Walk aisy when jug is full

The Kerry public is entitled to be enthused by the team’s latest performance but Paul Brennan says all concerned need to temper expectations

IT’S easy and understandable to be conflicted on a week like this. The All-Ireland and League champions coming to Tralee where the natives serenade the travelling party with music and easy hospitality before turning the water-cannons on their football team. Given Kerry’s two earlier wins in this League campaign and Dublin’s less than polished start - this was hardly an ambush, but Kerry can and should take plenty of positives from a contest of this nature in February. And there’s the rub: it’s only February.

There was a festival atmosphere in Tralee all day Saturday - sorry, Killarney, but the capital town was always the correct and only place to host this fixture - and a party mood among the local supporters on Saturday night. It was forgiveable to be getting a little carried away with what we’d seen above in the old Park with the new facelift and for chatter about what might be later on the year to bubble up. But then that old Kerry adage comes to mind: walk aisy when the jug is full.

Three games into a League campaign that still sees all the top All-Ireland contenders finding their feet and waiting on some significant players to come back to them, and it’s hard to know even how much is in the jug from Kerry’s point of view. Certainly Peter Keane and his management have found a few new players who this far look to have the measure of this senior inter-county lark, but it’s terribly early days yet. It’s easy to forget that Gavin O’Brien was wearing a Kerry jersey competitively for the first time ever, that Dara Moynihan and Diarmuid O’Connor and Shane Ryan are total greenhorns at this level. Even, it must be said, Jack Sherwood and Tommy Walsh – both of whom played very well on Saturday – are on their second and third go respectively with the county and it remains to be seen can they maintain this early form into the summer and the Championship.

What was positive about Saturday’s performance was, first, Kerry’s individual and collective willingness to work themselves to the bone in terms of hassling Dublin players on and off the ball. It’s an easy thing to ask of players but for whatever reason it doesn’t always happen, and all it takes is one or two weak links in that regard for the chain to come off the bicycle. It’s pretty obvious, three games in, that Keane has asked that his players work, work and work every second they’re on

the field, and that the players are doing what’s asked of them. Once that’s in place the management can go about putting together the subtleties of how they want the team to play and how they want them to take on different teams and challenges.

The other positive was how Kerry dug out the victory when the tide was going against them in the last 10 minutes, even with Dublin down to 14 men. When Cormac Costello converted a 72nd minute free to level the scores it was Dublin’s fourth point in-a-row and if there was to be a winner it looked like it would be Dublin.

A couple of unforced errors by Kerry threatened to spoil an great night’s work but in the end the experience of David Moran and Peter Crowley crafted a winning point at the death. In five months time Crowley’s point will be long forgotten by most of the 11,982 crowd packed into Stack Park, but it will have to be worth something, however minuscule, to the players, especially when they’re reminded of it next July or August.

Keane wasn’t too interested in making much out of the actual result, but in a decade that has seen Kerry enjoy just four wins (including this game) over 16 League and Championship the victory cannot be understated.

Yes, the two teams will be quite different in personnel and conditioning should they meet in August or September but in the year Dublin are going for an unprecedented fifth All-Ireland title in-a-row every nibble taken out of them at every opportunity can only be a good thing for the chasing pack.

It’s two defeats in three game now for the Dubs with an unbeaten Mayo team next to pitch up at Croke Park. A successful defence of their League title is hardly the priority this year but a poor defence could plant a tiny seed of doubt in their collective head. Or even if it doesn’t it should encourage Monaghan and Kerry and others that this Dublin team is not invincible, but eminently beatable. At least in February. But we should remember it is only February. Walk easy everyone.