The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
History boys storm to fourth title in-a-row
A brilliantly coached Kerry side stormed to a record fourth All Ireland minor title in-a-row in Croke Park on Sunday, writes Damian Stack
HIS arm reaches out, his fingers caress the ball, spinning and gliding through the air, and just like that he’s got it under his control. One hand, that’s all he needs. That’s the control he has. The touch and the feeling.
Things like that, they can’t be taught, they can’t be learned, they just are. You either have them or you don’t. David Clifford has it. There’s very little the guy doesn’t have. He’s pretty much the full package.
Only a player of his supreme abilities could score 4-4 from play in an All Ireland minor final and at the same time assist as heavily as he did. Outside of his sixteen point haul, he was directly involved in an additional five scores – including Fiachra Clifford’s first half goal. He even had time to assist Jack Griffin for his shot at goal.
As much as he loves to score, as much as he loves to rattle the back of the net, this guy is no glory-hunter. The Fossa man is a team player, a true leader of men. Doing unto others as he would have them do unto him.
Only one with an appreciation for the value of a killer pass could be capable of delivering the type of passes he gave. The pass he hit for his namesake’s goal was damn near sublime. Slide-rule and with the vision to pick out his man ghosting between two Derry defenders.
The vision thing. He’s got it and, as much as we and others rightly gush over his performance, it’s only fair to point out that he wasn’t the only one in green and gold who had the vision thing down cold. Barry Mahony’s pass for Clifford’s first was top notch. Dónal O’Sullivan’s pass for his second was even better.
It was that sort of day for Kerry. Everything pretty much worked like clockwork. The Kingdom looked a well-oiled machine moving up through the gears seamlessly. No doubt about it Peter Keane and his management team have done a remarkable job.
This minor team looked, to our eyes at least, one of the best coached sides ever to make the trip to Croke Park from these parts. The best evidence for this was in the way the Kingdom tackled and the way they set themselves up in defence.
Kerry were whistle clean in the tackle – they gave away their first free in the game after sixteen minutes – and forceful with it. Kerry defenders – led by guys like Seán O’Leary and Michael Potts who were both excellent throughout – got out ahead of their men, winning sixty / forty ball much more than fifty percent of the time.
That doesn’t just happen. No matter how good the footballers are – and these footballers are
very good indeed – that doesn’t happen without them being welldrilled and expertly coached.
Whatever about the fact that he’s delivered for the Kingdom a fourth All Ireland minor title ina-row, the quality of football that he’s served up in his two years in charge means that Peter Keane should be the next Kerry senior football manager.
He’s got a vision for how the game should be played that would find approval with the Kerry support. He’s got the freshness and the hunger for it. He’s got the experience too. His credentials now probably exceed those of Eamonn Fitzmaurice when he got the job.
If the incumbent opted not to stay on – and Fitzmaurice still hasn’t confirmed his intention to remain although that does seem the most likely scenario – Keane is ready to step up to the big job right now.
No doubt in time he will and no doubt in time a some of these players will step up to senior level too. That’s the big challenge now for whoever is Kerry Under 20 and senior boss. Moulding these guys to be the best they can be.
There’s pressure in that too. People’s expectations will be sky-high on the back of the Kingdom winning four titles in succession. All that is for the future. Now is the time to celebrate this brilliant team and this magnificent performance.
Sunday was their time to shine and shine they did. Kerry hardly put a foot wrong all afternoon. Derry on the other hand will be left to rue a few fateful and, in hindsight, poor choices.
Damian McErlain and his management team should have done much more to try and curb David Clifford. We say try to because even if he was doubled marked, the Kerry captain would still find a way.
Even so it was odd that even though Derry played a sweeper, he was rarely in the vicinity of Clifford who was left in a one-onone battle with full-back Conor McCluskey. McCluskey was withdrawn at half-time.
The second poor decision was that not to start Callum Brown in the full-forward line. Now this is a bit more understandable. Brown has generally played more as a midfielder during the campaign so the decision to throw him in at full-forward was a bit left field.
All the same the way Kerry struggled to cope with the big man showed that pre-match chatter about Kerry being vulnerable to a long ball strategy wasn’t that far off the mark. As Keane readily admitted after the match, he just didn’t have big guys in the full-back line.
What he did have was an ability to think on his feet and after an initial burst of activity, Brown’s influence was curbed once Eddie Horan came into the side. So even had Brown started Kerry would have found a way to win. They were that much better.
Even without David Clifford Kerry would have won. Subtract his 4-4 and the 1-4 he assisted from Kerry’s total and they would still have won by a point. Obviously that’s a somewhat silly, reductive argument (you can’t isolate one performance like that), but you get the basic point we’re driving at: this was a fantastic performance by a fantastic team.
They came into this final as the most low-key of the past four minor teams and they leave it having served up the most brilliant performance of any Kerry side during this four year golden age.
As Dublin proved in the senior game later on, creating history isn’t easily done and, yet, this team make it look easy. No county had ever won four in-arow before now and this team have done so and done so with a sixteen point average margin of victory. After that what more do you need to say?
They leave it having served up the most brilliant performance of any Kerry side during this golden age