Brave new dawn for Kerry as Tyrone are dismissed

Paul Brennan was encouraged by a tenacious Kerry performance against Tyrone that offered some green shoots of optimism for the future

ABOUT 20 minutes into Sunday’s game a wag in the stand wondered aloud if the crowd shouldn’t just get a rebate on the five euro increase on Division One ticket prices, but if they should get all their money back for being made to suffer what was unfolding out on the pitch. He might have even enquired if there was a few bob in it for himself and the rest of the 12,921 attendance to stay in their seats.

It brings to mind what Professor Niall Moyna – a man steeped in Gaelic football – said just before Christmas that you couldn’t pay him now to go and watch a football match. Even those of us who were in Fitzgerald Stadium in a paid capacity could empathise with the professor: at about 2.30 on Sunday afternoon we really wondered if there wasn’t better ways to make a living. At that stage Kerry were leading Tyrone by 0-3 to 0-1, with all four scores coming from free kicks. The only thing that had stopped us from flat-lining by then was Stephen O’Brien’s missed goal chance in the 18th minute when he broke clear but scuffed his shot wide of Niall Morgan’s goal.

Of course, it’s the hope that kills you, or when it comes to league football it’s the hope that sustains you. And, mercifully, we were briefly nourished by Dara Moynihan’s two points at the very end of that utterly forgettable first half to give Kerry a four-point lead and a strong foothold in the contest.

We’d pitch up at the stadium not quite sure what to expect from a Kerry team going out under the tutelage of Peter Keane for the first time. Even Keane himself had told us the previous week that really, truly, he didn’t know what to expect, other than what he demanded, which was for his team to be hard to beat. And so they proved to be.

The Kerry team announced on Friday night seemed to elicit a collective groan around the county. Goalkeeper Shane Ryan was the only player making his senior debut and we wondered where were the new faces that had been brought in and why weren’t they getting a start. As it transpired, two of them – Diarmuid O’Connor and Moynihan – did start the game and that pair brought an energy that permeated the whole team.

Moynihan, especially, grafted heroically and if the comparison at this early stage is unfair it is also apt: the Spa man is cast in the likeness of Darran O’Sullivan with his explosive speed and low centre of gravity and his hunger to get on the ball.

O’Connor’s debut wasn’t perfect but it was polished, the Na Gaeil man willing and able to run good lines of attack and ping the football about.

Elsewhere Brian Ó Beaglaoich was alert and brave in defence while Tadhg Morley, Paul Murphy and Tom O’Sullivan put up a de-

fensive wall Donald Trump would pay top dollar for.

Jack Barry and Adrian Spillane were more solid than stand-out at midfield, but as a partnership they dove-tailed neatly, rolled up their sleeves and put in a shift of work that Keane and Donie Buckley will be pleased with.

And then there was Seán O’Shea. Those first three Kerry scores came from O’Shea frees, two of which he earned himself, with the second one an offensive mark, which he called a tapped over the bar. He had a fourth from play early in the second half before he flung over that sideline kick, which surely drew a knowing smile from Maurice Fitzgerald behind him in the Kerry dugout.

Even Mikey Geaney – dropped from the named starting team and often decried for his lack of scoring punch in the county jersey – came on and thumped over a crucial point with his very first touch.

It was a grim, inhospitable day in Killarney weather-wise and for the most part the football was made to match. And yet there were just enough moments where the light was allowed in: an early block by Jack Sherwood to deny Tyrone, Moynihan’s second point, Tom O’Sullivan’s booming score in the 47th minute, O’Shea’s audacious sideline kick.

Keane wasn’t getting ahead of himself in the aftermath, nor should he be. Yes, this was an impressive and encouraging performance and result in the circumstances but one swallow in late January will not make his or Kerry’s summer. And let’s be frank here, Tyrone’s display was somewhere between the low end of medicore and brutal. For all the momentum they brought – or should have brought – from a McKenna Cup winning January, the beaten All-Ireland finalists offered little in the way of an offensive threat. Ponderous in their build-up from the back they persisted in trying to bish-bosh their way through a Kerry defensive screen that had been given the time to set itself up. The one first half score was a converted free kick from goalkeeper Niall Morgan, and it took 52 for their first of just two scores from play, a Peter Harte point. Shane Ryan hadn’t a tough save to make in the Kerry goal and Sherwood was given an armchair ride at full-back because of Tyrone’s lack of derring-do or any sort of aerial raid. It was, in essence, another limp display from a Tyrone team in Killarney. It’s 16 years since a Tyrone team won on Kerry soil and they looked as far away as ever last Sunday, even when just two points behind after 70 minutes.

For Peter Keane it was a winning start that very few new Kerry managers have enjoyed in many years. As he said himself, it’s nicer to win games than lose them, but Keane is cute enough to know this result will be well forgotten by the time July and the Super 8s come around. Suffice to say a defeat in Cavan next Sunday will re-open many of the recent concerns floating around the minds of the Kerry supporters, not to mind what will be said if Dublin come to Tralee on Saturday week and turn over the home side.

But for now Kerry and the Keane era is up and running with a win and a performance packed with good attitude and some structure that heralds a new dawn in a positive light.

Our man on the terrace might just be willing to fork out his hard earned for a second look. That’s as good as we can ask for now.