Tom, Tommy and Tomás play big part in Kerry win

Paul Brennan considers Kerry league campaign so far and how many more players - and who - we can expect to see in action before the end of March

FIND me a person who says they believed at the start of January that the Kerry footballers would have eight points from four National League games at the end of February and I’ll show you a liar. With both last year’s All-Ireland finalists (notwithstanding team holidays, coming back to training later, etc) among the first four fixtures, no one could have imagined that Kerry would record wins against Tyrone, Cavan, Dublin and Galway to sit atop of Division One at this stage in the campaign.

It’s not unusual that a team will get a positive bounce with the arrival of a new manager and management team: it might be a cliché but the idea of a fresh voice ringing through still carries weight. Established players can, inevitably, tire of hearing the same voice no matter how good the message might be, and over these last four games it’s pretty obvious that players such as Peter Crowley, Paul Murphy, Brian Ó Beaglaoich and Stephen O’Brien look reinvigorated now, where they looked mentally fatigued in last year’s Super 8 campaign.

Making such an assertion, we know, can be read as a direct criticism of the previous management, and while that regime certainly lost its lustre in its last 12 to 24 months, this season’s early form can, in some respects, be put down to that fresh voice bounce that most new team managers experience. The trick for Peter Keane and his backroom staff now is to ride this early confidence and momentum deep into the year and see how far into the Championship it can carry them.

That work continues this Sunday with the visit of Monaghan to Killarney, with last year’s All-Ireland semi-finalists struggling at the foot of the division with just two points. The Farney men’s predicament is even more surprising when one considers they started this campaign with a win over Dublin, but subsequent loses to Roscommon, Galway and Tyrone leaves Malachy O’Rourke under severe pressure to get something out of the trip to Fitzgerald Stadium.

From Kerry’s point of view,

Keane is coming to a sort of ‘stick or twist’ situation whereby he has enough of money in the bank at this stage to be able to afford to drop some points if he feels he’d be better try some more new players and ideas at the risk of losing a game or two. The other side of that - despite Keane’s assertion that he’s not overly bothered about the results or the points - is that three more points, and maybe even two, would get Kerry to the League final, and as was proved in 2004 and 2009 when Kerry did the League and All-Ireland double, silverware in March/April is no burden to carry into the summer and September.

Kerry have used 24 players over these first four games - 21 players have been match starters - but there has been a fairly familiar look to the team from no.1 to no.8, with Shane Ryan, Peter Crowley, Jack Sherwood, Paul Murphy, Tom O’Sullivan and Jack Barry starting all four games. Ó Beaglaoich started the first three and possibly would have started in Tuam but for being suspended, while Tadhg Morley started the first three - as did Adrian Spillane at midfield - and came on the last day against Galway.

The logic of sticking with the same goalkeeper and defence in those first few games made sense, but now there is probably as much logic is getting Jason Foley and Graham O’Sullivan and Robert Wharton into the action. Ditto up front where last week’s hero, Tomás Ó Sé, might expect to start, while Kevin McCarthy, Conor Geaney and Denis Daly - who were listed for the Galway trip - can surely expect to dip their toes into the action against Monaghan.

Twenty-four players is a tidy number to have seen action so far, when one considers Foley, Graham O’Sullivan, Wharton, McCarthy, Conor Geaney, Daly, Tom Leo O’Sullivan and Brian Kelly have been named on match day squads but haven’t made it onto the pitch. Add in David Clifford, James O’Donoghue, Gavin White, Micheal Burns, Shane Murphy, Michael Potts, David Shaw and Killian Young and you’re up to 40 players who will want to get at least some bit of game time in this League campaign.

Of course, between a League final on March 31 and the first Super 8 game on July 14 there is a 15-week break and let’s by honest, Kerry aren’t going to get a tough game in that time, with another Munster title waiting to be collected with minimum fuss.

Everything will be reset after the League but for players like Dara Moynihan, Gavin O’Brien, Jack Sherwood and Diarmuid O’Connor they’ve already got a head-start on the others who will be challenging for starting places and consideration when the Championship comes around.

David Moran will miss the game against Monaghan and after that there’s only two games for the likes of Young and O’Donoghue in particular to make some impression on the new management in a competitive match environment.

Mark Griffin will want another chance at midfield, Paul Geaney won’t want to drop down the pecking order and the Crokes lads will want to squeeze in a game, or two, if possible before the League ends.

No one is going to throw the toys out of the pram if they don’t get game time - Keane wouldn’t indulge that anyway - but with so much new talent, and older players Keane hasn’t worked with before, there simply aren’t enough games left this spring to run the rule over everyone.

With three - probably four - games left before Championship don’t expect these Kerry players to ease up one little bit.