I’ll never forget our battle with Tribe in ‘08
I AM looking forward to today’s opening quarter-final between Kerry and Galway because these two counties always seem to bring the best out in each other.
I will never forget the shootout in the monsoon in 2008 on a night when Michael Meehan cut up rough on me and then when we met in the 2014 quarter-final, it was a tight contest right up until the end of the third quarter.
Looking at the two teams right now the temptation is to suggest that the more things have changed the more they have stayed the same.
Galway have always been blessed with good forwards, high-skilled players who know how to sting and when you see players of the quality of Sean Armstrong, Shane Walsh, Michael Daly and Damien Comer then it is likely that the Kerry defence could be in for a testing afternoon.
The problem for Galway is that defensively they are less than convincing; something which was clearly exposed by Donegal’s Paddy McBrearty last weekend when a one-man attack managed to cause them all kinds of headaches.
There is an obvious fragility about their full-back line that needs protecting but I am still not fully convinced that Galway buy into defensive structure and if they don’t, then the likes of Paul Geaney and James O’Donoghue could exact a heavy price in Croke Park today.
However, I’m dismissing the notion that this is a 1/5 shoo-in for the Kingdom and I actually believe that this will be tight heading down the home straight before Kerry put the afterburners on.