Two down, Buckley hopes for a hat-trick of cup presentations

THIS he could get used to. In fact he has been.

Johnny Buckley has been up the steps of a stand to collect a cup after victory in an important final twice in the space of a couple of months. You’ve got to believe that feels good.

The Hogan Stand and the Andy Merrigan Cup was probably the more special of the two times, but for a Killarney man to collect the cup with no name in the O’Connor Stand on Munster final day has to rank pretty highly on the bucket list.

No longer does the Dr Crokes man have to wonder what it must be like. He’s been there. He’s done that. Really when you think about it, there’s just one more similar experience to aim for – Sam Maguire on the third Sunday of September.

“Wouldn’t it be nice,” he says with a glint in his eye that suggests it’s not the first time he’s thought of it.

Nor should it have been. No Kerry captain ever takes on the role without thinking that their final destination won’t be, or at least can’t be, the Hogan Stand. Kerry are now just three games, two hundred and ten minutes away from the ultimate.

The rhythm of the season is well known to Kerry by now. The gap between Munster final and quarter-final. The potential pitfalls such a gap produces. Winning five Munster titles ina-row has allowed a team that luxury.

“We’re well used to it,” Buckley says.

“The bigger gap is the one between the league and the championship it turns into two different seasons. You go back with the club for a couple of weeks playing the local championship matches, but we always found with the championship, even though there’s long breaks between it, that they kind of run in one after another.

“We’ll go back training Tuesday night and it’s great to be looking forward to Croke Park. You’re not thinking of who you’re going to be playing in two weeks time in a venue you’re unfamiliar, you can really tune in and from the management point of view they can really focus training to a specific date.

“So we’re just delighted. We love going to Croke Park. It’s where you want to play matches.”

It seems that the biggest benefit of winning on Sunday – indeed winning the five in-a-row – is just that: it provides for a route to Croke Park. In and of itself, after five years in succession, does it lose a little of its lustre?

“Sometimes it’s only when you’re talking to people and fellas who played with Kerry who went through a number of years without winning one, that you realise the importance and maybe take a step back,” the captain explains.

“We’re delighted to win them, five in-a-row is a great achievement and it’s something that we’ll look back on in years to come and say ‘it was great to be involved in that team’.

“Then there’s the game that fits into the season and you’re saying ‘let’s win this game and continue on’. The whole five in-a-row thing wasn’t a huge emphasis for us leading into the game, more so on the game itself, but looking back now that the game is done it’s a great achievement.”

The big question for many observers, however, was just how great an achievement it was to beat this particular Cork side and that’s no criticism of Kerry. They beat what was put in front of them, what else could they do?

In fact the Kingdom entered this game as such overwhelming favourites that you must give credit for how on the ball they were, how they started the game like a house on fire, how they started the second half in a similar fashion.

“You approach it as you do any game,” Buckley says.

“We weren’t fully sure what Cork were going to bring tactic-wise, so what we did was very much focus on ourselves and get our own game-plan right. I suppose focus that if we got ourselves right on the day that hopefully it’d be enough to pull through and thankfully it was.

“If you look at the first half the game was there or thereabouts at half-time, but we pulled away. We learned a lot from today, any championship game you learn a lot. There’s positives and there’s negatives and we’ll be focussed on both and trying to improve for the next day out.”

On a personal level it was good for Buckley to get back on the field of play. He can’t be too far away from challenging for a place on the starting fifteen and may well do battle with Kevin McCarthy for that number 11 berth.

“We’ll see,” he says. “There’s a big talk amongst ourselves at the moment that, look, some players start the game, some players come on. It’s a mentality that’s not easily developed within the team, but at the moment we have that balance right. Some fellas’ role is to start some fellas’ role is to finish, so we’re all pulling in the same direction and we’ll see how we go for the next day.

“Training is very tough. I suppose it has to be at this level, when you’re preparing for big championship games there’s nothing better than intensity in training. It is very competitive, there’s competitiveness on the field, but once the training is over there’s a close bunch of lads there.

“Everybody is trying to do their bit and fighting for their spot. It’s good healthy competitiveness.”