Piling on the pressure
Can Kerry’s kick-out beat Dublin’s ruthless press?
‘Countering the Dublin press is more than just a one-man job’ TOMORROW: Does history have the power to derail Dublin?
SHANE RYAN is best known as the Kerry goalkeeper who plays as a forward for his club. There will be times on Sunday when the Rathmore man will be hankering for the relative serenity of life as a full-forward with Jonny Cooper for company.
If facing the Dublin full-back line guarantees an afternoon of ceaseless attention, then lining up a kick-out while Dublin’s ruthless press seems to occupy every available space in Croke Park must be the most intimidating position for a player in the modern game.
There were times in the closing stages of Kerry’s semi-final win over Tyrone when Ryan, in trying to take a second to assess where he could place his kick, was pressurised with cat-calls from opposing fans.
This is an old tactic that is often effective in prompting a referee to try and hurry up the kick-out, piling more pressure on the goalkeeper.
Now imagine the noise Hill 16 will make every time Ryan places the ball on the tee next Sunday?
Unless Kerry opt to take quick restarts, Ryan will be hounded if he tries to take his time over his kicks.
But that will be the least of his problems. The one that will be central to Kerry’s chances is how effective they are in finding a way around Dublin’s famed press.
When it came to kick-outs, the excellence of Stephen Cluxton in finding a team-mate was for a long time the most noteworthy feature of Dublin’s game in this area.
No longer: the damage they inflict on the other team’s re-starts is now as vital to their success.
The most recent example of that was staggering. The 2-6 they burgled off Mayo in the first 12 minutes of their semi-final second half included seven successive turnovers.
Mayo could not get past half way. Dublin pressed up on Robbie Hennelly, pushing up their wing-backs into the forward line and having a line of four behind them. It meant that, at times, they had up to a dozen players in the Mayo half.
This is not a new tactic, but rather one they have been deploying since 2017. And it was at least partly inspired by the press Kerry deployed in the 2016 semi-final when they ran Dublin much closer than most supposed.
Éamonn Fitzmaurice has talked since about preparing for that match, and realising that even if Kerry went man for man, they would still not close down all of Cluxton’s options from kick-outs because he is so accurate.
So they flooded the Dublin half any time Cluxton didn’t take a quick kick-out. It was effective, too, but unsustainable through 70 minutes. They used it sparingly but eventually, with Kerry tiring and Dublin showing their capacity to learn from and respond to the opposition’s plans, Cluxton started kicking the ball out over the press.
There will, then, have been no important issue for Peter Keane, his players and his selectors to consider this week than their own kick-outs.
This is Ryan’s first season as Kerry’s preferred No 1, and he has been encouraging if not outstanding. He does not have the distance in his restarts of Cluxton, Shaun Patton or Rory Beggan, and he has wobbled on a few occasions.
But goalkeeper has been a problematic position for Kerry since Diarmuid Murphy retired, and Ryan is the most convincing successor yet auditioned.
He will confront a challenge on Sunday that he has never faced before, though.
Patton reflected at the end of last season on trying to work around the Dublin press when Donegal were in Croke Park for a Super 8s game.
‘It’s probably their intensity. In Ulster, teams tend to drop off, but Dublin absolutely squeezed the life out of us. They pressed immediately and shut every man down. There was nothing there.’
Beggan has spoken in similar terms. ‘Dublin seem to get into the exact same press from each kickout. Whenever I looked up I would see blue everywhere. As soon as they got a shot away, they immediately got into shape to make it really hard for me. You are wondering how they can maintain it throughout the full match.’
They didn’t against Mayo, and even a team as supremely fit as the champions couldn’t do it for a full game. But they can do it in spurts, and as they showed against Mayo that can be enough to win a game.
Ryan had a deeply uncomfortable time in Kerry’s Super 8s win in Navan when Meath applied a press for five minutes in the second half. Kerry had been leading 0-5 to 0-2, but saw three successive kick-outs turned over, and Meath levelled the match.
And that was against a secondtier team not yet with the physical condition of the leading sides.
Yet demanding that the goalkeeper assume all of the responsibility for failing to break the Dublin press is absurd.
Ryan could be an easy fall-guy, but beating the press is not a one-man job.
Critics found Hennelly an irresistible target after Dublin vaporised Mayo, but his options were limited.
Dublin back their tackling to dispossess defenders who show for a short restart, but their press is so complete that even that option is denied to the opposition.
Figuring a way around the press is fiendishly difficult. Solutions have been suggested, from overloading a particular area of the field, thereby guaranteeing numerical advantage, to clearing the ball as long as possible, breaking it and trying to win the fight for secondary possession.
The latter method could appeal to Kerry, but it would be contingent on having at least two options other than David Moran for Ryan to aim at (perhaps Jack Barry as a midfield partner, and Tommy Walsh drifting out from the forward line), as well as Kerry being strong and quick enough to forage the breaks ahead of Dublin.
We can say with absolute certainty that Dublin will go after Ryan in the final.
How he and Kerry respond to that will go a long way to determining the winner.