Safety first: Hurlers avoid the drop despite defeat

But for Mikey Boyle’s definance and dogged determination the Kingdom were facing a second relegation in the face, writes Damian Stack

HOW much did he know? Was he as aware as we were, those of us that is hurriedly checking Twitter during breaks in play (no easy thing in a sport that’s played at a breakneck pace), of just how much trouble Kerry were in?

With fifteen minutes to go Kerry were on the very precipice. Relegation was a live possibility. Westmeath were, as expected, winning the other game in the group, meaning that the Kingdom’s senior championship future was now dependant upon score difference.

As it stood then the Kingdom were just about safe. All it would have taken was another score or two by Laois or, over a hundred miles away in Mullingar, by Meath and Kerry’s goose would have been well and truly cooked.

Given that Kerry were by then down to fourteen men following Seán Weir’s dismissal on a second yellow card, a somewhat heavy defeat seemed the most likely outcome for Kerry. Laois were on a roll having started the half with 1-4 unanswered.

Something needed to be done. Somebody needed to grab hold of the game from a Kerry point of view. That Mikey Boyle was the man to do so should surprise nobody. When he gets it in his head to do something nothing or nobody can stop the Ballyduff man.

As he burst through the Laois defence with fifty four minutes on the clock, it looked (from a distance at least) as if the man was in a temper and that too would have been understandable given the way the game had panned out.

During the half-time break the last thing he and his colleagues would have been envisaging was a desperate scrap for survival. Shane Nolan’s goals seemed to suggest quite the opposite, but here they were on the brink of a second relegation in as many months.

Boyle burst through, eyes only for goal, having to make do instead with a free from the 21 yard line.

When his brother Pádraig’s effort was blocked on the line and the referee ordered it retaken, Mikey wasn’t going to let the chance slip him by.

His finish, (relatively) high, hard and unstoppable to Enda Rowland’s left was struck with the venom of a man not at all happy to find himself six points down in a game his team could have and maybe even should have won.

A lot of people will focus on six missed frees – five from Shane Nolan, one from Pádraig Boyle – that if converted would have been enough to win the game for Kerry, but more trou-

bling was Kerry’s concession of so many frees in scoreable positions and for so little.

“Sometimes we’re over anxious,” Kerry boss Fintan O’Connor explained.

“We’re trying to do the right thing so much that sometimes it’s nearly because we’re trying too hard to turn over the ball, we’re giving away a free, that sometimes if you try a little less you won’t concede a free as easily.”

Add, to that unfortunate habit of giving away poor frees, the unerring Ross King – he scored twelve frees from thirteen placed balls, dropping his last short with just seconds on the clock – and you’ve given yourself a mountain to climb.

Still for all that frustration there were a lot of positives to be drawn from the game, the first half especially so, but even in how the team – with Boyle acting as catalyst – recovered their composure as the game, as their season, reached its clutch point.

To give the management team their dues the second half substitutions worked out well. Bryan Murphy hit two brilliant longrange points from the half-back line. John Griffin came in and hurled his usual tidy, efficient and effective game, while both Maurice O’Connor and Philip Lucid added some extra impetus in attack.

Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the Kerry performance was just how well the midfield fared. Both Jack Goulding and Paudie O’Connor had impressive games against Ross King and Patrick Purcell – a duo who tormented Kerry in the relegation play-off just a couple of weeks ago.

Add to that the impressive performances of young players like John Buckley (tenacious at number five) and Jordan Conway (combative despite his tender years and slender frame) and it’s not all doom and gloom from a Kerry point of view despite a difficult, disappointing couple of months.

Still there’s no getting away from how desperately disappointing it is that Kerry have again failed to take a place in the quarter-finals and their failure to do so has little to do with anything that happened on Sunday afternoon. No it was in Navan at the end of last month that Kerry’s fate was signed, sealed and delivered.

That defeat put Kerry on the back foot straight away. Indeed, it put them in danger of relegation unless they managed to win their very next game. That they did so – and did so impressively – shows how much of a missed opportunity this was.

Kerry are better than Westmeath, we got all the proof of that you could want in the second round fixture, and now the Kingdom have to watch on from the sidelines as Westmeath prepare for a Leinster championship quarter-final with Offaly.

With a qualifier to follow it would have meant another month, at least, of training and development for this bunch of Kerry players.

Make no mistake it’s a prize of rare value that Kerry have missed out on.

Given the way the season panned out, given the way last Sunday panned out, the avoidance of the relegation trap-door feels almost like a victory in itself. Make no mistake, however, if it’s a victory it’s a victory of the kind achieved by the British at Dunkerque.

As Churchill said: “We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.”

Sunday’s result gives the Kingdom the chance to fight another day. No more, no less than that.

We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory – Wintston Churchill