Kerry V Dublin

[guevara]

Well I personally know the majority of them Tyrone guys went to uni with few Tyrone lads & played against the likes of Cavanagh & Mulligan on a number of occassions  So thats how I would know!
I also have relatives in Kerry & am down there quite often & can tell you for a fact Walsh, Gooch etc were all superior footballers at underage level than any of the Tyrone guys I know so I would say having seen both play & be in a position to judge Im more than entitled to my view?
Whats your reason for yours idiot?

[Donnellys Hollow]

A few months ago, this column caused some civil unrest in the deep south when it dared to suggest that we, as a nation, are hopelessly deluded about Kerry football.

The column was written on the eve of the Championship and it was largely in response to the overwhelming majority of pundits, journalists and ex-players who had selected Kerry as the team most likely to win this year's

All-Ireland title.

Against the Breeze argued that these people were just plain wrong. It said these people were still living under the spell of the magical green and gold jersey. It said they were allowing tradition and nostalgia to cloud their

judgement.

A few months later and the cognoscenti who were telling us why Kerry were going to win this year's All-Ireland title have dramatically changed their tune. At that time, we were told that Jack was back to conquer Tyrone. His team had just cruised to the National League title and, with his squad bolstered by Tadhg Kennelly and young David Moran, he was perfectly-positioned for September glory.

Now, the same people are telling us that Kerry are in total disarray. It turns out Jack was wrong to go back. His book was a mistake. It rubbed the O Se brothers up the wrong way.

Apparently, Jack has now lost the changing room. We are also being told that the players have too many miles on the legs. They are weary and worn.

Ironically, much of the analysis outlining what is wrong with Kerry is as fundamentally flawed as the articles written to explain why they would win this year's Championship.

For the benefit of those now suffering from selective amnesia, it's necessary to point out that Jack O'Connor was welcomed back with open arms. The players and the public applauded his appointment.

Furthermore, there was no mention of tired legs or mental fatigue when Kerry collected the League title in cruise control.

The real problem facing this Kerry squad centres on its dependence on individuals.

Last year, 'Team Tyrone' beat 15 Kerry players.

The trouble with individuals is that they put themselves first, which is the long way of saying

'indiscipline'.

And indiscipline explains the red card that ruled Paul Galvin out of action for much of last summer.

It explains the three yellow cards that Kerry picked up when they lost their composure before half-time in the All-Ireland final.

And if we delve deeper, there is further evidence to demonstrate why Tyrone's collective emerged triumphant.

Last year's final essentially turned at the start of the second half. Darragh O Se, who was imperious in the first period, found himself standing beside a fresh-legged and determined Kevin Hughes for the second throw-in.

Darragh had just completed 35 minutes of hard graft. Kevin was pawing at the ground. Tyrone's goal came when Hughes came bounding through the centre of the pitch and took a pass from Stephen O'Neill. Darragh hadn't the legs to keep up with his younger, fitter rival.

Watch a replay of last year's All-Ireland final and witness the number of times Darragh is chasing back, valiantly trying to catch a player that is leaving him for dead.

Jack O'Connor will have watched last year's final on countless occasions. Darragh's performance was not lost on him. At the start of the year, he set out to establish a new midfield partnership.

Anthony Maher, Michael Quirke and David Moran were all given ample game time in the League, but they were exposed against Cork in the Championship.

�This meant O'Connor had to go back to Darragh. Of course, there is no doubt that Darragh O Se can make a huge contribution, but last year's All-Ireland final provides clear evidence that his ageing limbs can be exposed over the course of 70 minutes.

The obvious solution is to keep Darragh in cold storage, then introduce him at half-time for the crucial phase of the game.

But, by all accounts, Darragh doesn't like these new-fangled notions. He wants the number eight on his back and he wants to start.

Now, consider the contrast with Tyrone, where everyone submits obediently to the gameplan. The collective comes first.

Both Kevin Hughes and Brian McGuigan wanted to start last year's final.�But Mickey Harte

believed they could make a more telling impact as substitutes.

A fit Hughes could run the legs off a tiring Darragh O Se. McGuigan could provide composure and intelligence during a frenetic finish.

Like the rest of the Tyrone squad, Hughes and McGuigan learned a long time ago to accept the

wisdom of the man who manages them.

A different dynamic exists in Kerry. The players hold more sway because they've won All-Ireland titles under three different managers.

Kerry's success over the last decade has stemmed from brilliant individuals with big, powerful, resilient egos. But the cause of that strength is now their greatest weakness.

Jack O'Connor is now trying to wrest that control from the players.

His decision to drop Tomas O Se and Colm Cooper�for drinking before a round four Qualifier would appear unavoidable to anyone with the faintest knowledge of management.

Yet, the reaction in Kerry to O'Connor's decision neatly demonstrates their current subservience to the talented individual rather than the team.

The real crisis for Kerry would be if two players could escape punishment for such a breach of discipline.

The fact that Jack O'Connor could make that call, and Kerry's radically improved conduct on the pitch provides evidence that he has more authority over his changing room than he is currently being given credit for.

But, O'Connor is fighting an uphill�battle.

Whereas Mike Frank Russell and Eoin Brosnan recently quit his squad, the absolute unity and

dedication that Jack needs can be found in the changing room of his next opponents. Dublin's Ciaran Whelan, Bryan Cullen and Shane Ryan have all been prepared to sit on the bench.

Nevertheless, Kerry's grip on the public imagination is still incredibly strong. For all their failings and fall-outs, it's amazing how few can identify the symptoms of a dying team.

There is a nationwide inability to dismiss Kerry. Despite the evidence presented in recent games, there are many who still insist that 'you write Kerry off at your peril'.

What cautious drivel! Against Longford, Sligo and Antrim, we witnessed a once fine team in the death throes. Proud, strong and noble, it's fitting that Kerry are gasping for every last lungful of air.

It's a relief they weren't beaten in the Qualifiers. These players deserved a better send-off than to be laid to rest in a remote outpost in the midlands.

Better for them to return to the capital, and Croke Park, the ground they consider home, and the place where this�Kerry team will receive their last rites.

http://www.irishnews.com/irishnews/597/5764/2009/7/28/623611_388890678322Dubscanp.html

And some people claim that the "southern meeejia" are obsessed with Kerry. 

Btw Mr Heaney, Anthony Maher was injured for both Cork matches.

[Fear ón Srath Bán]

I also have relatives in Kerry & am down there quite often...

A (n impartial) Down man my arse 

[guevara]

No man Im unfortunatley following the Dubs on this one! Hope they beat Kerry as think they have been better this year
Although may holiday in Kerry the feckers havent a chance of converting me 
Red & Blacks my only colours 

[Seamus]

And some people claim that the "southern meeejia" are obsessed with Kerry. 

Btw Mr Heaney, Anthony Maher was injured for both Cork matches.

David Moran had very little playing time as well. His drop in form coincides with his father Ogie's illness. Brian his brother has some illness also. He is off the Kerry panel since. Tough times off the field for David. Ogie's brother James died of cancer a few years back so worrying times.

Heaney is also incorrect in stating that all of Kerry disagreed with Jack's decision to drop Gooch and Tomas when in fact it was the complete opposite.

[ludermor]

Well I personally know the majority of them Tyrone guys went to uni with few Tyrone lads & played against the likes of Cavanagh & Mulligan on a number of occassions  So thats how I would know!
I also have relatives in Kerry & am down there quite often & can tell you for a fact Walsh, Gooch etc were all superior footballers at underage level than any of the Tyrone guys I know so I would say having seen both play & be in a position to judge Im more than entitled to my view?
Whats your reason for yours idiot?

Translator please!

[5 Sams]

And some people claim that the "southern meeejia" are obsessed with Kerry. 

Btw Mr Heaney, Anthony Maher was injured for both Cork matches.

David Moran had very little playing time as well. His drop in form coincides with his father Ogie's illness. Brian his brother has some illness also. He is off the Kerry panel since. Tough times off the field for David. Ogie's brother James died of cancer a few years back so worrying times.

Heaney is also incorrect in stating that all of Kerry disagreed with Jack's decision to drop Gooch and Tomas when in fact it was the complete opposite.

I didnt hear that Ogie wasn't well Séamus....when did this news appear??

[nrico2006]

Well I personally know the majority of them Tyrone guys went to uni with few Tyrone lads & played against the likes of Cavanagh & Mulligan on a number of occassions  So thats how I would know!
I also have relatives in Kerry & am down there quite often & can tell you for a fact Walsh, Gooch etc were all superior footballers at underage level than any of the Tyrone guys I know so I would say having seen both play & be in a position to judge Im more than entitled to my view?
Whats your reason for yours idiot?

If Walsh and Gooch etc were all superior footballers then how come we haven't saw more All Ireland Minor titles going to Kerry?
So by going to Uni with a few Tyrone lads puts you in a position to know how they developed - by that stage they are basically as good as they will be as they would have done the majority of this extra work that they required in their early to mid teens which would be their formative years.  This argument (Kerry having better individuals than Tyrone) has been put to bed before.  Tyrone play as a team and their team ethic is righly praised but they would not have achieved what they have without having exceptional footballers in the side.  Tyrone have great footballers in every position who are equal if not better than their Kerry counterparts - just look at the adaptibility of wach Tyrone player.  How many Kerry players are as comfortable in the Full Back position as they are at wing forward?  Look at the Tyrone defenders such as McMenamin, Harte or Jordan who are all as good going forward as they are in front of their own goal.  My point regarding Donaghy was that he did not announce himself as a serious talent until he was basically in his mid twenties, he obviously had to improve and work hard to become the player that he was as he was on the Kerry squad for a while before he started to perform.
before,

[guevara]

Donaghy was on the Kerry panel from 05 & starting for them by 2006 at Full Forward were he announced himself against Armagh.
He was 23 years old & had been latecomer to the panel as his previous allegiance was with Tralee in the Basketball.
And no I didnt just go to uni with few Tyrone boys I played against a lot of them from 12/13 right up so I think I would have an idea of what they were like.
I agree Tyrone play as a team with a set system that gets the best out of players.
Kerry on other hand play off the cuff at times & rely on the pure ability of guys like Cooper, O'Sullivan etc to try & win them games.
How many of the Tyrone team were playing for their county at 18/19???

[tyrone86]

How many of the Tyrone team were playing for their county at 18/19???

Stephen O'Neill, Sean Cavanagh and John Devine among others

[DandyMan]

To what extent do people think that all of the allegations of unrest in the Kerry camp are part of a strategy to lure the Dubs into a flase sense of superiority? After all, the three teams that Kerry beat in the qualifiers were never going to beat them - despite all of the their best efforts.

[tyrone86]

Maybe it's the new management, perhaps it's the form of Bernard Brogan but the Dubs seem a totally different proposition this year and they certainly won't capitulate this year the way they did against Tyrone this time against the kingdom. Kerry have been very laboured to date and if anything the wide open spaces of Croke Park is more likely to expose their frailties and lack of pace in key areas than lift them from their slumbers. The Dubs by a couple in a high scoring contest

[bcarrier]

Compare Team from 2007( thanks to Kerry Mike) vs last Sundays team

Kerry:

Diarmuid Murphy; Padraig Reidy, Marc O Se, Tom O'Sullivan; Tomas
O Se (0-1), Aidan O'Mahony, Killian Young;
Darragh O Se, Seamus Scanlon;
Paul Galvin (0-2),, Eoin Brosnan (0-2), Declan O'Sullivan (1-3); Colm Cooper
(0-3), Kieran Donaghy, Bryan Sheehan (0-3).
Subs: Tommy Griffin for Darragh O Se, Darragh O Se for Griffin, Sean
O'Sullivan (0-1) for Galvin, Darran O'Sullivan for Brosnan.

Of the 18 players used v Dublin 2007 ...14 of them played last Sunday. Would have been 15 if Star was fit and there is a case to reinstate Sheehan.

[tyrone86]

http://www.herald.ie/sport/gaelic-football/kerry-not-capable-of-doing-a-tyrone-1844072.html



IT'S elementary, my dear Watson. And all so eminently logical.

The evidence against the Kingdom is so overwhelming that 12 good men and true would barely require five minutes to send Jack O'Connor and his motley crew of misfits to the championship slammer.

Even Johnnie Cochran -- if he were still around -- would struggle to convince a jury of gullible Gaels that the O'Neills gloves don't fit so you must acquit.

Kerry's fingerprints are plastered all over at least five crime scenes -- Killarney, the Páirc, Pearse Park, Austin Stack and now O'Connor Park. They are as guilty as OJ ... sorry, Johnnie, we meant as guilty as sin!

If we can abandon the forensic metaphors, their graph is clearly moving in the opposite direction to Dublin's. So much so that finally, after 32 years of waiting and wondering would it ever happen again, Dublin should put their green-and-gold nemesis to the sword next bank holiday Monday.

CLASSIC

The classic 1977 All-Ireland semi-final will finally be given an appropriate resting place in the Garden of Sky Blue Remembrance. Paddy Cullen and Jimmy Keaveney will be allowed to go about their daily August business without being cajoled into recalling what it was like in the rare auld times of Heffo and Micko, of cute Kerry codgers and Dublin coddle.

Unlike in 2001, 2004 or 2007, when you could only have tipped the Dubs against Kerry on the dubious premise of a hunch, cold logic now dictates that they must win, should win, will win.

Really?

Here's the problem with the above synopsis. While all the logical pointers indicate a Dublin victory in six days' time, logic and match-day reality aren't always the most comfortable of GAA bedfellows. Just ask the Galway hurlers.

In this case, Dublin's form is clearly more compelling but you can't be fully convinced until they walk the walk in August.

One presumes there is always some potential for Dublin being spooked by their unhappy history against the Kingdom. Equally, it is possible to envisage a scenario whereby Kerry - assailed by chronic form, doubted by their own and roundly dismissed by the rest - are kickstarted out of their torpor by the sight of that blue jersey and the cacophonous sound of a heaving Hill.

Besides, it wouldn't be unheard of for Dublin to be the unwitting catalyst for an All-Ireland assault reborn. It happened all of - let us see - 12 months ago.

Tyrone looked to be trundling towards the inevitable exit door as they prepared to face a familiar Dublin foe in last year's quarter-final. They had lost to Down in the Ulster championship. They could have lost at home to Westmeath. They probably should have lost to Mayo in the final qualifier round.

They duly proceeded to make a mockery of all the doubters, not to mention the suddenly dithering Dubs.

So, is the Kerry/Tyrone comparison a valid one? Yes and no. Both Tyrone (circa '08) and Kerry today qualified as former All-Ireland champions who had lost their way. Yet in the former case, there was that brief but telling shell-burst of points when it mattered most against Mayo - a hint that some vintage Tyrone 'vino' was ready to be uncorked once more.

Contrast this with Kerry. They have played five games in this championship and haven't managed anything remotely as impressive. Yes, they had that brilliant start to the second half of the Cork replay (a positive augury soon buried in another Leeside avalanche) and they finished strongly when disaster could have beckoned against Antrim last Sunday.

The more blindly optimistic Kerryman (we're not sure if this endangered species currently exists in the plural) might also highlight the wildly contrasting reactions to Tyrone's recent six-point win over Antrim and Kerry's five-point success against the same opposition.

CRUISE

The former had won at a cruise playing within themselves, so the consensus went. And the latter? "For 62 minutes, this was arguably the most inept championship performance by a Kerry team in many years - and Antrim should have beaten them," was the no-frills conclusion of one media witness to events in Tullamore.

Yet Tyrone's margin was only one point superior, which begs the question is this merely a case of reigning champions being judged in a more sycophantic light (as Kerry have been in the past) when measured against a team perceived to be on the slippery slope?

We don't think so, for several reasons. Firstly, Tyrone were never seriously troubled by Antrim; Kerry patently were.

This time last year Tyrone merely seemed afflicted by poor form and/or a confidence deficit whereas Kerry have this ailment and lots more besides. They include: (1) major problems in critical positions with no obvious immediate solutions; (2) the crippling loss of Kieran Donaghy to contend with; (3) a sense that decorated limbs (belonging to Darragh ó Sé among others) are creaking; and (4) the inescapable whiff of trouble in the camp, exemplified by the (albeit brief) banishment to the bench of Colm Cooper and Tomás ó Sé.

Jack O'Connor's public declaration for the TV cameras that there is "great spirit in the squad", that Kerry are "fine despite rumours to the contrary", is what you'd expect from an experienced manager trying to keep his ship afloat when it has been holed below the water line. It doesn't mean we have to swallow his every utterance.

You must also judge Kerry's latest fitful performance against a backdrop of all that has gone before this summer - and even last summer, when on-field tetchiness and a recurring tendency towards second half collapses hinted at a team showing tell-tale signs of battle fatigue.

Many of us assumed that O'Connor's return would put the pep back in Kerry's step. Just to reinforce this assumption, they were duly crowned league champions.

But 20-20 hindsight is everything and so, instead of recalling who won it, today we can only remember the dearth of championship intensity in the Division 1 league final against Derry - and guess what happened to them!

All of the above is an attempt to place the Kerry 'crisis' in context: in summary, they look less well equipped than Tyrone last season for mid-summer rejuvenation and there is also the feeling about Dublin, under Pat Gilroy, are now less susceptible to the collective implosion that wrecked their grand dream in Pillar's final campaign.

Ah, did we just say "feeling" vis-a-vis the Dubs? So much for sticking rigidly to the evidence trail and the dull science of logic!

- Frank Roche

[DUBSFORSAM1]

Well I personally know the majority of them Tyrone guys went to uni with few Tyrone lads & played against the likes of Cavanagh & Mulligan on a number of occassions  So thats how I would know!
I also have relatives in Kerry & am down there quite often & can tell you for a fact Walsh, Gooch etc were all superior footballers at underage level than any of the Tyrone guys I know so I would say having seen both play & be in a position to judge Im more than entitled to my view?
Whats your reason for yours idiot?

If Walsh and Gooch etc were all superior footballers then how come we haven't saw more All Ireland Minor titles going to Kerry?
So by going to Uni with a few Tyrone lads puts you in a position to know how they developed - by that stage they are basically as good as they will be as they would have done the majority of this extra work that they required in their early to mid teens which would be their formative years.  This argument (Kerry having better individuals than Tyrone) has been put to bed before.  Tyrone play as a team and their team ethic is righly praised but they would not have achieved what they have without having exceptional footballers in the side.  Tyrone have great footballers in every position who are equal if not better than their Kerry counterparts - just look at the adaptibility of wach Tyrone player.  How many Kerry players are as comfortable in the Full Back position as they are at wing forward?  Look at the Tyrone defenders such as McMenamin, Harte or Jordan who are all as good going forward as they are in front of their own goal.  My point regarding Donaghy was that he did not announce himself as a serious talent until he was basically in his mid twenties, he obviously had to improve and work hard to become the player that he was as he was on the Kerry squad for a while before he started to perform.
before,

nrico - so if Tyrone have such great footballers etc how come they are nowhere near as consistent as Kerry, have less titles and get beaten by the likes of Laois/Mayo etc