The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Second half fade outs are a real concern
Kerry do have issues, but overall there were more positives than negatives to be drawn from last Saturday’s performance, writes Damian Stack
AJINK and a shimmy, David Newcombe sidestepped, the pass taken, the shot on. You could practically see the confidence surging through him.
Taking the pass from Killian Young, knowing Paul Geaney was there alongside him on the full-forward line, Jack Savage was revelling in it. Fresh from rave reviews of his debut in Letterkenny, there was a certain nonchalance to how he popped it over the bar, a nonchalance and a born-to-rule comportment.
When tails are up there’s nothing quite like a Kerry football team. The way they move the ball at pace, the lines of running, the delicately hit passes, the skill, the ambition, the sheer audacity of it all.
Imagine coming into a team like that for your first couple of league games. It must be as a dream. Everything you imagined it ever would be. The way the crowd swells as you pull back the trigger and purrs appreciatively when the ball sails between the sticks after you release it.
It must be intoxicating, a powerful drug, a brilliant high you just want to experience again and again. Savage, though he didn’t score again in the game, kept up a similar level of performance for much of the first half. Without his quick thinking and clever pass to David Moran from a free, Barry John Keane’s goal would never have happened.
He was just one of a number of young players making their mark in a first half against Mayo under the lights on Saturday evening. It was everything those of us who long yearned to see the squad shaken up could have hoped for.
Ronan Shanahan, a man who never played at any level for Kerry before this year, showed up well at corner-back. Jack Barry continued the fine form he displayed off the bench in Donegal, hustling and bustling, getting himself about.
Adrian Spillane, meanwhile, nearly rose the roof with his first kick of senior inter-county football. Now that really would have been Roy of the Rovers stuff had the Templenoe man stuck it in the back of the net.
It’s a shame really that he didn’t, a shame that he rattled the crossbar instead of the net. We do love a good story, but more than that it would have done wonders for his confidence. As it was he played a fine, if unspectacular, game before being withdrawn midway through the second half.
By then a very fine Kerry performance had begun to curdle into something a little more unpalatable. It was then that the limitations of youth were shown and the value of experience demonstrated.
It’s expecting a lot, too much really, of a Jack Savage or a Jack Barry to grab a game like
this by the scruff of the neck, to bend it too his will. In time they will. Barry, in particular, seems a player well capable of leadership, just not yet, not on this stage, not at this level, not without help.
Barry and Kerry needed more from Moran, for instance, as Kerry began to struggle in the middle third of the pitch. That said both Barry and Moran actually won more primary possession in the second half than they did in the first.
Of course, there’s more to football than raw statistics. Kerry needed to do more to disrupt Mayo – who won eight of their nine second half kick-outs – do more to take the game to them instead of fighting a rearguard action.
The loss of Paul Geaney – and Killian Young too – through injury severely impacted upon the Kingdom’s forward options. Without Geaney, Kerry had no target man, no focal point, no great leader, though Paul Murphy did his best to carry the fight. Without Young, Kerry lost one of their most effective ball carriers.
All this at a time when Mayo were on the march. It put huge pressure on a defence who wobbled occasionally – Andy Moran and Diarmuid O’Connor both had second half goal chances – but ultimately didn’t crack.
They did, however, give away far, far too many frees. Cillian O’Connor was presented with twelve frees in scorable positions, taking nine of those. Eamonn Fitzmaurice evinced a certain amount of disappointment with some of the decisions, but ultimately agreed that discipline in the tackle was an issue.
Perhaps of bigger concern even than that is the Kingdom’s continued propensity to fade in the second half of games. Last week against Donegal Kerry scored their last point of the game on fifty seven minutes, a free by Jack Savage.
At the time it wasn’t a huge talking point that Kerry went over fifteen minutes without a score at the end of the game, after all they had won the game by three points, having been nine up following Savage’s free.
Placed in the context of last Saturday and it begins to look more like a trend. Again Kerry’s last score of the game came on fifty seven minutes. Again there was more than quarter of an hour of play still to go.
It was a similar story last August in the All Ireland semi-final against Dublin. Paul Murphy’s point on sixty one minutes was Kerry’s last, almost fifteen minutes later and the sky blues were still slinging it over the bar through Diarmuid Connolly.
For whatever reason Kerry have been finishing games rather poorly of late. Some of that is down to the conservatism of the manager – that Paul Geaney call in the All Ireland semi-final – more of it is down to a lack of impact off the bench (which is probably why, much to his chagrin, Barry John Keane remains on the bench more often than not).
If and when Colm Cooper returns there’s a case to be made for holding him in reserve until the final fifteen minutes. Same goes for Kieran Donaghy and, maybe even, Darran O’Sullivan. Unless Kerry learn to finish games more strongly they won’t be winning too many close ones.
It’s understandable that some supporters left Stack Park somewhat deflated on Saturday evening, but even considering all that was wrong about the performance – the second half essentially – there’s no real grounds for despair.
The first half wasn’t an aberration. Jack Savage was as sharp as he looked, that he hooked a free wide at the death when really he would have been better served trying to work it and create a goal scoring chance isn’t the end of the world.
Savage will have learned from it. All these guys will have done. You have to take the rough with the smooth.
Even considering all that was wrong about the performance there’s no real grounds for despair