember going over to Tralee and everywhere else we went for training and getting to play with players I never played with before and making some new friends as well.”