5 QUESTIONS KERRY NEED TO ANSWER
They’re not at their peak, so ahead of the Cork showdown, here are...
THEY say it is better to be late than to arrive ugly. Kerry will make their grand entrance to championship 2022 this evening and, along with their Páirc Uí Rinn hosts Cork, will be the last two football teams to hit the summer road.
They have had more than enough time to prepare and, on the face of it, hardly looked like a team that needed to spend much time in front of the mirror when last we saw them.
Bouncing on a Croke Park pitch, and with David Clifford producing a master-class as they hit Mayo for 3-19 in the league final, there was a swagger to their strut along the catwalk and a structure to their defending that suggested they are no longer just a pretty face.
And this was all achieved in the absence of their most assured forward and place-kicker in chief, Seán O’Shea, which might go some way to explaining why a team with less than a handful of All-Ireland winners have been declared shooins to become just that.
‘It’s Kerry’s to lose,’ has been the gleeful punch-line in other corners of the land, which proves more than anything that ‘yerrah’ can be spoken in several dialects.
But here is the thing. For the previous two pre-championship buildups, Kerry have been in pretty much the same place; reigning League champions with a forward line to die for. And yet when it was done and dusted, they ended with a whole pile of nothing.
Perhaps, with a proven winner in Jack O’Connor back at the helm, this time it can be different; but if Kerry are going to deliver on all that expectation, they are going to have to find answers to the questions they have struggled with over the last two years.
Here are five of them.
1: HAVE THEY A KEEPER OF THE FLAME?
Kerry’s status as the 6/5 favourites to win the Sam Maguire jars with what now qualifies as a consensus; that the goalkeeper is the most important player on the team
All spring, O’Connor, below, could not pick which of the two Shanes, Murphy or Ryan, was his No1, both starting four games each.
While competition may be good, revolving your goalkeeper – the principal figure in a kick-out strategy – is never a good look in a position where the confidence of the player, and his team-mates, in him is everything.
The problem for Kerry is that right now, when compared to all their main contenders, Dublin, Donegal, Tyrone, Monaghan and Mayo (when the latter get Rob Hennelly back) they are deemed to be behind the curve in a position which now extends to playing a hybrid role to allow teams to facilitate full-court presses.
Kerry are not even close to getting to that point. To be fair, it was not necessarily the position that hurt them in the past two years, but it has hardly been an area of strength when compared to their rivals.
Recent All-Ireland finals have been dictated largely by goalkeepers; Kerry will hardly need reminding of Stephen Cluxton’s jaw-dropping performance in the 2019 drawn final, while the key head-to-head battle last year was Niall Morgan’s eclipsing of Hennelly.
Right now, that is not even a fight Kerry can get involved in.
2: HAVE THEY A MIDFIELD PAIR THEY CAN LEAN ON?
Perhaps, this is even the wrong question to ask because no more than any other area on the pitch, viewing midfield through an oldfashioned grid in the modern game is a tad redundant. Half-backs and half-forwards are engaged as ‘receivers’ on restarts more often than the 8 or 9, while most teams now carry a supplementary midfielder to attend to core work in the middle – Adrian Spillane’s role for Kerry. Still, having a man who you can trust in an aerial contest will never go out of fashion, which is why reports on David Moran’s fitness have been followed so keenly in the Kingdom.
His availability is a boost but not as big as this season’s return of Diarmuid O’Connor, who last year started to deliver on his promise before an injury wrecked his summer, all but sabotaging Kerry’s.
Kerry’s biggest issue, again one highlighted by the likes of Matthew Ruane, Paul Conroy, Conn Kilpatrick and, above all, Brian Fenton, is having that presence in the middle which O’Connor provides, both in play-making and finishing, that will take minding.
As it happens, this is a question they are well placed to answer and, in truth, it was not that big of an issue last year as Moran was the stand-out midfielder in that semifinal loss to Tyrone when Kerry’s restarts were not contested.
That may be the case again because their opponents may have to pick and choose between investing in defensive cover to limit the twin threats of Clifford and O’Shea, or going after Kerry with an aggressive press. The likelihood is that it will be the former, but if it is then that raises another query.
3: HOW CAN THEY COPE IF CLIFFORD AND O’SHEA ARE LOCKED DOWN?
This is Gaelic football’s ultimate first-world problem. Putting the shackles on one is an achievement, but on both represents a seismic task that will almost certainly require a collective approach.
Tyrone were halfway there last year, Pádraig Hampsey nullifying O’Shea’s impact to more than acceptable levels, but Clifford was, as can be his way, virtually unplayable. But when the Fossa genius went off with an ankle injury, the sense was that Kerry’s chances went him.
Last summer, the pair combined in four matches to score 4-46, which was more than half (54%) of their entire tally with 4-20 coming from play, and that is not taking into account their general playmaking ability.
The answer is others have to step into that breach, principally Paul Geaney in terms of scores, while Clifford’s older brother Paudie, whose creative forces are such that he also tends to be man-marked as a priority, will have to stand tall, while the likes of O’Connor, Gavin White and Brian Ó Beaglaoich have to show that Kerry can sting from places other than the front.
The bottom line, though, is that they will be in trouble if they are both locked down but for that to happen, opposition may have to tailor their own set-up to a point where it will be devoid of any sustained threat.
4: CAN THEY REALLY TRUST IN DEFENCE?
Offences sell tickets, defences win championships is an old line rooted in truth.
Kerry can’t swagger their way to a 38th All-Ireland, an admission that was rooted in the appoint
ment of Paddy Tally as coach and the short-term impact has been all positive. Kerry won the league conceding an average of just 13 points a game, while their net was hit only twice in eight games.
While Tally is likely to get credit for that, individual improvement was evident prior or his arrival.
Jason Foley has earned rave reviews this spring but actually excelled – with the exception of a difficult opening quarter against Cork – last year while Tom O’Sullivan did not pick up his second All-Star in a lucky bag.
The return of Tadhg Morley to form and to a defined central holding role has added to their sense of security and they are as well equipped, given their depth on the bench, to cope if not better than any other team’s defence.
5: HAVE THEY GOT THE NERVE TO GET IT DONE?
The answer to this will reveal all. Their great paradox to date is that for a side with so many players with such an innate football intellect, when it comes to down to it they can rarely think their way out of trouble.
They have developed an unhealthy habit of losing big games by small margins, including their last two championship defeats to Cork and Tyrone.
Those performances were defined by poor individual decision making – the kind reflected in David Moran’s willingness to risk handing back possession against Cork with a couple of high-percentage kicks at the death, and the Paul Geaney/ Steven O’Brien botched goal chance against Tyrone – and muddied collective thinking.
The latter was evident against Tyrone when their obsession with playing their way through spaces that did not exist led to turnovers that would kill them.
They need to play smarter. Will they? Well, thanks to a system that implies they are still seven weeks away from their first genuine test, we really won’t know that until they have to.