The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Dubious penalty denies Kenmare of final place
ALL-IRELAND CLUB IFC SEMI-FINAL
Kenmare 0-11 Westport 1-10 TWICE we tried to get the thoughts of John O’Sullivan and twice the Kenmare manager struggled to unscramble his mind and put into words what had just unfolded before him and almost 4,000 onlookers in Cusack Park. Kenmare should have won this All-Ireland semi-final in regulation time but they could have lost it. In extra-time they might have wrestled victory but in the end it was wrestled from them, and O’Sullivan looked like he had played every one of the preceding 82 minutes.
“They battled us, they battled us, they battled us. We thought we’d got away with at the end but it wasn’t to be,” O’Sullivan said as his distraught players trundled off the pitch behind him.
After 82 minutes of not always easy on the eye, but never anything but uncompromising football, Kenmare were denied a place in the All-Ireland Club Intermediate final in Croke Park, and there was an uneasy feeling that the Kerry champions might have been hard done by.
With 56 minutes elapsed in this edge-of-your-seat contest Kenmare led 0-9 to 0-6, and while they had never pulled more than a score away from Westport, there was little to suggest the Kerry champions couldn’t hold out for the last four minutes and change. Unless.
Westport won a free some 60 metres out, near the left sideline, and with a little smack of desperation Lee Keegan - the Mayo club’s talisman - opted for a route one high delivery to the Kenmare square. Keegan’s midfield partner Shane Scott did very well to win the ball over his head but there seemed little, if any, contact from David Hallissey as Scott went to ground just inside the large square. Scott’s reaction to get up and play on suggested a slip on the part of the Westport player, but referee Martin McNally signalled a penalty, which Scott dispatched low past Kieran Fitzgibbon.
It was, obviously, a critical moment in a game of small margins and although Paul O’Connor had a 59th minute ‘45’ to possibly win the game - it was caught on the goal line - the sense was that Westport had been thrown a very fortunate lifeline back into a game that looked to have drifted out of reach.
“I don’t want to be controversial but I’d have to seriously look at what happened below (for the penalty),” O’Sullivan said, anxious not to convey any sense of sour grapes, but clearly convinced of an injustice on his team. “I can’t see what happened there for the goal. I’m not a sore loser but to us it looked incredibly dubious. Incredibly dubious.”
At half time, with Kenmare holding the advantage of a 0-5 to 0-4 scoreline, this observer felt that the team that got the goal in the second half would win they game. It was that tight. In the end, Scott’s penalty goal didn’t win Westport the game in regulation time but it meant they didn’t lose it, and with their better collective physical strength they drove home their advantage in extra-time despite Kenmare’s best efforts.
With Stephen O’Brien ruled out of the Kenmare team just before throw-in with a hamstring injury, the Shamrock’s scoring threat was severely diminished. It’s reasonable to assume had O’Brien been in from the start he’d have engineered those couple of extra scores to ensure his team had a wider buffer when the goal came.
Kenmare were inches from a goal of their own in the seventh minute when O’Connor took a free quickly only to see his shot come out off the underside of the crossbar with Patrick O’Malley beaten in the Westport goal. It was an early sigh of the threat O’Connor carried all through, although Westport did well to restrict him to just two points from play. Sean O’Shea, too, was in good form, but for all the possession he had he found it hard to get inside a very tenacious defence and do real damage on the scoreboard.
With Kenmare leading 0-4 to 0-2 after 20 minutes Fitzgibbon had to make a smart save from Colm Moran after the goalkeeper’s poor kickout had allowed Paul Lambert set up his team mate for the chance.
The second half was equally as cagey and physical as the first, with Kenmare holding a narrow advantage on the scoreboard until Sean O’Shea’s point from distance pushed them 0-9 to 0-6 ahead after 51 minutes.
When Westport’s Niall McManamon overran his pass to Phil Keegan who had ghosted in behind the Kenmare defence, the Kerry contingent in the 4,000-strong crowd could have been forgiven for believing Kenmare were Croke Park bound.
But then came the penalty and goal. Then extra-time and the growing Westport belief. Then a huge Brian McDermott equaliser in the 74th minute, Scott’s lead point in the 78th minute and Colm Geraghty’s insurance score in the 82nd.
“We’d watched the tapes (of Westport), we knew what to expect. We knew their intensity, we knew they’re an incredibly fit team, but we played into it a bit,” John O’Sullivan said. “We’d be awful disappointed with ourselves to be straight up. We knew going into the game that they wanted to keep the score at seven (points) to six, or six-five. We played into that a bit but they’re a very physical team, they’re very strong. They stop you, and fair play to them. Probably their physical strength saw them through. They could stand us up. The conditions wouldn’t have been ideal for our players. We were looking for a dry pitch to move the ball fast.” WESTPORT: P O’Malley; B McDermott (0-1), K Keane, N McManamon; K Dever, L Keegan, J Walsh; B O’Malley, S Scott (1-1, 1-0 pen); P Keegan, F McDonagh, L Staunton (0-2f); C Moran (0-2), P Lambert (0-1), O McLoughlin. Subs: R Geraghty for McLoughlin (39 mins); D Horan for Staunton (48); C Geraghty (0-1) for McDonagh (60); F McDonagh (0-2, 1f) for B O’Malley (70); O McLoughlin for Lambert (78). KENMARE: K Fitzgibbon; S O’Shea, T O’Sullivan, D Crowley; S O’Sullivan, D O’Shea (0-1), M Crowley; JM Foley, D Hallissey; S O’Leary (0-1), K O’Sullivan, A O’Leary; P O’Shea (0-1), S O’Shea (0-1), P O’Connor (0-7, 5f). Subs: B O’Sullivan for P O’Shea (41 mins); S Dalton for Hallissey (58); C O’Sullivan for T O’Sullivan (69); S O’Brien for O’Leary (73); D Hallissey for Dalton (73, b/c). REFEREE: M McNally (Monaghan)