Kerry v Cork All Ireland Final 2009

[Elias]

Paddy Heaney; who backed Kerry 12 months ago, has gave the nod to Cork in this mornings Irish news. (Sort of)
He concludes, "We know Kerry have the potential. But it's Cork who have the form. For this particular contest, it's the form team which looks the most likely winners."
Nothing like sitting on the fence Paddy, Kerry it is then.

[Chris agus Snoop]

What will kerry do if they lose?

No talent coming from U21s, minors and juniors. With 3 or 4 retiring after sunday there could be a famine in the kingdom!

With the recession, fewer american tourists coming over to be conned by some "cute" kerry leprechaun peddler.

Whats a young man in kerry to do?

....looks like the poor sheep will walking funny in kerry for the next few years.

[Zulu]

September pilgrimage a fact of life for Kerry

Kieth Duggan SIDELINE CUT : Their team's consistent excellence, that is now bordering on indecent, compels poor Kerry folk to undertake an annual exodus to Croke Park

THE REST of us do not have the first clue about the complexities and difficulties that come with being from Kerry. I sometimes think we should pity them. The obligation the nation has placed on Kerry shoulders has become intolerable. After all, what sort of state would Gaelic football be in if were not for the clans from the Kingdom? If Kerry were not Kerry, would there be any point to the championship at all?

Yet again, a Kerry football team has qualified for the All-Ireland football final. As has been well-flagged, this will be their sixth appearance on the trot, a rate of consistent excellence that is bordering on indecent. If they keep up this behaviour, a generation of Irish children will grow up under the assumption that there is some kind of law decreeing that, no matter what happens, Kerry will be in the final.

It is all very well for those of us from other counties, who can look forward to their representative teams making it as far as September about once every 40 years or so. These weekends can literally become once-in-a-lifetime experiences. But for Kerry folks, it is very different. They don't really have any choice in this.

This strange excellence with which they play Gaelic football has taken hold of them all and will not let them go.

Who knows how or why it started?

True, we can all blow on a bit about the singular beauty of Kerry – the lakes, the mist, the mountains, all those silver-tongued rogues, the creamy pints of plain, the endless golf courses etc. You always know a city man who has weekended in Kerry: he comes back talking like Robert Mitchum in Ryan's Daughter and talks dreamily of turf fires and bowls of mussels, all that kind of stuff.

Kerry is a ridiculously famous patch of earth. The census will give the official verdict on the population of the county but we all know that that is just nonsense; in global terms, the Kerry population is just shy of that of China. The hoors are everywhere.

A recent survey in The Economist estimated that three-quarters of the world's pubs are owned by Kerrymen. It is not widely known that world's richest man, Warren Buffet, is descended from the Ballyferriter Buffets. It is not widely known because Kerry folks do not go on about these things. And anyhow, all accomplishments are measured in terms of football. How many medals does Warren Buffet have?

Offaly may be claiming Barrack Obama and Kerry people will concede that because they know whenever the US President eventually makes it to the Emerald Isle, the photograph that travels around the world will show him teeing off at the first in Ballybunion. Revenge for '82 will be sweet. All famous people end up in Kerry, sooner or later.

But, at the end of the day, Kerry is just a place. There is no godly reason why Kildare or Waterford or Monaghan could not have emerged as the county that came to define itself through its football. Kerry men got there first. Years ago, before the foundation of the state, the great-grandfathers of the Kingdom got it into their heads that they would beat every other blasted county at this Irish big-ball game and they have been obsessed with the idea ever since.

The blame may well lie with the man who coined the nickname for Aeroplane O'Shea. When you invent a nickname that terrific – it is matched only by the flightier nicknames from the NYC basketball ghetto scene – you have an obligation to act as the moral guardian of the sport. So here are the Kerrymen, back for more.

I met a Kerryman on a train recently who told me, with a kind of sorrow in his voice, that he had taken the precaution of booking quarters in the same Dublin hotel for this weekend every year until 2025. The owner – Listowel to the last – had given him a decent rate. He figures it will be needed more often than not.

Beside him, his wife sighed deeply when asked if she was looking forward to this year's final and gave the Irish reply usually reserved for Christmas: "I suppose I am. But at the same time, I'll be glad when it's all over."

Deep down, many Kerry folks must feel like that. Of course, they feel pride at the aggregate accomplishment of their great teams down the decades and harbour particular affection for the current team.

But this business of appearing in All-Ireland after All-Ireland can take its toll as well. They say that all Kerry children can recite the names of All-Ireland-winning teams by the age of four. At five, they are kicking off either foot. By fifteen, they have become connoisseurs of their heritage and will fussily compare the vintages of '62 and '34 on the long journey up to Dublin.

Kerry folks know the city intimately because of their prowess at football. They could act as tour guides of the capital, if they so chose. They are masters at these September invasions. Any Kerry person who you meet will have a brother/sister/both living in Ranelagh. Many thousands more will have an uncle who owns a pub along the quays. They don't so much as leave Kerry behind them as transport it up to the capital for the weekend.

If you stand outside the Palace Bar at seven o'clock this evening, you are only fooling yourself if you believe yourself to be standing in Dublin. Kerry folks are the truest home birds in the world, particularly after a few drinks. They arrive at Heuston station at three o'clock and by nine they are singing some teary ballad about a lost love in Glenflesk.

And they genuinely miss the place. They hate being away for too long. But when Kerry are in the All-Ireland – which is often – they have no choice.

On All-Ireland football Sundays, the city is peppered with Kerry greats. You hear them before you see them, all those All-Ireland medals chinking in their back pockets. You might see the Bomber strolling up Grafton Street or one of the Spillanes loafing around the gates of Trinity or O'Dwyer himself passing by in a blur on the motorway, devilish grin on his face and a whistle around his neck. (Never Maurice, though. Sightings of the Cahersiveen idol are rare enough to be considered an event).

It is an odd thing to think that, by 3.30pm tomorrow, there will be hundreds of Kerry All-Ireland medal winners spread around the stadium. There are enough of them to make up an entire town if they so chose, a gated community comprised exclusively of All-Ireland medal winners.

Soon, the present team will join them, bowing out one by one. This is a special final for the Kingdom. This is a special September.

Win or lose, though, Kerry are trapped by their own tradition of excellence and by our expectations that they live up to that excellence, year after year. Privately, as they gather underneath the Hogan Stand or wait in the freezing night in Killarney for another homecoming, the Kerry faithful might wonder when it is all going to end. They might wonder when they are going to get a quiet September.

Never, would appear to be the answer. Never.

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times

[Zulu]

The final twist on September road
By Dara O'Cinneide

Saturday, September 19, 2009



IF WE have learnt anything from the last few All-Ireland finals we know that the eventual champion isn't always the best team over the course of the summer but rather the best team over the course of an hour and a half in late September.



It has been a legacy of both Kerry and Tyrone to provide us with definitive proof these last six seasons that the team who perform best under the klieg lights between 3.30pm and 5pm on the third Sunday always wins the All-Ireland title and anything that happens before or after that period of time is of no consequence.

That is why the beguiling form lines coming into tomorrow's season finale are in reality so meaningless as to render them redundant. This is a game where all the clichés will apply. This is Cork and Kerry. It really is all on the day and it probably will go down to the wire. Sometimes you realise that clichés are clichés because they're true.

Sometimes too though, the winning team will reveal enough of itself in the post match analysis to inform our opinions about their formation, their evolution and their motivations over the course of a season. Like after the 2006 final when Jack O'Connor suggested that Kerry's hunger derived one year of anguish after losing to Tyrone could dwarf Mayo's 55-year famine. Or after the 2007 final against tomorrow's opponents when Paul Galvin revealed that the thought of losing to their nearest neighbour and greatest adversary was sufficient to raise the levels of motivation to a level beyond anything Cork could hope to reach back then. One wonders where Kerry's Big Why is coming from this time out having seen their greatest motivational device evaporate before their eyes last month.

Maybe Kerry really are competing against themselves, against their own history and against standards of excellence set by those that wore the jersey before them but there must be something even more than that, something more microscopic, more primal driving this extraordinary team. I have no doubt all will be revealed should they manage to get their hands on Sam again.

It is unusual for a Kerry team facing into their sixth final in a row with a clean bill of health for the first time all season to still have huge question marks about them. The All-Ireland quarter final against Dublin — the one swallow in a strange and stumbling summer can't dispel these doubts. We doubt Darragh Ó Sé's ability to get up and down the field and to put heat on the Cork ball out of the backs. In what will most likely be the big fella's swansong, the need for him to time his input to coincide with the hour of Kerry's greatest need is stark. But what if Cork do as Tyrone did last year and play the game at such a tempo that the need for Darragh's contributions becomes too great and too incessant for his input to make a difference? The battle between the sidelines will be crucial in this regard. I have no doubt that Fintan Goold will have patches of football when introduced that will rattle Ó Sé just like Kevin Hughes had upon his introduction last year. Ó Sé is no ordinary veteran, however, and he has never failed to perform on a big day. Doubts about his ability that seem to bother other mortals, merely serve to drive him on. He should be fine.

There are doubts too, about Kerry's ability to vary their game when there is a big man at the edge of the square.

The variety of Kerry's attacks is crucial but what if the pressure out the field is so great that the likes of Tomás Ó Sé, Mike McCarthy, Paul Galvin and Tadhg Kennelly — normally assured in their delivery, decide that the heat is such that it demands the ignorant, unsophisticated hoofers sent into the full forward line last year? If Kerry's attacking ploy malfunctions to the extent that it did in last year's final will the outfield players have the patience and the forbearance to toughen and think their way through the storm?

The other nagging concern for Kerry is the incredible reality that they still have nobody to take the long range frees and 50's. You might say that Cork's defence is so disciplined that they won't be giving up too many frees but after 12 minutes of last year's final against an even more disciplined Tyrone unit, the score was 0-3 apiece with two points or 66% coming from frees on either side. Many people point to Pascal McConell's save from Declan O'Sullivan on 67 minutes as the defining moment of the game but few recall the resultant 50 being missed — as well as another 50 a few minutes earlier. In games like this, the small things are critical.

HERE'S SOME of what makes Cork uneasy: In the absence of genuine doubts about their defence after such a dogged display against Tyrone, the central question about this final is what can Cork do up front this time? We suspect that the likes of the two O'Neills, Patrick Kelly and Daniel Goulding have big matches in them but the reality is that only Limerick and Tyrone put it up to them this year. Only Donnacha O'Connor emerged with reputation intact after the final indignities of two years ago but it may be a bit unfair to burden those that had no real part in that. This is a different Cork team and 2009 is a different year but much like Tyrone's emergence in 2003, we can only accept Cork's credentials when we see Graham Canty on the podium and the truth is Cork are as fearful at this stage of the year as they appear fearsome up to now.

For obvious reasons, mainly tribal and parochial, fear of losing is a characteristic common to both counties but only Kerry have in past meetings shown an ability to channel that fear into something un-inhibiting and liberating.

Players and management often talk about turning points in a season when the collective realise that a year's work is pointing to one end. In that regard Cork's semi-final win over Tyrone could prove to be a seminal moment in their development as a team. When a team wins a game of that magnitude played at that intensity, the possibilities for growth are endless and if Cork win tomorrow we may well begin to view the overthrowing of Tyrone as the turning point not alone in Cork's season but in their long term football fortunes.

Ultimately the kings of September these last few seasons have been those who did the simple things well most often between half past three and five o' clock. When all things are equal and the margins are so fine that could mean Kerry figuring out Alan Quirke's kickouts as well as they did Stephen Cluxton's in early August. It could also on the other hand mean Anthony Lynch beating Colm Cooper as comprehensively as he did in June.

At this stage last year Kerry were on the cusp of a glorious three-in-a-row but in the end it was that small bit of magic, from Seán Cavanagh and Brian Dooher allied to the collective will that swung it away from them. It has always been thus in a battle between equals. That bit of genius, that X-factor from truly gifted forwards becomes the decisive factor.

In 2004 it was Gooch's goal, 2005 Canavan's slide-rule precision, 2006 Donaghy's catch and swivel, 2007 Gooch's fist and 2008 the irrepressible Cavanagh's five points from play. In Colm O'Neill and Daniel Goulding Cork have the capacity for special moments but in Declan O'Sullivan and Colm Cooper, Kerry have men who have done it more often before. That for me is the balancing theory and that's why when genius arrives to announce itself once again on All-Ireland final Sunday, I expect it to have a Kerry accent.



This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Saturday, September 19, 2009

[Zulu]

Well it appears I'm one of the few experts  who can see the wood from the trees. All of the pundits are coming down on the Kerry side now that the game is almost upon us, but I can tell you now they are wrong and Cork will win the All Ireland this Sunday. They are, as they say in the states, my Lock of the Week and they will win it by 3 or 4 points at least. The only reason these pundits are going for Kerry is because of tradition but that only counts if you are of a similar standard to your opponent or your opponent is mentally weak, neither is the case here.

[stephenite]

Well it appears I'm one of the few experts  who can see the wood from the trees. All of the pundits are coming down on the Kerry side now that the game is almost upon us, but I can tell you now they are wrong and Cork will win the All Ireland this Sunday. They are, as they say in the states, my Lock of the Week and they will win it by 3 or 4 points at least. The only reason these pundits are going for Kerry is because of tradition but that only counts if you are of a similar standard to your opponent or your opponent is mentally weak, neither is the case here.

Some of those younger Cork players haven't had the question asked of them before, that is, can they perform when the chips are down in All Ireland Senior final, I don't care what's gone on before in their underage careers, means nothing. Some of the other players have had the question asked and failed.

If they are mentally weak, Kerry will exploit it.

[Seamus]

What will kerry do if they lose?

No talent coming from U21s, minors and juniors. With 3 or 4 retiring after sunday there could be a famine in the kingdom!

With the recession, fewer american tourists coming over to be conned by some "cute" kerry leprechaun peddler.

Whats a young man in kerry to do?

....looks like the poor sheep will walking funny in kerry for the next few years.

Shows how little you know about Kerry football and football in general.

David Moran and Anthony Maher will be the too best midfield combinations in Ireland next year and for years to come. Unfortunate circumstance disrupted their opportunity of starting tomorrow. Tommy Walsh is already good but you ain't seen nothing yet while his brother Barry John may even be better. At last Paul O'Connor is beginning to show his true potential, he is a revelation in training. I could go on, fortunately Kerry will be around to sicken you well into the foreseeable future.

[longrunsthefox]

Kerry have quite a record at losing in All Ireland finals this decade too when it was put up to them...I think Cork will come through tomorrow and not roll over like they did last time or the way Mayo did a few times. Will be win inspired by Armagh '02 and Tyrone '05 and '08   

[INDIANA]

Well it appears I'm one of the few experts  who can see the wood from the trees. All of the pundits are coming down on the Kerry side now that the game is almost upon us, but I can tell you now they are wrong and Cork will win the All Ireland this Sunday. They are, as they say in the states, my Lock of the Week and they will win it by 3 or 4 points at least. The only reason these pundits are going for Kerry is because of tradition but that only counts if you are of a similar standard to your opponent or your opponent is mentally weak, neither is the case here.

Some of those younger Cork players haven't had the question asked of them before, that is, can they perform when the chips are down in All Ireland Senior final, I don't care what's gone on before in their underage careers, means nothing. Some of the other players have had the question asked and failed.

If they are mentally weak, Kerry will exploit it.

Absolutely agreed 100%

[Donnellys Hollow]

Strange to be facing into an AIF with Kerry as underdogs. Cork have been best team in the country all year right through the NFL and into the summer. I still think that the last team they'll have wanted to see lining out in September against them is Kerry though.

I got a nice price about Kerry for the All-Ireland on Betfair before the Dublin match and I've not even considered laying some of that bet off. I think Kerry are coming into this match in the perfect position. Too much is being read into the respective semi-final performances. Cork were awesome against Tyrone, but how good were Tyrone? I suspect they were a team in decline this year. We (Kildare) should have beaten them in the quarter final had we shown a bit more composure and I think we're still a good bit off the top teams. Losing Seán Cavanagh on the morning of the match was also a big blow to Tyrone. Kerry's semi-final against Meath was a terrible match but they were never in any danger of losing it. The conditions on the day were poor and they didn't allow for the style of football that Kerry played against Dublin. It is often the team that come off the back of a workmanlike performance in the semi-final that do the business in the final. How many times down the years have we seen teams play sparkling stuff in a semi-final and fail to reproduce it in the final.

I've read plenty about Cork's hunger to win this All-Ireland during the week. I don't think Kerry are going to be short of it either though. This could be the last hurrah for a lot of thie Kerry team. Diarmuid Murphy, Tommy Griffin, Tom Sullivan, Tomás Ó Sé, Mike McCarthy and Darragh Ó Sé are all the wrong side of thirty. They won't want what potentially could be their last match in Croke Park to be a defeat to their great rivals. Cork have a settled and experienced defence but their forward line is relatively young and it is hard to predict how they will react to the occasion. Kelly, Kerrigan and O'Neill have been excellent all year and they've done it all at underage level but that counts for nothing come AIF day. Potentially they could let the occasion get the better of them and let the match pass them by. I don't think there's any fear of that with this Kerry team. They've all been here many times before and they know what it is all about. If Cork get a run on them early on in the match I wouldn't expect them to panic and fall apart. If the opposite occurs and Kerry get on top in the first half, we don't know how Cork will react. Apart from the Limerick match, we haven't seen how Cork deal with being behind and trying to fight their way back into the match. I suspect that on Munster Final day, it was Limerick's fear of winning more than Cork's fighting spirit that swung that match.

Tommy Walsh coming back into the Kerry team is no surprise after his performance against Meath. I'd prefer to see Declan O'Sullivan lining out closer to goal and I suspect he will rotate positions with Walsh during the match. Walsh's height around the middle of the field would give Kerry another option with their kickouts. It is important for Cork that Ray Carey is fit to play because Kieran O'Connor has been exposed by Kerry before and Cadogan is untested at this level. It should be a tight and tense affair and hopefully Marty Duffy isn't a talking point after the match. The law of averages suggest that Cork have to beat Kerry in Croke Park some day but I'm not sure that tomorrow will be that day. Kerry by 4/5 points for me.

[Donnellys Hollow]

What will kerry do if they lose?

No talent coming from U21s, minors and juniors. With 3 or 4 retiring after sunday there could be a famine in the kingdom!

With the recession, fewer american tourists coming over to be conned by some "cute" kerry leprechaun peddler.

Whats a young man in kerry to do?

....looks like the poor sheep will walking funny in kerry for the next few years.

That's mature. Away back to peoplesrepublicofcork.com with you!

[Frank Casey]

One wonders with all of the talk about Kerry being unable to stop Tyrone in Croke Park this decade, whether the same thing might pick the minds of a few Cork men at around 4.45 tomorrow afternoon.

All streaks come to an end at some stage. Who knows if the Kerry-Tyrone sequence would have ended this year if the red-handers had beaten the rebels. Who knows if the langers will change their recent luck against Kerry tomorrow.

I've had a feeling that this would be Cork's year since their Munster final win against Limerick. It was obvious that Conor Counihan was already thinking of August and September football immediately after the Kerry replay. Training in the camp was stepped up and the leaden legs of his team in the Munster final coupled with a Limerick desire to pull off an upset was always going to leave this one close. The difference, as Kerry, Tyrone and one or two others know, between a provincial title and a provincial title loss is last 8 versus last 12. The manner of Cork's preparation for the Limerick match convinced me that at last they were getting serious.

HOWEVER, as the match comes closer I am finding in harder to keep my conviction about Cork and and begining to think that Kerry have saved their last sting, of this supposedly dying wasp, for tomorrow.

As the late great John B. Keane said "A Kerry footballer with an inferiority complex is one who thinks he's just as good as everybody else."

Kerry I think by 3 or 4.

[Chris agus Snoop]

What will kerry do if they lose?

No talent coming from U21s, minors and juniors. With 3 or 4 retiring after sunday there could be a famine in the kingdom!

With the recession, fewer american tourists coming over to be conned by some "cute" kerry leprechaun peddler.

Whats a young man in kerry to do?

....looks like the poor sheep will walking funny in kerry for the next few years.

Shows how little you know about Kerry football and football in general.

David Moran and Anthony Maher will be the too best midfield combinations in Ireland next year and for years to come. Unfortunate circumstance disrupted their opportunity of starting tomorrow. Tommy Walsh is already good but you ain't seen nothing yet while his brother Barry John may even be better. At last Paul O'Connor is beginning to show his true potential, he is a revelation in training. I could go on, fortunately Kerry will be around to sicken you well into the foreseeable future.

I already know about them, if thats all you have then I foresee that kerry farmers won't  be getting a good price for their sheep on market day.

[Frank Casey]

I already know about them, if thats all you have then I foresee that kerry farmers won't  be getting a good price for their sheep on market day.

Just looked up your profile and I see you have your age as N/A - does that stand for "not aware" or "not admitted" or what?

I'm sure there's some swingers or doggers forum that would welcome your obsession with bestiality but on here play ball not with yours

[Zulu]

I don't care what's gone on before in their underage careers, means nothing.

Kelly, Kerrigan and O'Neill have been excellent all year and they've done it all at underage level but that counts for nothing come AIF day.

It counts for something lads, everyone would accept that lads who come through from successful underage set ups are better off than those who don't. Most counties build their senior success on the back of underage success and winning breeds confidence. Does underage success guarantee senior success or a performance in a senior AI? Of course not but it does count for something.

we haven't seen how Cork deal with being behind and trying to fight their way back into the match.

Yes we have, they ground out a win over Limerick when they shouldn't have and they cam back from 8 or 9 points down against Kerry 3 times last year to win, draw and narrowly lose to them. They also beat Tyrone after having been unfairly reduced to 14 men in the semi final which again showed maturity and ability.

Some of the other players have had the question asked and failed.

I don't think that is true at all, players like Canty, Lynch, O'Neill and Miskella were on poor enough teams that were exposed on the big day but these lads have proven themselves to be top quality players and now with a better supporting cast I don't think they will underperform.