The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Still in the dark despite big win
STRANGE though it may seem, for the last five minutes of the Munster semi-final our focus was not on events in Fitzgerald Stadium.
Instead we were all tuned on – by radio, by Twitter, by text or whatever else – to events happening up the road in Semple Stadium. Tipp were on the cusp of a famous win over Cork and Cork were on the cusp of a famous comeback.
In the end Cork’s rally fell short and that talk and the buzz amongst supporters after Kerry’s routine victory over Clare was of Cork... or rather the lack of Cork on Munster final day in July.
We’re a people bound up in tradition and as much as we moan about the sameyness of the championship summer it was, all the same, a disappointment to a lot of Kerry people that our annual joust with the Rebels wouldn’t be happening in 2016.
As for the game at hand it was hard to get a firm grip on what any of it meant. An early goal for Colm Cooper – a shot for a point that dipped and squirmed past Joe Hayes in the Clare goalmouth – meant everything that followed carried a certain amount of healthy scepticism.
At their best the Kingdom were quite irresistible. Brian Kelly had a one-hundred perfect record from kick-outs in the first half – eleven from eleven – thanks not only to his own performance, but sterling work out the field by Kieran Donaghy and Bryan Sheehan.
Even accounting for all of this and accounting for the fact that Kerry scored an impressive 2-23, there was still plenty to worry about. Clare hit seventeen points in the game and fashioned a number of goal-scoring opportunities.
It’s possible to argue that Kerry coughed up such a large number of scores (and opportunities) simply because the game was won so early on. A certainly slackening off was to be expected. The trouble was that we really did not know.
“I thought there was a lot of good football by us,” was Eamonn Fitzmaurice’s assessment.
“But a lot of mistakes by us at the same time. I would be very disappointed at conceding seventeen points, but the one thing we have now is a context to shape our preparations over the coming three weeks.”