The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Keane indifferent to result even if players’ silence betrays sense of disappointment
SOMETIMES one doesn’t have to utter a word to say plenty.
It’s an old trope that the team that comes from behind to force a draw and earn a point will be the happier of the two, and the team that let’s their late lead slip will be kicking themselves after the final whistle. If that were the case then one would have thought that Kerry - through David Clifford’s 80th minute equalising free kick - would have been a little, if not a lot, pleased with themselves leaving Croke Park. And yet...
Five Kerry players leaving the visitors’ dressing room were asked to stop and chew the fat on the match they had just played in, but all five declined. Unless we were still humming from the garlic bread we had chowed down the previous evening, we could only draw the conclusion that those Kerry players were too dejected to engage with the local media. Certainly the body language suggested a keen disappointment at coming up a fraction short - again - against the old adversary.
Minutes earlier Peter Keane had offered his thoughts on the game and the result, which he best summed up with typical insouciance: “Had we won I wouldn’t have been jumping out of my skin in here, and had we lost I wouldn’t have been crying.”
Twelve months ago, when Kerry beat Tyrone in his first game as senior manager, Keane struck a similar tone of indifference when downplaying a victory over a visiting Tyrone team to Killarney, which many felt was beyond Kerry that day.
Last Saturday evening the Kerry manager wasn’t minded to make much, either way, of the result, though privately he must have rued a great opportunity to get one over early on Jim Gavin’s successor, Dessie Farrell.
“You know, it’s a League game in January,” Keane said to no onein particular. “It’s your first League game. We haven’t a whole pile of work done. We’ve about two and a half weeks of work done, which is similar to what Dublin have done. They’re probably at a bigger advantage because they’re on the go for many, many years and they’re very used to what they’re doing, but it wouldn’t have been crazy had we lost the game.”
An inquiry as to James O’Donoghue’s performance against Dublin drew the longest reply from Keane, which was, in his own way, an affirmation of the Legion man’s apparent return to form.
“Well, take James last year, James had a few injuries earlier on in the League and we were doing our best to get him back. He played very well against Clare in the opening round of the (Munster) Championship. About 40 or 45 minutes (in) the hamstring went on him and it effectively ruined his year. Whereas up to that he had been going very, very well in the April, May period heading into that game. So that was a big setback for him because we were expecting a big year out of him last year.
“And he has done very well in the last few weeks. He had the benefit too, maybe, of not killing himself last year because of the injury, went in fresh to the O’Donoghue Cup which Legion won after so many years and that was a big thing for him. And he’s carried and taken that through.”
Amid some random thoughts on the reduction in substitutions allowed (he would prefer a return to six) and the new rules (his jury, like most, remains out), Keane dropped a few thoughts on the result.
There was this: “It was a draw, it could have been a loss, it could have been a win, you know. We’ll take the draw and head for home.”
And this: “We’re reasonably happy with what we got out of it for the amount of work we got done. It’s a starting point and we’ll build on from there we hope.
And finally this: “Will Dublin feel they left the game after them by virtue of the fact that we came back and took it. Will we feel we left the game after us because we were three points up at sixty one or two or three minutes... so there’s learning curves for everyone.”