Hurlers set up crunch final round fixture with Westmeath
NO question, when they’re good they’re good and on Sunday Kerry were very good indeed.
This time around there’s no need for those caveats we so readily applied to their victory over Kildare in Newbridge. Meath may well have been no great shakes – they really were quite poor – but that shouldn’t take away from the quality of Kerry’s performance.
Kerry played a brand of slick, clever and efficient hurling. In the first half, with the breeze in their faces, Kerry pulled bodies back towards the half-back line and ruthlessly utilised the space created further up the pitch as a result.
Down the right hand side of the pitch, in front of the main stand in Stack Park, Kerry made hay and Meath simply couldn’t cope. Having run Westmeath so close just seven days before, the Royals would have expected to do much better than they did. That they didn’t is largely down to Kerry.
It’s down to a half-back line led with distinction yet again by Mikey Boyle. He was so good again on Sunday that you’re left to wonder if he’ll take up permanent residence in the number six shirt alongside Daniel Collins and the ever-improving Tomás O’Connor.
The forwards, naturally enough, will take the lion’s share of the plaudits after a performance like that – Jack Goulding was in sensational form no question – the case for the defence, however, is just as strong.
Meath scored just six times from play over the seventy minutes and, in a really disciplined performance which saw Kerry not give away a free for the first twenty four minutes of the game, just four times from the placed ball.
That’s impressive stuff in many man’s language and especially so for masters of the defensive arts like Kerry full-back Bryan Murphy. The Causeway man been enjoying a really fine start to the campaign.
“We try to set the standard from number one up, try to set the intensity,” he explains.
“Even from the warm up we try to get the backs together with the forwards and we have our own goals, personal goals in the backs, not to concede any scores from play would be our main one and we did fairly well today, they only scored 1-2, 1-3 from play so that’s a good day at the office any day.”
That being the case to have conceded a goal to Meath’s Alan Douglas a little under two minutes into the contest must have come as a real kick in the teeth to somebody as driven and disciplined as Murphy.
“Obviously we started slow, conceded a goal in the first two minutes, but that seems to be a problem for us at the moment, starting the first two minutes and the first five minutes, getting going, and it’s something we’re working on,” he says.
“It’s something that I think will improve as the year goes
on. As you can see with our forwards, when they’re on form they’re untouchable, the likes of Jack Goulding there today, Shane Conway, Jordan Conway, outstanding hurlers and you’ve fellas on the bench then to come in. Colum Harty the likes of him, great hurlers as well, so I think we’d compete at any level really with the forwards on the ball.”
Meath, one got the feeling, were a itch the Kingdom just had to scratch. The defeat in Trim at the start of last year’s championship did more than anything else to put paid to whatever hopes they might have had of progressing to a Leinster quarter-final.
“Last year they beat us, they kind of took us on the hop up in Meath so we knew that we had a bit of pay-back to give them so I suppose we were well hyped up before the game and we knew the challenge ahead of us and I think we dealt with it pretty well so looking forward to the game next weekend now,” Murphy admits.
Murphy – a self-avowed fan of the new ‘back to gold’ Kerry alternative strip – will have a key role to play again next weekend if Kerry are to advance to the league final. Westmeath’s full-forward Killian Doyle has been one of the form players in their unbeaten run to the top of the table, meaning Murphy will have to be on top form again.
Doyle bagged two points from play last weekend as Westmeath saw off a surprisingly sticky London side 2-12 to 1-10 in Ruislip. Michael Ryan’s men needed two second half goals from the ever-impressive Niall Mitchell – who’s likely to come face-to-face with Mikey Boyle at centre-forward this weekend – to seal the deal.
Does that relatively disappointing performance for Westmeath in London – a five point victory in contrast with Kerry’s twenty point win at the same venue – give the visitors to Cusack Park next Sunday afternoon hope?
It might. It’s more likely that London have improved since the first round and it’s equally likely that Westmeath were a little bit complacent with their eyes more firmly fixed on the visit of Kerry than to the trip across the Irish sea.
We must remember that in as much as Meath were a itch Kerry wanted to scratch, Kerry are an itch Westmeath will want to scratch after Kerry’s somewhat surprising victory in Mullingar during last year’s Leinster round robin.
Plus the fact remains that given Westmeath’s scoring difference (+16 compared to Kerry’s +45 and Carlow’s +35) – and the likelihood of a Carlow victory over a Meath team with nothing to play for – a defeat for the home side will more than likely see them finish in third place despite leading the way from the off.
That would be an incredibly bitter pill for Westmeath to swallow, meaning that they’re going to be massively tuned in for this one, just as Kerry are going to have to be.
The bookies will have Westmeath as the favourites – rightly so given their unbeaten status – but we get the sense that if Kerry are to perform they’re more than a match for Westmeath.
It’s always a dangerous thing to compare results – there are too many variables to make any definitive judgements – but the fact that Kerry humbled Meath just a week after the Royals gave Westmeath their toughest game of the campaign should give Kerry hope.
At the very least Meath’s performance against Westmeath shows that on any given day there’s not much between any of these teams when they perform at their best. If Kerry play up to scratch they should be there or thereabouts.
After that it could come down to a lucky break or two along the way.
Verdict: Kerry