Dublin V Kerry 28/08/16 3.30pm RTE/SKY.

[yellowcard]

Listened to Wooly Parkinson's podcast today and he said JoD told him he was fully fit to start on Sunday, strange to see him so late. Don't get the full on meltdown talk re Cluxton. Out of 18 kicks he failed to find a dub on just three occasions. Two of those occasions resulted in Kerry goals. Remove them and Macdanger's point is hammered home that an ageing Kerry team, in all honesty, were extremely lucky to be in the game at all with 10 to go.

Most people would agree that on the balance of play Dublin had played most of the football in the first half and probably deserved to be 5/6 ahead at half time. They out scored Kerry by 7 points in the second. I thought overall they were comfortably the better side and the scoreline flattered Kerry. I can understand the frustration with the referee over the Crowley decision but in reality I think there was a gulf in quality between the 2 sides that was greater than the winning margin suggests.

The JOD situation I don't understand either. How do you go from POTY 2 seasons ago to not being able to get your place in a crunch match. Has his form dipped that much or has the shoulder operation taken its toll.

[Seamus]

Listened to Wooly Parkinson's podcast today and he said JoD told him he was fully fit to start on Sunday, strange to see him so late. Don't get the full on meltdown talk re Cluxton. Out of 18 kicks he failed to find a dub on just three occasions. Two of those occasions resulted in Kerry goals. Remove them and Macdanger's point is hammered home that an ageing Kerry team, in all honesty, were extremely lucky to be in the game at all with 10 to go.

May as well take all the other scores off them as while you are at it why stop at 2-04? Kerry missed a few sitters in the last 10 minutes, if any one of them went over we may well have a different result.

[Seamus]

Listened to Wooly Parkinson's podcast today and he said JoD told him he was fully fit to start on Sunday, strange to see him so late. Don't get the full on meltdown talk re Cluxton. Out of 18 kicks he failed to find a dub on just three occasions. Two of those occasions resulted in Kerry goals. Remove them and Macdanger's point is hammered home that an ageing Kerry team, in all honesty, were extremely lucky to be in the game at all with 10 to go.

Most people would agree that on the balance of play Dublin had played most of the football in the first half and probably deserved to be 5/6 ahead at half time. They out scored Kerry by 7 points in the second. I thought overall they were comfortably the better side and the scoreline flattered Kerry. I can understand the frustration with the referee over the Crowley decision but in reality I think there was a gulf in quality between the 2 sides that was greater than the winning margin suggests.

The JOD situation I don't understand either. How do you go from POTY 2 seasons ago to not being able to get your place in a crunch match. Has his form dipped that much or has the shoulder operation taken its toll.

Count the amount of minutes of competitive football he has played since last year's All Ireland, therein lies the answer.

[omagh_gael]

Not being at the game I was unable to get a full picture of the intensity of the Kerry press before half time. My initial thought was for Cluxton to hammer it as long as he could and look for a Dublin player to either catch it or try and break it into space. Durkan exploited this full court press by hoofing his kicks over the press, would Cluxton have had the distance to clear the press or what could he have done to lessen the impact of this tactic? I'm sure Rochford will rewatch those 5/10 minutes many times between now and the final.

[Main Street]

Yeah very interesting article and explains why the richer counties are pulling away from the others as they are becoming more and more professional.
Athletic players can only do so much but it's when you take talented footballers and make them more athletic is when you end up with a team like Dublin.

Brolly harps on recently about how Dublin are just allowed to play enjoyable attacking football and players allowed to express themselves which is true but there is so much more behind the scenes. High levels of fitness, strength & conditioning, having an excellent subs bench to get you over the line are all important factors now that are making Dublin very hard to beat.

3 points downs with 10 mins to go they calmly played like the did all game and trusted themselves to create the chances and kick the scores. Years ago the old Dublin teams would have crumbled under the pressure but with all the sports science experience they have sampled now they are made of sterner stuff.
........

I am certain that Joe was also orgasmic about the Dubs' level of fitness, at least during his post match punditry.
Now it appears that Joe loves Dublin more than Zulu and Dinny combined.
Joe's love is the deepest.

[tyssam5]

I might be in the minority but whilst I thought it was a great game I didn't think Kerry were actually that good save for two 5-10 minute patches in either half. The tactic of continually switching Donaghy in and out seemed to leave players confused as to when to the high ball etc and when to run it. For me Dublin controlled massive amounts of the game and should have won by 5-6 points. Dublin looked like scoring nearly every time they attacked whereas Kerry seemed to rely more on luck and Dublin mistakes.

Tactically I thought Dublin got it bang on whereas Kerry struggled. The removal of Geaney for O'Se was a strange one. As was the withdrawal of the entire inside forward line when chasing the game late despite lack pace to break into that area. The inability to get players round the midfielders to win breaking ball also hurt Kerry.

On the referee I thought he was very poor, I have no problem with refs who get things wrong when they've only had a split second to look at things but refs who blatantly ignore the rules annoy me. If it's a black card to offence like it was for McMahon then black card don't chicken out because it will spoil the spectacle as ultimately the failure to properly implement the rules will have as big an impact on the match. . That said I still think the game is too big, too fast and too professional for a single amateur referee. Also I'm glad the referees performance didn't deprive the far better side of their victory.

Agree with all of that. Ref just decided he would give no black cards (maybe actually not a bad thing, but not really the rules)

[Jinxy]

Brian Gavin will stand back and let Tipp and KK players disembowel each other on Sunday, and 'hurling people' will love him for it.

[Maroon Manc]

Dublin got back level very early on in the 2nd half yet Kerry still managed to open up a 3 point lead with 9 minutes to go against the greatest team ever according to many people, if Dublin were comfortably the better team then they wouldn't have allowed that to happen?

I agree Dublin were the better team for far longer periods than Kerry but we all know that doesn't necessarily mean that team will win, their might have been an element of luck about Kerry's goals but the first goal was a really well worked tactical move on Kerry's part and the 2nd goal displayed a weakness we've seen in Cluxton before. Kerry could argue that they were unlucky that their great patch of play came to an end because of the half time whistle as the Dubs were clearly well and truly rattled. On the balance of play a 2 points victory for Dublin was a fair reflection on play.

[Rossfan]

Maybe Gough should have decided to ignore the half time rule as well

[Fuzzman]

For Kerry to win this game you would have imagined they would need good scoring returns from their main forwards. You would have expected Donaghy, Geaney, O'Donoghue, O'Sullivan and Gooch to be their main score getters but with the exception of Geaney it didn't really materialise. Gooch was surprisingly off form from play with him wasting quite a lot of possession & Darren O'Sullivan wearing heavy strapping on his knee from the start you have to wonder how under par this Kerry attack was. Saying that Dublin's defence was very well organised and they tackled very aggressively. Flynn, Kilkenny and McManoman were often spotted back in their own half helping out.

Kerry's first goal was well worked as they took a chance on really pushing up on the Dublin kickout but the second goal really did come from nothing and was the one that turned the game on its head as it meant Kerry went in at half time with a rather false feeling of being on top.

[Jinxy]

In his article today, Darragh O'Sé blamed young Morley for putting an easy chance wide in the 2nd half and said that Cooper would no doubt have given him a piece of his mind.
Maybe he should focus more on Cooper's incredibly bad effort that dropped into Cluxton's hands in the 2nd half instead of picking on an inexperienced wing-back.

[westbound]

For Kerry to win this game you would have imagined they would need good scoring returns from their main forwards. You would have expected Donaghy, Geaney, O'Donoghue, O'Sullivan and Gooch to be their main score getters but with the exception of Geaney it didn't really materialise. Gooch was surprisingly off form from play with him wasting quite a lot of possession & Darren O'Sullivan wearing heavy strapping on his knee from the start you have to wonder how under par this Kerry attack was. Saying that Dublin's defence was very well organised and they tackled very aggressively. Flynn, Kilkenny and McManoman were often spotted back in their own half helping out.

Kerry's first goal was well worked as they took a chance on really pushing up on the Dublin kickout but the second goal really did come from nothing and was the one that turned the game on its head as it meant Kerry went in at half time with a rather false feeling of being on top.

I don't think it was a 'false' feeling at all. In those last 5/10 minutes of the first half Kerry had dublin rattled. Cluxton was unnerved after the first kickout failure resulted in the goal. Kerry had their tails up and it was noticeable in the crowd too. Kerry sensed blood.
The half time break came at an awful time for Kerry. If there had been no half time break I still expect that Dublin would have regrouped at some stage. But if the half time break was say 5 minutes later kerry would propably have added on a couple of more points and been a little further ahead and it would have just made the second half even more difficult.

But those are all ifs and buts. The fact of the matter is Dublin scored more over 70 minutes than Dublin and deserved to win!

[screenexile]

Parkinson acting the tool on Twitter about Gough being referee. . . I have no great grá for the Dubs but it wasn't his refereeing that cost Kerry the game yes he made mistakes but he wasn't biased!!!

[highorlow]

The Kerry backs were very poor. Standing off the Dubs will never work.

[blanketattack]

Did someone say Gough is a teacher who lives and works in Dublin but he represents Meath at intercounty level?

You have to wonder does that impact on a ref to any extent when he knows if he makes a bad call against Dublin then he will be hearing about it the next day at work or from his neighbours whereas if it had of been a Ulster ref he wouldn't have cared about any such bad calls.

I just think the Crowley one was so obviously a foul and if it had of happened near the start of the game it would have been given and maybe a yellow card. If he had of given it and it was a draw would so many of you be saying the ref did quite well?

On top of that Gough is on the Dublin team's payroll, regularly coming in to referee A v B games at €80 a pop. It also gives the Dublin team extra info on what he blows for and what he lets go.