Breffni remain a potential banana skin for Keane’s Kingdom

CONTEXT is everything and context is nothing.

Had Kerry lost on Sunday afternoon to Tyrone we’d be looking at this weekend’s game very differently to how we’re looking at now, after they’ve won a game with last year’s All Ireland runners-up.

A win breeds confidence. A win takes pressure off.

A win makes you look at a team differently. Suddenly the Kingdom look a hell of a lot less callow than they did before throw-in in a misty Fitzgerald Stadium on the final Sunday of the month of January.

Young guys like Dara Moynihan and Diarmuid O’Connor are no longer unproven and untested. They’ve come through the crucible and lived to tell the tale – seventy minutes means the world at that stage of a player’s development.

That’s the context in which Kerry will travel north this weekend. Breffni Park no longer looks quite as daunting a prospect as it did seven days ago and, yet, Cavan are still Cavan.

Cavan are no different to what they were before Kerry put Tyrone to the sword on home soil. The Kingdom’s change of context won’t make the Breffni men any easier to beat. It won’t make Cavan any less motivated. If anything it might make them that bit more motivated, put them that bit more on guard.

As we say context matters... to the point at which it doesn’t. A football match is still a football match. It still has to be won. The opposition still has to be overcome, but you’d sooner go in off the back of a win than not.

Cavan’s context is that they’ll be desperate for points. Cavan’s context is that they lost a game they could well have won were it not for picking up three black cards and picking them up concurrently for a time that saw them reduced to twelve men.

True enough Galway picked up two black cards over the course of the game, but they didn’t come together like Cavan’s did. Mickey Graham’s side lost the game during that spell when they were down to twelve players.

Cavan still only lost by two points away from home against a side who twice beat Kerry last season and who went on to reach an All Ireland semi-final. If Cavan are equally competitive next weekend and if they manage to improve their discipline there really ought not be much between the two sides.

Another important piece of context to consider is just how poor Tyrone were in Killarney. It was as poor a Tyrone performance as we’ve seen since... since well Tyrone last visited the lakeside venue.

You don’t want to take away from what Kerry did last weekend – it was genuinely impressive – but you don’t want to be setting too much store on it either. Are Kerry’s defensive issues solved because they closed down a blunt Tyrone attack?

Of course not. What we can say, however, is that Kerry are working incredibly hard, that they appear to be tackling at a greater rate than they were during the last year or two. Regardless of what you might think of Tyrone, that will stand to Kerry this weekend.

Cavan will be as close to their first choice fifteen as they possibly can be so Kerry will need to keep their work-rate at the same level as it was last weekend to try and contain players like Michael Argue, Martin Reilly, Thomas Galligan and Dara McVeety.

Probably Mickey Graham will have an easier time deciding upon his starting fifteen for this game than Peter Keane will. With Tralee IT playing midweek, for instance, it’s unclear at the time of writing whether or not Peter Keane will retain Dara Moynihan in the starting fifteen or instead seek to limit his game time for fear of burn-out or injury.

James O’Donoghue is expected to return to the squad and would seem to be the perfect choice to replace Moynihan if that is, indeed, the way the management team opt to go.

Still with only so many games available – just a minimum of six remaining in this league – Keane and co will probably want to give at least one or not two more younger players their debuts or even just additional game time.

Killian Spillane and Gavin O’Brien could be in line for starts, while Tomás Ó Sé and Graham O’Sullivan (the chance to blood a defender is probably one Keane will take sooner rather than later) can’t be too far away either.

It’s got to be considered somewhat unlikely that David Moran will travel, so O’Donoghue aside it’s probably going to be the same twenty six again on match day. Good enough to get the two points certainly, but Cavan remain what they were before last weekend – a potential banana skin.

Nothing comes easy or pro forma at this level. Verdict: Kerry