Dublin are the face of what could have been for Kingdom
“Keane has the burden of what happened since”
AS A taster ahead of the main course at Austin Stack Park in Tralee tomorrow evening, eir Sport took the time to screen the 2011 All-Ireland football final between Kerry and Dublin on Tuesday night. If ever there was a Sliding Doors moment in the modern history of Gaelic football, this was it.
Travelling home by train that night, Kerry supporters must have felt like Gwyneth Paltrow, wondering if there is a parallel existence, whether or not they caught the train to Heuston Station on the morning of Sunday, September 18, 2011.
One in which an alternate future is green and gold-hued, not one in which Dublin would win six All-Irelands in eight seasons and are chasing an unprecedented five-in-a-row.
Because the 2011 final was defined by a series of small moments that changed the balance of power in a rivalry that has played no small part in defining Gaelic football.
Like Colm Cooper’s point from play in the 63rd minute to push Kerry 1-10 to 0-9 ahead, a score surely to give one of the Kingdom’s finest attacking talents the moment his career has built up to: lifting the Sam Maguire Cup as captain.
Playmaker Declan O’Sullivan — on the wrong end of an elbow from Ger Brennan in an earlier tackle — seeing a pass intercepted. Super-sub Kevin McManamon torching forward and skipping past the same player to find the net. Dublin wing-back Kevin Nolan pulling his first ever point in Championship football out of the bag to level.
Then a double-hop from McManamon! Not spotted by referee Joe McQuillan.
An outrageously-good score from Bernard Brogan. An equally outrageous spiralling finish from the Cusack Stand side by Kieran Donaghy to tie things up again heading in to injury-time.
And then, McManamon sent stumbling from a challenge by the wrong-footed Barry John Keane, and Brogan beckoning Stephen Cluxton up to nail the winning free.
‘The most dramatic, the most wonderful of finishes,’ gushes Ger Canning in the RTÉ commentary box, perhaps subconsciously betraying his Cork roots. Revenge of Gilroy’s ‘startled earwigs’ and a Dublin team humiliated by 17 points by the same opposition in the 2009 quarter-final.
New Kerry manager Peter Keane has the burden of what has happened since to factor in. The county losing to Dublin in Championship four times in a row when the 2013 semi-final, the 2015 final and 2016 semi-final are included — unheard of.
In dismissing Galway last Saturday at Croke Park, Jim Gavin claimed that the champions are only warming up, saying his team was only in ‘pre-season’ mode until now.
A sign perhaps that a sixth Allianz Football League title in the seven seasons of Gavin’s reign isn’t the highest of priorities in a year that could define the modern era.
Kerry, the only county with the traditional mental fortitude to unseat them, are still in rebuilding mode and struggled for long spells against Cavan last Sunday, leaving more questions about their state of health.
In Sean O’Shea, so far understated and largely kept out of the spotlight last year by the Kingdom’s other young tyro, David Clifford, they would appear to have another superstar in the making. A dozen points against Cavan confirms his luminous talent, 10 of those via a sweet deadball action.
No doubt selector Maurice Fitzgerald got a kick out of watching O’Shea re-enact his famous Thurles sideline score by splitting the posts in a similar fashion in Round One against Tyrone.
Will it be enough, though, and how will they cope with Dublin this weekend, never mind later in the year if these two footballing worlds collide?
Is Jack Sherwood the answer in the number three shirt? Is Paul Murphy better placed at six, as an out-and-out sweeper or a wingforward-cum-seventh defender? Can Tommy Walsh provide an ‘xfactor’ in attack as he did in his first coming?
In a way, Peter Keane’s remit mirrors that of Pat Gilroy who identified the pressing need to put a solid defensive shape in
place as the path to All-Ireland honours.
It was Gilroy’s positioning of two natural half-backs — Barry Cahill and captain Bryan Cullen — in the half-forward line, wearing 11 and 12, respectively, but testament to Dublin’s new-found defensive structure, which laid the foundation for Dublin’s breakthrough in 2011.
Tomorrow evening, Kerry will be looking to start their own chain of actions and reactions that alter the course of Dublin’s five-in-arow bid and send the champions on a different track.