Kerry well warned after being spooked last year
IUNDERSTAND why a lot of GAA folk are getting a nostalgic sugar rush from a knockout Championship, but the best kick I ever received from Cork was when they booted us through the backdoor in 2006. It was a difficult experience on a day when the only thing hotter than the sun was the temper of the Kerry crowd as they heckled Jack O’Connor on the sideline.
Post-match, he wanted to hold a meeting in the cramped Páirc Uí Chaoimh dressing room but, unaware of the planned crisis talks, Tomás, Darragh and myself along with a few others, had showered quickly and departed because of the oppressive heat.
As some of our supporters saw the three Ó Sés sitting in the bus outside Páirc Uí Chaoimh on our lonesome, the news travelled down home faster than a Darran O’Sullivan sprint that we had walked out after a massive postmatch bust-up with Jack.
The less sensational truth was that the meeting was rescheduled for the more luxurious surroundings of the Hayfield Manor Hotel where we had one of our best truth and reconciliation meetings – setting the tone for, what would be, an All-Ireland-winning season.
Except we were halfway back down the road to Killarney before the penny dropped that Jack had missed getting back on the bus outside the hotel. So, to add so-called substance to the rumoured bust-up that was already the talk of the Kingdom, we arrived back home without our manager.
We were settled into a wellattended Munster final wake in Tatler’s that evening when Jack, who was after getting a lift down, burst through the doors.
‘Well, ye are some shower of b****xes…’ and to a man we dissolved into tears of laughter.
Should Kerry lose today, though, the tears will be a lot saltier.
Just in case I will be convicted of the punditry charge of ‘cute Kerry hoorism’, I don’t think that will happen.
That said, I do not, for a minute, believe that this will be the cruise for Kerry that is being widely predicted.
Cork are a team on a rapid upward trajectory and all that remains to be decided is ‘when’ and not ‘if’ they become All-Ireland contenders.
And that claim stands up to scrutiny.
They can be tagged officially as a Division 3 team, but, as with Albert Reynolds’ jaundiced view of the Progressive Democrats as Fianna Fáil’s coalition partners, their presence in that tier was just a ‘temporary little arrangement’.
They hardly stretched themselves in winning the division but they showed last year, not only in putting the frighteners on Kerry, but in going toe-to-toe with Dublin and Tyrone – they are a genuine top-eight team. Even though they have a strong smattering of experience, this is a young, fearless side and it is an even better one than ran through the Kerry defence last June.
There are a few reasons why I believe Kerry will just about manage to find a way today.
For starters, they won’t walk blindly into an ambush. There has been much discussion about Kerry’s well-resourced defensive structure and the interpretation is that it is being designed as a roadblock to halt Dublin, but it has really been put together with Cork’s running game in mind.
Make no mistake, Kerry boss Peter Keane was spooked by what happened last year and it is not just that he has put the structure in place, but in so doing he has shown that his focus does not extend beyond today’s game.
If this goes pear-shaped for him, complacency is one accusation that cannot be levelled at him.
Despite some evidence that some Kerry players have beefed up, I am quite fearful that a number of the team are not suited to the physicality of winter football.
Put it this way, if Kerry had played either Donegal or Tyrone last Sunday in Ballybofey in those deplorable conditions, their Championship would now be over.
This might be strange, especially given their excellent record in Fitzgerald Stadium, but it should really suit Keane’s men that they are playing in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.
I was never a huge fan of playing Cork there myself and I was a spectator the last time the Rebels beat us in a knockout Munster Championship there in 1999.
And that game could just as easily have been played in the winter, it spilled rain all afternoon and physically they sewed it into Kerry, not least the current Cork manager Ronan McCarthy, who did not give Maurice Fitzgerald a sniff that afternoon.
That should serve as a cautionary tale ahead of today’s game but this is not ‘de Park’ as we knew it and it comes with an excellent playing surface that is now as good as Croke Park.
That should suit Kerry and, in particular, the likes of a David Clifford and Seán O’Shea. If Cork are unable to curb that pair, they will hardly need telling that they are in trouble.
The other theory doing the rounds is that a knock-out game should suit Cork because if they win they will bury Kerry, not allowing their neighbours to come back and haunt them through the back door like our team did in the noughties.
I don’t think that is relevant because, with the exception of Paul Kerrigan, those ghosts don’t bother this Cork team but what they could really do with is another way back into the Championship if they lose today.
They are building fast but, after a League spent in company that will neither have educated or illuminated, a Championship run is just what they need.
And if Kerry lose? They are further down the road so, development-wise, they can absorb the consequences of a one-game Championship.
Still, Kingdom supporters might not see it that way.