Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
This is different, I wanted to stay on that pitch & soak it all in
SAYS JACK MCCAFFREY
BEFORE the second half started on Saturday, it was easy to imagine how the five-in-a-row might slip from Dublin’s grasp.
They had started the game in an ominous mood, moving four points up after eight minutes and again after 16, with Ciaran Kilkenny well on his way to a man of the match performance, and Con O’callaghan and Paul Mannion drilling holes in the Kerry defence.
Kerry had opted against starting Tommy Walsh but were still resorting to ballooning high ball on the Dublin full-back line and it was comfortably dealt with time after time.
But, just as it appeared that Dublin may cut them adrift altogether, they gradually worked their way back into the game and with David Clifford and Paul Geaney troublesome.
Despite the sides being level at 0-10 each, Kerry had the momentum at half-time, particularly as Jack Mccaffrey, the star of the drawn game who had been receiving treatment on his hamstring, didn’t appear for the second half.
And then, within 10 seconds of the restart, the flow of the game flipped with Eoin Murchan’s goal and it stayed with them to the end.
“I went in at half-time and said to Jim and the lads, ‘Look, I can play if you want me to, but I can’t sprint’, which renders me essentially useless,” Mccaffrey reflected at the team’s base in the Gibson Hotel yesterday.
“I was getting subbed off and was thinking, ‘It’s fine, whoever comes in is going to be on the money and we’re going to win’.
“I had total confidence in what was going on. The experience of doing my cruciate before in 2017, that was quite emotional because I knew something quite serious was wrong.
“This was a very minor injury and just to be there among the subs and try to stay in the moment and stay focused, it wasn’t where I wanted to be, but, look, I wouldn’t change anything.”
For Mccaffrey, it was quite a contrast to the drawn game, when he produced arguably his most scintillating performance yet and the build-up to the replay was something of a drag.
“It was incredibly challenging,” he admitted. “Not particularly because of the narrative. Basically all the stuff you lads write, you try and ignore.
“But it does seep in. We’re all intelligent people, I played quite well in the drawn final. Analysing the game, preparing as well. Whatever about the performance, it’s very hard to put into actual words the energy that goes into an All-ireland final. “For the next week if anyone asked me to kick a ball
I emotionally wouldn’t be able to go out and play a game.
“You’re two days post possibly the biggest game of your entire career and at the same time you’re 12 days away from an All-ireland final and you’re trying to square those circles and it is very difficult.
“I found the week after the drawn game incredibly challenging. I was arriving at training and thinking, ‘Are we? Are we? This should be done, I cleared my locker out and brought everything home and now have to bring it all back up, what’s happening here?’”
Ultimately, they got to grips with that and clinched the five-in-a-row, which Mccaffrey admitted had a different feel to his four previous All-irelands. “They all feel special but it was one of those where you had to drag yourself off the pitch in Croke Park. You just wanted to stay there and soak up everything.
“It was something we did not let into our psyche. In the aftermath, you could tell looking around at people, the emotions that were in the stadium that this was a little different.”