Worth a second look?

and wondering whether or not it might be time to consider Walsh anew? The performances he’s been putting in for Kerins O’Rahillys over the course of this year’s county championship make it an idea at least worth exploring.

Walsh still isn’t what he was, but he looks closer to it now than he did two years ago. Whatever work he’s doing on his own or with physios and whatever work he’s doing with Strand Road boss Micheál Quirke seems to be working a charm.

You look at him field a ball and soar over a defender’s head and think that surely this guy is worth having around for ten or fifteen minutes here and there towards the end of matches.

Have you ever seen a pair of hands better than his? There’s an almost magnetic attraction between those hands and the ball. The football brain is still there too, his positioning is brilliant, his reading of the game makes up for whatever deficit in pace those injuries have inflicted upon him.

Still as interesting as all this is in theory, we don’t know how practical it might be. Would Walsh be interested in playing a bit part role? Could his body stand up to an inter-county training regime? Is Peter Keane interested in having a player like him on board?

Keane could be – what manager doesn’t like to have different options and different types of options at his disposal? – especially seeing as Kieran Donaghy has opted to walk away at the end of a glorious career.

The break-glass-in-case-ofemergency option of a long ball into Donaghy is no longer on the table. That said there is David Clifford. In the first semi-final on Sunday, Clifford showed as much. He’s a target man in his own right.

The odds surely are against some sort of a return for Walsh. Second comings are rare enough, third comings are practically unheard of and for good reason. All the same it’s great to see Walsh performing at

MAIN MAN

Edmund O’Sullivan said afterwards that Johnny Buckley is an inter-county player who just can’t play at that level this year for personal reasons. Even though the Crokes midfielder might have sailed close to the wind early on with Jack Savage, it was an overall display that showed what Buckley can offer any side at his very best.

KEY MOMENT

The danger of short kick-outs was laid bare again last Sunday especially if you aren’t bolt tight n how youuse them as Jordan Kiely seized on the miscommunication between Gary Kissane and Ross O’Callaghan for the goal that sent Crokes on their way to a victory borne outof craft and patience in the main.

TALKING POINT

In general Sunday was a bad tempered day. Undoubtedly officials have to be on their game to match the efforts that players are putting in to try and succeed but they can be powerless at times to do anything when players step over the line themselves. There is arguably a tendency now for players to go over the line particularly if they know they will escape punishment. such a level that it’s even been whispered about at all in the first place.

If nothing else it shows that he’s getting the most out of himself, that he’s enjoying his football. Injuries robbed him of the chance of making the kind of impact in Australia that his talents warranted. To see him starring again, even if only at club level, is heart-warming. A talent like that always deserved bigger and better things.

Walsh bagged 3-7 over the course of the championship, including a famous 2-2 against Dr Crokes in the second round – at times he’s unmarkable, with his power he can just brush guys off, hold them back and do what he wants to do.

What a brilliant asset he is for a club team and he’s been at the vanguard of Kerins O’Rahillys continuing revival. At the very least that’s going to continue for the one-time AFL man.

Walsh is going to be a key player for his club for another few years at least (he’s only thirty years of age) and we’ve got a feeling that his club are going to continue to improve to the point where they reach a county final again – their first since 2008 (they lost out to James Sheehan’s Mid Kerry that year).

One way or another Walsh’s sporting story still has another couple of a chapters to go. Don’t rule out it ending with the Bishop Moynihan Cup nestling in his arms – or even, for that matter, the Sam Maguire.

Stranger things and all of that.

They say the scoreboard doesn’t lie and, of course, in the most meaningful way possible it doesn’t. The scoreboard showed Dr Crokes were the superior force and, indeed, they were, but were they nine points the better side? That’s probably where we part company with the scoreboard.

This was a much more hotly contested match and a much more even match the the scoreline suggests. There’s just no way Dr Crokes were nine points the better team than Kerins O’Rahillys.

On a lot of the meaningful measures there wasn’t much of anything at all between these two sides. On primary possession Kerins O’Rahillys marginally came out of top – 51% overall in comparision to Crokes 49%. Dr Crokes did, however, do a typically brilliant job of retaining their own possession.

With Shane Murphy really on form between the sticks up to and until his enforced departure from the pitch following a collision with Tommy Walsh, Crokes retained upwards of 80% of their kick-outs (Johnny O’Leary, by the way, looked an able deputy for the Kerry number one in his short time on the pitch).

That said Strand Road were hugely competitive in large part thanks to another brilliant shift put in by David Moran. The All

Star award winner won a huge amount of possession – seven kick-outs in a sixty minute game is a monsterous return.

Micheál Quirke’s side were really well primed for this game. They made the absolute most of what they had, tearing into the game from the off. Indeed they finished the game having converted a higher number of chances than Dr Crokes did – a 70% return compared to a 66% rate of return on chances created.

So all that being the case where did it all go wrong for Strand Road? It has to be with the dismissal of Jack Savage. Up until that point there was nothing between the sides – they were still level after fifty four minutes. After that Dr Crokes outscored them 2-5 to 0-1.

By the end of the match Crokes had created twelve more chances than their rivals – with a minimum of seven of those coming after Savage left the pitch – and that’s where the game was won and lost.

Strand Road will probably feel a little aggrieved by how the game played out – Savage can have few complaints, but a Crokes player could easily have seen red in the first half.

One final stat is telling – Crokes made six substitutions and Strand Road just two. Panels matter.

Still as interesting as all this is in theory, we don’t know how practical it might be. Would Walsh be interested?