DUBS STILL HAVE THE STAMINA TO GO ALL THE WAY AGAIN THIS YEAR
Kerry’s thrilling win in Tralee suggests they can be a force this year, but the All-Ireland champions’ superior conditioning sets them apart from rivals
WHEN the giddiness left us Saturday night last weekend, the chilling reality of Dublin’s greatness sent a little shiver through us. At this time of the year, writing GAA columns has the feel of those life assurance adverts on the radio.
After the punchline is delivered, it is followed by the breathless monotone voice advising you of the usual terms and conditions.
Like that, we have an inner voice which is screaming out to be heard… readers are advised that this is only February football and anything you take heed of now, could leave you open to ridicule later.
But along with death and taxes, you can be certain that Dublin won’t make you look foolish when predicting the great things that will happen for them.
More than a week on and that game in Tralee has me still tingling with excitement and I am not forgetting my own county for the equal part they played in a contest that showcased the best of our game.
Kerry were quite brilliant, honest and vibrant – a cocktail of manic work-rate, blinding speed on the counter and sublime kicking skills.
And they deserved to win too. It’s a result that puts Peter Keane in a very healthy position in regards of their Allianz League position, and even healthier in terms of how much potential is in this group.
All of that is true but, while Kerry can look forward to the future, the sense is that the present still belongs to Dublin.
Jim Gavin could have been accused of playing us for fools afterwards when he suggested that Kerry had a lot more work done and it had showed.
At first glance, that contradicted the narrative of the contest we had seen. After all, it was a 14-man Dublin team who had surged for the line when a leg-weary Kerry side were holding on.
But what Gavin was getting at was an insistence that the Dubs were behind Kerry in terms of field work and there was evidence of that with the home team showing more fluency.
My understanding is that Kerry are not killing themselves at the moment, with just one gym and one pitch session a week, but that will be doubled up in the coming weeks.
But, of course, what made little sense in Gavin’s claim that Dublin were behind in terms of preparation is that they looked to be in better physical shape than Kerry, and that is not an indictment of the latter.
In terms of physicality and conditioning, Dublin are still on a very different level to everyone else, with the possible exception of Mayo.
That has nothing to do with what has happened in the last couple of weeks and everything to do with what has happened over the last five years.
The single biggest change in the game since I started out in the early noughties is in the physical conditioning of players. I was close enough to the action to see Paul Mannion’s upper body power last weekend and he could just as easily have been togging out in Murrayfield earlier that afternoon.
I am not talking about him necessarily being bulked up, but his strength and explosive power, allied to a blinding skill set, makes for quite the sight.
They all do. They are a team full to the brim with truly great players, but it is when they bring that physical power into play that the rest really struggle against them. You keep hearing lines about how some teams are blessed with young legs and others are hampered by old ones, but that is not how it really works. What Dublin have in their legs, torsos and lungs is a body of work that is a half a decade in the making. Whatever Kerry have in their young legs and lungs, you can be certain they have a long way to go to make up the deficit. They literally ran themselves into the ground last Saturday night, emptying themselves completely. I was tired watching Jack Barry’s relentless shadowing of Brian Fenton in as selfless a performance as you will see, but as the game entered its critical championship phase in the final quarter, the latter’s influence became more pronounced.
By the time the game hit the 75th minute he was operating in a large pocket of space and had a shot off to tie the game, which he missed.
That’s not a criticism of Barry, or Kerry, but that is what happens when a supremely conditioned team meets one in the early changes of its developmental curve.
In my time, players got fit for the season, let themselves go in the close season and then went through the stomach-churning ritual of getting back into shape in the pre-season. That’s not the case now. There is no letting go, conditioning is maintained in the off-season so further gains can be made the following term.
Dublin’s Croke Park advantage is a hot topic now and it plays for real because that is the pitch which stress-tests your body like nowhere else, and the champions are built to play there.
Last Saturday’s game was played on a lush but, in comparison to Croke Park in August, a relatively sluggish pitch, while restarts were slower because they were taken from the 20-metre line under the experimental rule, while Evan Comerford showed he’s not ready to replace Stephen Cluxton at the kicking tee.
And yet despite all that, it was Kerry who were sucking air and Dublin sucking diesel at the death.
That’s not putting Kerry down; they were utterly fearless and committed – qualities best summed up by the outstanding Dara Moynihan – but they have a lot of physical ground to make up on the Dubs.
And there is no short cut with this. Getting to the physical pitch of where Dublin are at is the biggest challenge for those chasing down the champions. However, it is not something that can be delivered in an instant or even in a single year.
Kerry have made a start, but that gap right now is too big to close inside 12 months.
‘MANNION COULD HAVE TOGGED OUT IN MURRAYFIELD’