The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
McCarthy inspires a famous victory
An inspired Kevin McCarthy drove Kilcummin to this All Ireland club championship crown
HE was a man possessed, a man inspired, unmarkable, unstoppable. He gave the most complete Croke Park performance we’ve seen since David Clifford ran amok in the 2017 All Ireland minor final. He finished the game with three goals and seven points. All from play.
He was involved directly in an additional 2-2, meaning that Kevin McCarthy contributed to fully eighty five percent of Kilcummin’s scores. A remarkable return in an All Ireland final from a player who twice broke his hand in the last six months.
To come back as strongly as he did showed character. To contribute as handsomely shows the quality this guy has. From April last year to February this year he’s been the talisman, the one to whom they turn to when the need is most pressing.
McCarthy has been for Kilcummin and, indeed, has the x-factor. He looked lean and hungry out there on the Croke Park turf. Strong as an ox, powerful on and off the ball, yet deft and deadly as and when the situation warranted.
The little misdirection he gave his man – full-back Damien Gault – in the lead up to his first goal brought him all the time and space he needed to plant it to the back of Paddy Flood’s net. Different class.
It’s unlikely that Naomh Éanna were given too much comfort by his absence from the starting fifteen on the match programme. They had to know that McCarthy would start. Fear the worst, hope for the best.
“The first break seemed to heal, but the second break, he broke it ten minutes into the Munster final with Fermoy and he played for fifty minutes afterwards, which shows the man he is,” Kilcummin boss Willie Maher enthused under the Hogan Stand, rightly basking in the aftermath of famous win.
“We were just hoping he’d come through okay. He has been training away and with Kerry and has a lot of training done with Kerry so he was in good shape physically inside with the Kerry lads a lot of the time. We had him for the last two weeks and I suppose he’d very little ball played and he was handling ball last week.”
McCarthy was just too good to hold in reserve. Too good and too important. Naomh Éanna ended up trying at least another two markers on the Kerry star after Gault and began to play a sweeper in front of their full-back line after a while too.
For a time it seemed to have some effect – long balls into McCarthy were cut out – but the man was simply irrepressible. Kilcummin had too much of the ball for a guy in that sort of form not thrive.
Kilcummin – with Brendan Kealy inspired with his kick-outs – retained almost ninety percent of their restarts and won a good chunk of Naomh Éanna’s too, even winning a majority of them in the first half.
Shane McSweeney, playing at ten as an auxiliary midfielder, in probably his finest ever game in the green and red won five marks (and another break) and won two of those against the head. With that sort of a platform it was always likely Kilcummin and their star man
would surge into a commanding position.
The blip midway through the first half when Naomh Éanna nabbed two goals and brought it back to a two point game having been nine points in arrears had the potential to knock Kilcummin off their axis, but their composure was telling.
“I think that was the key,” Maher explains.
“When they brought it back to maybe three or four it was slipping from us and they had chances and their running game was very strong and we’d talked about that. It’s a different thing talking about it and trying to stop it.
“Their number seven got injured before half-time and he was a big loss to them as well. I thought the main thing was we did very well in the middle of the field and that kind of gave us a platform to win possession.
“The plan was fairly basic to get it into Kevin McCarthy and he scored 3-7 from play which is a phenomenal return.”
If the devil is in the detail, there’s genius in simplicity and there was a beauty to it as well. Kilcummin – and Naomh Éanna too – were a joy to behold on Saturday evening.
They played with an abandon, a heads-up enthusiasm swept the East Kerry men to this All Ireland title. That carries certain risks – they had to rely on Brendan Kealy to bail them out with brilliant saves a few times too often – but the rewards were manifest.
Centre-back Chris O’Leary gave an exhibition. Seán O’Leary showed flashes of the brilliance that helped his club to domestic honours last May. Kieran Murphy and Kevin Gorman were more than solid. Gary O’Leary, Matt Keane and Noel Duggan, meanwhile, provided ample support for McCarthy.
McCarthy may have been the star turn, but the ensemble were every bit as important to this victory. More than anything that’s what’s going to give them hope for the future as they prepare for a return to the senior championship.
Kilcummin now have momentum and confidence of the sort that they haven’t had at senior level at least in the last decade. Kilcummin have a handful of players in their thirties – Kealy, Gorman, McSweeney – but the core of the team is young enough to develop further still.
“There was about ten of them there today who won the County Minor Championship and in Kerry that’s literally impossible for a club team to win a County Minor title with divisional boards,” Maher says.
As for Maher it’s been one hell of a thirteen months. The man tasked with finding a man to manage the senior team, who ended up having to take on the role himself and ended up winning an All Ireland title off the back of it.
“I’d no interest whatsoever in the job,” he explains.
“I’ve been in Kilcummin thirty years – as they tell me the whole time I’m a blow in into Kilcummin – I’ll be there thirty years on April 15. I’ve been training teams in Kilcummin from underage right up to senior to ladies I don’t think there’s no age I haven’t trained, but training the senior team is a different thing and I’d two young fellas involved, which is one reason I didn’t want to do it.
“I’ve been involved before with relative success we’ve got to county semi-finals and in Kerry there’s only eight senior clubs and we could be back intermediate next year it’s that tight. An Ghaeltacht were only a kick of a ball from beating Moy and being in a final last year and they went back down intermediate again.
“It’s dog eat dog.” Maybe so, but once again Kilcummin are big dogs in large part thanks to Willie Maher.
Roll on the month of April.