Best of enemies rematch is ideal start for Murphy
THEY have played nice all week, saying the right things. Both Paul Geaney and Paddy McBrearty insisted on separate occasions that they don’t expect to see any tension in O’Donnell Park today. Both managers said something similar. It’s as if Donegal and Kerry got together and agreed a mantra before the biggest game of the opening Allianz National League weekend.
‘Whenever Kerry come to town, it is one of the highlights of any county’s year,’ Donegal captain Michael Murphy observed, maintaining the theme of cordiality. And yet, even if we don’t get a repeat of last March’s Battle of Tralee, the game in Letterkenny is likely to simmer.
Both management teams refused, at least publicly, to play the blame game after last term’s clash but, privately, they pointed the finger at the other team for the ugly scenes that transpired.
By the final whistle referee Eddie Kinsella saw fit to call 60 fouls, sent off Kerry’s Alan Fitzgerald and Donegal’s Leo McLoone and gave black cards to Kingdom duo Shane Enright and Denis Daly. Donegal fullback Neil McGee earned a retrospective one-match ban from the game while both county boards were fined €7,500 for the messy scenes.
And they are trying to tell us that there will be no repercussions this afternoon. ‘Ah no, listen, they have been huge challenges over the last couple of years, they have been good, tough games with Kerry,’ Murphy said.
In his autobiography, Jim McGuinness maintained that beating Kerry in the 2012 All-Ireland quarter-final was like flicking a switch in the players who, as a result, believed they could go all the way. The Kingdom were still seen as the standard-bearers.
But a lot has happened in the four-and-a-half years since Donegal edged out Jack O’Connor’s side in Croke Park and friction has never been far away.
Although it was played largely for laughs afterwards, the discovery of a Donegal spy up a tree outside Fitzgerald Stadium during a training session before the 2014 All Ireland final did not go down at all well in the Kingdom. Similarly, Aidan O’Mahony’s methods in policing Murphy in that decider remains a sore point in the north west to this day.
Even Donegal’s decision to bring Kerry up to their most northerly venue (they have generally hosted Kerry in either Ballybofey or Ballyshannon) is seen as a payback of sorts for the decision to play last year’s game in the tight confines of Austin Stack Park, rather than Fitzgerald Stadium. Neither county are conceding an inch.
And it won’t be lost on Gallagher, how Donegal reacted to being bullied by Kerry last year. They arrived in Tralee, top of Division 1 after three wins in their first three games. When they left Austin Stack Park, they went into a tailspin, their season failing to recover.
Meanwhile, Kerry’s season took off from the Battle of Tralee. As former Kerry captain Dara Ó Cinnéide pointed out, after their poor performance in the 2015 All Ireland football final, they needed to show their supporters that they wouldn’t be pushed around on their own patch.
‘Ah, they are tough games but it always comes down to the footballing side of things,’ said Murphy. ‘Sometimes, that can boil over into something else, but it will still come down to which team is more at it on the day,’ the Donegal captain added.
‘One thing that has occurred over the last number of years is the familiarity that all the top teams have built up with each other. Players are marking each other constantly, we are playing each other once a year, sometimes twice a year, so we know each other’s games inside out. And that feeds into it.
‘But Kerry is always a game I look forward to because physically tactically and skills level, you will find out a lot about yourself. And you can’t ask for more than that on the first week of February.’
Murphy scored a fantastic goal in last year’s war, a rare moment of brilliance in the game. But he feels those moments were all too scarce in 2016 and it is something he wants to put right this year.
‘I would have been disappointed in some of my performances last year and it is something that I want to try and get myself into a better place and give more this year.’