More of the same from Kerry should be enough to beat Joyce’s Galway

NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE DIVISION 1 Kerry v Galway Saturday, February 1 Austin Stack Park, 7pm

WE’VE been burned a few times expecting a silk purse of a game and ending up instead with a sow’s ear.

There’s something about the fixture that leads us all to flights of romantic fancy. There’s a certain amount of kinship there between these two west of Ireland counties. Game recognises game and both places like to play football the right way.

That, of course, doesn’t mean they always have. Galway, it’s fair to say, have been hard enough going the last couple of years from a neutral perspective. That’s not to disrespect the Kevin Walsh era, a lot of what he did he had to do, he brought Galway to a level of consistency and competitiveness that eluded them for a long time.

There did come a point though when it became clear that All Ireland winning midfielder had brought the team as far as he could. Galway looked a side at times suffocated and forced to stifle their natural instincts.

It made for sometimes sterile enough clashes between the traditional best of rivals. The 2018 Super 8 match in Croke Park was probably the nadir of the long and storied relationship between the two counties. About as far removed from the shoot-out in the downpour ten years previous as you can get.

Galway won the game, but it still felt like they’d strayed too far from what it is that made Galway Galway not to get too caught up in hazy nostalgic notions of the way things were and how they ought to be again.

Still it wasn’t just us outsiders who seemed to feel that to some certain extent if the reaction in Galway to Pádraic Joyce’s appointment as senior football manager in the wake of Walsh stepping down last year is indicative.

Euphoric might be stretching it, but there’s a real sense of optimism in Galway right now and certainly an enthusiasm for how he’s going about his business and the style of football he’s trying to get his side to play.

It’s closer Corofin football than Kevin Walsh football. It’s closer to the traditions of the game up there than what we’ve seen from them of late and it’s got us once again dreaming of one of those classic contests this Saturday evening under the lights in Austin Stack Park.

Probably we should hold our horses a just little bit there. There’s no guarantee of a classic here and as much as Joyce is moving things on for Galway stylistically it’s not like he’s going to stride into Stack Park guns blazing without due regard of his own safety.

Joyce will know what he’s up against in Kerry with probably the best full-forward line in the game at the moment now that James

O’Donoghue is back to full fitness and back on his game. Seán Mulkerrin and co in the Galway full-back line are going to have their hands full and they’re going to need a certain amount of protection.

Potentially Galway should be a little further on in where they want to be than the Kingdom – although they probably won’t be able to call upon any of their Corofin contingent for this weekend’s fixture in Tralee – but with Kerry now having a serious game under their belts against Dublin their relative lack of collective training time shouldn’t be as much of an issue.

Indeed, the Kingdom looked incredibly sharp and tuned in on the weekend once they got going. Fitness and match-sharpness wasn’t a problem last weekend despite being just a couple of weeks back from their vacation and shouldn’t be a problem here.

We’ve a feeling again that Peter Keane will want to select the strongest team that he can, with a relatively minimal amount of experimentation. Kerry only have three home games this season so he’ll want to make the absolute most of them. Kerry will probably have to make a handful of forced changes with Brian Ó Beaglaoich and Adrian Spillane going off injured against the Sky Blues. Their replacements in Dublin would seem to be well-placed to step into their boots again this weekend with Graham O’Sullivan and Liam Kearney both impressive at Headquarters. We would also expect to see Na Gaeil’s Jack Barry return to the match day squad at the very minimum – if not as a starter – given Kerry’s relative lightness in the central positions at the moment. Diarmuid O’Connor, of course, could also return. There’s also a chance that Keane could draft one or two more players into the side – might we see a Tony Brosnan or a David Shaw or maybe even a Micheál Burns from the start after his impressive cameo at Croker?

One got the feeling watching the Kerry and Dublin game that last year’s All Ireland finalists are a cut above the chasing pack at the moment, but that doesn’t mean that Kerry are nailed on to win here.We’dexpectthemto, but Galway have more than enough quality footballers to cause problems and pull off something of a coup (they did so the last time they came calling).

Paul Conroy is back after his horror injury. Shane Walsh is as silky smooth and mercurial as ever and Damien Comer could well be in a position to start this weekend having come off the bench in the Tribesmen’s opening round victory over Monaghan. Once again that old romantic tendency has caught a hold of us and we really do think we could be in for a very good game under the lights in Stack Park and those Saturday night games in Tralee seem to take on a life of their own as it is don’t they? Still it’s hard to look beyond Kerry winning this game right now if Keane does go with as strong a team selection as we imagine he might. They’ll be made to earn it though, of that we’re fairly certain. Verdict: Kerry