The good times keep on rolling for Collins
Kerry hurling is on a crest of a wave at the moment and captain Daniel Collins is enjoying every minute of it, writes Damian Stack
HE’S never experienced anything like it. It was special – the day was special, the game was special, the performance was special. What followed possibly even more so.
The day after the game with Laois, the footballers hosted Cork in the final round of the National League, a week down the line a semi-final clash with Roscommon in Croke Park beckoned and, yet, despite all this the topic of conversation in the Kingdom that week was the small ball rather than the large one.
It felt like a corner turned, a point made. The days when Kerry hurling was a joke to some people banished, more so even than that the days when it was treated less with contempt and more with apathy had been banished. A milestone.
As he went about his daily business that week, into the shops and down the streets and where ever else he happened to be, the talk was of hurling. People wanted to know about it and him.
There’s an excitement and a buzz about Kerry hurling right now and long may it continue. For too long it was, in effect, forgotten about or simply ignored. Those games played out in front of the proverbial three men and a dog, now little more than a bad memory. “It’s great,” Collins says. “People are starting to respect you and take notice of what you’re doing, all the hard work is starting to pay off.”
There’s an almost puritanical streak to this Kerry hurling team, a belief in the value of hard work and the hard yards. After the high of Austin Stack Park, which was positively bopping for the relegation play-off, it wasn’t long before they were brought back down to earth.
That Tuesday night manager Ciarán Carey had them back in training again. Having been let off the leash a little for a few days the players probably expected to be eased gently back into the swing of it. Not a bit of it. “It was probably the toughest training of the year that Tuesday night and ever since the last three weeks especially the training has been absolutely cruel, but hopefully it’s going to pay off. It’s going pretty well at the moment,” Collins says.
“You’re up at a level and we’re trying to raise the bar. There’s what we set in the league and we’re trying to go above that again, we don’t want to drop below that standard and if we can do that we’re confident that we can have a great year.”
By any standards they’ve already had a great year. To win two games in the league proper, to win a relegation play-off in the manner in which they did so was hugely impressive.
Such is their hunger and their desire that it’s not enough. They want more. They want to beat Carlow next Sunday and go all the way to a Leinster quarter-final (and, whisper it, beyond). Collins won’t be drawn on that, the mantra is that all their focus is on Carlow this weekend and nothing else, still the subtext is clear.
“We’re most definitely prepared, most of the time we go into games as the underdog, but I think we’re just simply focused on ourselves and focused on our own game, so I don’t think about what Carlow do. If we play our own game we’ll win the game.”
Games against Limerick and Clare (and Waterford in the Munster Senior Hurling League) have prepared them for Carlow in a way they’ve rarely been before. It’s not been easy, it’s
been actively trying at times, it’s invaluable experience nevertheless.
“Clare were definitely that much ahead, obviously you can see what they did to Kilkenny at the weekend,” he says.
“The Wexford game was a huge disappointment. Whatever could have gone wrong that day, did go wrong. You can blame this and blame that, but it was just one of those things and we put it behind us fairly quickly anyway so it didn’t bother us too much.
“We played a lot better [against Clare a week later], but we were disappointed we only came away with what was it 1-8 or something? We were just hugely disappointed with the scoring.
“We’d been scoring very well up to the Wexford game and to go eight points or whatever we got against Wexford and then 1-8 against Clare that’s hugely demoralising, especially as a forward. We were probably playing sweepers in those games so as a forward then trying to get scores it’s nearly impossible against top defenders.
“When Ciarán came down he said our hurling wasn’t the big issue, he said our skill was there it was just trying to execute it faster, the speed of our game was just too slow.
“It definitely stands to you, playing the bigger teams, we got more out of playing the bigger teams than they got out of us. I know they might only throw in half a team against us expecting to beat us, but we learned so much more out of playing those big teams than they’re going to get out of playing us.
“You’d be hoping it would stand to you, but every time we play the likes of Carlow and Westmeath over the last few years there’s never been anything in it and to be honest we don’t expect much to be in it the next day we play Carlow.
“They’re still at a good level and we have improved, but if we can stay at the level we’re at and improve again we will win, but if we drop down to their level we will be in trouble.”
It’s hard to imagine Kerry’s standards dropping any time soon. These players have worked too hard for too long to allow for that. To be here where they are – just days before a debut appearance in the Leinster championship – is the culmination of a lot of work by a lot of people. As the hurling world takes notes, Kerry and their captain are well set to make their mark.
Watch out.
Every time we play the likes of Carlow and Westmeath there’s never anything in it – Daniel Collins