Could Royal visit signal some new faces in Kerry team?

WHEN you think about it, the start to Kerry’s league campaign has been fairly patchy and we’re not just talking about the results with one draw, one win and one defeat garnered from the opening three games.

More so it’s that the level of performance has fluctuated from the really very good, to the quite ordinary, to even a little below par in places (even within the same game or half). Really it wouldn’t have taken a huge amount for Kerry to have lost all three games to date.

Nor, of course, would it have taken much for Peter Keane’s men to win all three. It’s been that sort of a season so far. From the level of the Kingdom’s performance their return of three points seems about right and not at all out of kilter with how everybody else is performing in the division this year.

Everybody seems to be taking points off everybody else. Even Dublin have dropped points in both their home games – following up the draw with Kerry with a come-from-behind rescue mission against Monaghan in the last round – making this arguably the most open Division 1 season in at least half a decade, if not more.

Kerry were never likely to have such a charmed start to this season as they had last (when they won the opening five games) and the fact that they haven’t isn’t the end of the world. At this stage of the season results really aren’t the most important thing, it’s about development and team building, advancing patterns of play and habit forming.

When you’re trying to do new things and integrate new players into the side a certain amount of patchiness is to be expected. Injuries have cost Kerry key players in key positions at different times.

To lose Adrian Spillane after less than fifteen minutes of the opening game in Croke Park, for instance, hasn’t helped matters, but it did allow Peter Keane to bring in Liam Kearney for his first minutes as a senior inter-county footballer (not counting the McGrath Cup).

The Spa man has been a qualified success. He was impressive against Dublin in the second half and impressive against Galway, if a little less prominent against Tyrone in Edendork last time out.

Interestingly Kearney is the only new footballer we’ve seen from the Kingdom so far this year. Everybody else who’s featured has featured before and probably out of everything that’s the most disappointing aspect of it from where we’re sitting.

We would have liked to have seen a few more fresh faces by now. Again injuries haven’t helped – Paudie Clifford surely would have featured by now but for his – but even so there’s a certain conservatism to the management team’s selection policy.

The rejoinder to that from the manager would surely be to point out that he’s handed out how ever many inter-county debuts in the last fourteen months, to point out that, while these guys have a league and a championship campaign (one where they played in two All Ireland finals) under their belt, they’re still relatively inexperienced, that the more game-time they get the better. Still we’d imagine that Keane might be in a position to experiment a little more this weekend with the visit of the Royals to Fitzgerald Stadium. No we wouldn’t expect Keane to go gung-ho or anything like it, but don’t be surprised if one or two new guys get their first starts.

David Shaw – who came very close to getting minutes in Tralee against Galway – could well feature. Paudie Clifford, if he’s fit enough, might make the bench for the first time. Perhaps, we might even see Barry Mahony in some capacity after his starring role against Cork in the McGrath Cup.

Beyond a few tweaks like that we wouldn’t expect anything too radical from Keane at this juncture. He’s not the type to take any opponent likely, even if they’re not having a particularly good time of it at the moment as Meath don’t seem to be. Besides Kerry need the points.

The Royals have been finding the transition to Division 1 football most difficult, not helped by the number of injuries they seem to be suffering at the minute – it seems telling that they were only about to bring on two substitutes against Mayo last day out, making it no great surprise that they were caught short late on.

It does seem to be something of a recurring theme for Andy McEntee’s men. Competitive for long stretches and then a lapse in concentration coming at the wrong time and leaking a goal and a couple of points and finding themselves out of contention and scrambling for a late equaliser (as they were at home to Mayo).

That doesn’t sound at all dissimilar to how the Royals performed against Kerry in Páirc Tailteann in the final Super 8 game last August. For forty five minutes they competed well enough with the Kingdom – down David Clifford that Saturday evening – and then Seán O’Shea pops up with a wonder goal and that’s that.

It’s not at all inconceivable that the game will follow a similar pattern in the Stadium this weekend. Meath are going to fight all the way, necessity will ensure that they will. A defeat on the weekend and it’s unlikely they’ll be able to avoid the drop (especially seeing as they’ve failed to take anything out of their two home games so far). Despite their current league position, it’s important to remember that Meath are a good side and that McEntee is a fine manager. There’s a lot of talent there. Full-back Conor McGill will probably have to pick up David Clifford. Donal Keogan on the halfback line was one of the stars of the summer. At midfield Bryan Menton and Ronan Jones (if he’s available) should be capable of matching up to Kearney and Jack Barry. Up front though Meath do lack a little something or at least have so far this year. They haven’t been putting up the type of scores you need at all. Cillian O’Sullivan (pictured), for example, is a very fine player but the end result isn’t always there.

That won’t do against a Kerry forward unit likely to put up a substantial score on their favourite stomping ground.

Verdict: Kerry