Kimoyley have more routes to victory than Lixnaw do

Sunday, August 26 Austin Stack Park, 3.15pm

WHAT relevance does June 16 have for August 26?

Very little you’d have to imagine. That first day of the championship Lixnaw beat their opponents for Sunday’s final by the bare minimum – 0-16 to 1-12. Neither team were altogether impressive, but then again what harm? It was a first round game, both teams had a long way to go from there and what’s more they knew it.

The Kilmoyley and Lixnaw teams we see this weekend will have bear certain resemblances to the teams we saw a couple of months ago – similar personnel, same jerseys – but in reality they will be very different animals to what they were back then.

That’s what two months and three championship matches will do for you. With time and opportunity both of these management teams have improved their players, got greater cohesion out of them, greater aggression and greater motivation.

There’s nothing quite like the sight of the finishing line to incentivise a bunch of eager young hurlers and that’s the interesting thing about this final, both teams are being led by their younger cohort.

Sure there have been days when the old head on wise shoulders was needed to pull the fat from the fire – John Griffin in Lixnaw’s quarter-final and Tom Murnane in Kilmoyley’s – but increasingly it’s guys like Jordan Brick and Darragh Shanahan who are leading the way.

Lixnaw’s hopes for this final rest upon the shoulders of the most exciting talent to emerge in Kerry hurling in the best part of a decade, Shane Conway. Conway has lit up this championship and easily tops the scoring charts for both his club and the championship as a whole.

Any club in the country would love to have a player like Conway on their books. Conway’s strength as a player does, however, highlight a weakness in Lixnaw’s game plan.

Conway is responsible for about seventy percent of Lixnaw’s scores – he’s scored 1-45 out of Lixnaw’s 1-66 total. That’s a real imbalance. The fact Conway is the club’s free taker shouldn’t be ignored and does inflate the figure, but even so he’s taking an inordinate amount of scores for the club.

Last time out only three other players got on the scoreboard apart from Conway and Fergus Fitzmaurice’s men didn’t get a single score out of their starting half-forward line or a single score off the bench.

There’s no way of looking at that other than as a major vulnerability. If Kilmoyley can clamp down on Conway – a combination of Seánie Murnane and James Godley most likely – then it’s hard to see how Lixnaw can get the scores they need to win this match.

It’s probably the main reason we’re leaning towards Kilmoyley to win here. Kilmoyley have the players to clamp down on Conway. They’re unlikely to take him out of the game entirely, he’s too good for that, but they should be able to do enough to limit his effectiveness just enough to win them the game. And, while Lixnaw have the players to clamp down on some Kilmoyley’s forwards, Kilmoyley have a greater spread of scorers that makes it that bit less likely to be as effective.

Brendan Brosnan could give Jordan Brick a run for his money for instance, Pat Corridan can mark Maurice O’Connor or Joe McElligott out of it, but can they do that while keeping Daniel Collins and Seán Maunsell quiet too?

They may be able to, but it’s much easier for a team to focus their attention on one or two players than on a whole suite of attacking options and that’s what Kilmoyley now have at their disposal. After years of over-reliance on Collins, Kilmoyley have options again.

Kilmoyley also have the incentive of that first round defeat to fire them. Sure it technically doesn’t matter much in the larger scheme of things as we’ve said, but beating a team twice in the one campaign is a notoriously difficult thing to do. Causeway found that to their cost against Kilmoyley in the semi-final. Monaghan found that out to their cost against Tyrone in this year’s All Ireland football championship.

What Lixnaw have in their favour is the two county finals they played last year. That will stand to them hugely this weekend. Kilmoyley, despite two titles in the last three years, don’t hold a major advantage over them in the experience department. There’s also the possibility – and at the time of writing it wasn’t yet 100% certain – that John Buckley and Liam Mullins will be available for selection. That’s the sort of boost that can make all the difference in a final.

John Meyler’s influence with Kilmoyley, meanwhile, has quite clearly given them a boost. Obviously we should recognise the work being done by Shane Brick and his management team, but when you can call upon the coach of a quality of Meyler it’d be madnessnotto.

Overall you can’t see this being anything other than a tight match, with a score or two either way likely to decide it. The thing is though we see more potential routes to victory for Kilmoyley than we do Lixnaw.

For Lixnaw everything goes through Shane Conway. As we’ve said that’s a risky proposition, but by the same token if anybody can pull it off it’s young Conway. We’ll go for Kilmoyley just about – all the while remembering that we’ve not yet had a draw (or extra-time) in this year’s championship. Verdict: Kilmoyley