GAELIC GAMES: SEAN MORANsays the return of classy Kerry duo Declan O'Sullivan and Paul Galvin increases Jack O'Connor's options to a formidable degree

IT’S NOT the Kerry way to be too impressed by winning league matches in March but there was no mistaking Jack O’Connor’s good humour on Sunday in Armagh’s Athletic Grounds.

The result wasn’t the only reason O’Connor was pleased as he shepherded all attendant media into a big scrum – when the trip home is longer than 500 kilometres you want to do press conferences in one take. Beyond the immediate issues of success and failure in the league, Kerry’s agenda for regrouping before this year’s championship has been almost entirely developmental.

Most obviously there has been the need to refresh a defence where five of last year’s six first-choice players have seen 30 for the last time. There has also been the question of trying to make good the loss at centrefield of Darragh Ó Sé to retirement a year ago.

Even the attack where three former footballers of the year – Colm Cooper, Kieran Donaghy and Paul Galvin – plus Declan O’Sullivan, shortlisted in 2007, hasn’t been without problems despite the sector’s lower age profile. Galvin and O’Sullivan have had lengthy hibernations because of injury and Donaghy has been struggling to find form.

Solutions to all of these difficulties were to varying degrees progressed on Sunday, as O’Connor acknowledged. O’Sullivan and Galvin returned to action and Donaghy had his best match in a long time.

Shane Enright, full back on the All-Ireland-winning under-21s from three years ago, started at corner back but gave a confident performance farther out on the home side’s promising Rory Grugan, as Armagh played a two-man full-forward line.

Centrefield benefited from some rejigging on Sunday with David Moran coming in on half an hour and playing assertively around the middle, prompting more words of encouragement from the manager.

“He made a massive difference in the middle of the field and if he keeps that form up he’ll solve a big problem for us there.”

Moran has the added advantage that he kicks frees and landed two at the weekend.

The two attacking revelations were Donaghy and Darran O’Sullivan. The former has been struggling for form for the past year and it was noticeable in Croke Park last month how an over-emphasis on letting the ball go long into the full forward was restricting the scope of the team’s attacks when fast, low transfers into Darran O’Sullivan and Cooper caused a great deal more consternation in the Dublin defence and should have led to at least a share of the spoils.

Donaghy’s stagnation in the position in which he became footballer of the year in 2006 had prompted speculation that he might be better off switched to his original position of centrefield in the hope that it would help him recover form.

But he has been an exceptional full forward when on his game and it always seemed fanciful to suggest that moving him to a position he hasn’t played for Kerry over any sustained period for five years would help his performances on the edge of the square.

On Sunday his marker and namesake Brendan Donaghy was in trouble on him from the start, conceding possession in a variety of dangerous positions and watching while goal chances were created (if not all taken) and other scores set up.

After a less than sparkling display against Galway the previous week, Donaghy distinguished between the two matches.

“You can kind of judge yourself on a game. Saying nothing to Galway but that game sort of lacked tempo, especially in the second half. Today there was none of that, it was intense, it is a tight narrow field and there was great intensity.”

Intensity is a recurring theme and with the return of Declan O’Sullivan and Galvin, the team is beginning to take on a formidable shape of experience supplemented by youth.

“Just to have all the guys coming back,” according to Donaghy, “it’s just making training better. It’s great to be able to call on the experience of Paul and Declan there to come on and calm things down.

“What it does is make training games better, it makes training more intense which is what we want. The backroom staff and the management are doing a great job. They are making training interesting and enjoyable, which for a team like us who have been on the road for so long is important.”

Darran O’Sullivan has been having a good league. His speed and work rate were evident on the 40 in Armagh and recalled how in an All-Ireland quarter-final against the same opposition five years ago his pace had caused mayhem. Despite that early promise his career took a while to establish itself although it did culminate in his captaining the 2009 All-Ireland-winning team.

His kicking was also well -directed and his deployment to run in to support Donaghy nearly led to a first-half goal and then did so for the match-defining score in the 53rd minute. That pace and ability to take on defenders is a great counterpoint to the traditional long-ball strengths of a revived Donaghy, who acknowledged his team-mate’s role in the current team.

“Exceptional, yeah. He’s playing the football of his life I think at centre-forward. His movement and speed causes teams hassle and today he could have had two goals. The goalie made a great save from the first one – I suppose it cost him coming off but when Darran takes a shot like that if a goalie takes it in the face it is going to knock him out.

“Darran is a guy who used to be coming off the bench but now he is taking games by the scruff of the neck. He was always a centre-forward with the Kerry minors and under-21s. It’s a role that suits him. Darran can play anywhere; he can play in the corner too, on the wing. His confidence is up at the moment, which is crucial for a footballer.”

“Just to have all the guys coming back,” according to Donaghy, “it’s just making training better. It’s great to be able to call on the experience of Paul and Declan there to come on and calm things down.”