If you watch back that game, it is absolutely staggering that we lost it.
I had kind of fooled myself into think thinking we collapsed in the second half and let Kerry dominate which was not the case. In the 52nd minute we were 2 points up and Kerry had closed the gap thanks to 3 ridiculous awards of free kicks, in that time we had four absolutely terrible wides, one from Sludden 30 yards out in front on the posts under little pressure, another free 35 yards out from McShane just left of centre, a 25 yard effort from McShane just right of centre after he lost his man and a Donnelly shot rushed off his left when he had more space to run into. Kerry up to that point had only scored two scores from play in the second half and one of those was a very good score from Sherwood which was a rather hopeful punt when they were running out of ideas.
After that Walsh came in and he gave them a real focal point from play and he set up two points from play to level it up but even then we were in charge, McGeary has made a great surge through but ends up just having a nosebleed and chucking the ball to O'Brien where the goal comes about. Geaney should certainly have been pulled up for overplaying the ball too, he takes an absolute age with it.
As much as McGeary will be scapegoated for the loss, he did a fantastic job on O'Brien up to that point, O'Brien was picked up by McGeary all game and had no impact really until the goal and he was the main man from then on. McGeary was hooked pretty much straight after the goal for Tiernan McCann who looked well off the pace - he gave a really silly free away in the second half.
Sludden and McGeary both were whisked off after poor errors, Sludden after a miss and McGeary after the poor pass but they had been playing well until then and can feel themselves hard done by.
I don't really get all the plaudits David Moran got after the game, he was pretty much a peripheral figure in proceedings and I thought Michael Cassidy did a fantastic job on him. We had a spell near the end where we were 5 points down and Meyler, McAliskey and McKernan gave away 3 daft frees which allowed Kerry to kill momentum.
I can't understand how we just let Kerry have the short kickouts for the last 10 or so minutes including injury time. We pressed up full on one, McCann intercepted it and Richie Donnelly took a nice score. The last 3 kickouts we let Kerr
Geaney and Clifford hit a few savage scores late on when the game was in the melting pot, we only really had McShane standing up in that regard.
The ball was only in play for about 3 minutes in injury time so I would have expected Deegan to have played another few minutes more than he did.
We are very poor at putting pressure on teams when they are playing keep ball, we give away way too many silly frees that allows the opposition to kill time.
