Sideline Cut:How many modern day football men have what Daniel Day Lewis, sharpening knives as the glass-eyed patriot William "Bill the Butcher", theatrically called "the sand". How many football managers have the bloody-mindedness and daring to truly believe their team will beat Kerry in next year's championship? How many teams will be talking and thinking that way as early as October? The immediate challenge for those who would be champions is to topple a team that will, next summer, chase not so much another leasehold on the Sam Maguire as a legacy that will shine as brightly as anything achieved by Kerry teams in the past.
Once again, the Kingdom players will be guided by voices from their own tradition. They have another cause. As twilight fell on another bizarre non-event of an All-Ireland final, the radio airwaves crackled with plenty of talk about the damn near invincibility of this Kerry football team. On the main evening news, there were pictures of the coveted cup back among the Kingdom people propped casually among discarded water bottles and green and gold tops on the centre table in the dressingroom. On The Sunday Game, Colm Cooper accepted the man of the match award with genuine bashfulness and the mind reeled at the thought this guy was only 24 years of age. It will be a pleasure watching him mature and peak as a football player but for opposition counties, it will also mean many afternoons of teeth-gnashing disappointment.
All of these sounds and images were absorbed by disappointed football men throughout the country and all of them reinforced the Kingdom's supremacy and the power they have to turn it on in September. All the questions had been answered. The county had survived the departure of Séamus Moynihan and Michael McCarthy. The transition from the Jack O'Connor administration to Pat O'Shea's tenure could not have gone more smoothly.
It is sobering to think O'Shea was only fully engaged with the county team in late March, when his club duties with Dr Crokes had concluded. Seven months was more than enough time for him to make sure the machine was running smoothly, improved by his own subtle tactical appreciation and coolness on the sideline. Also, the county team had responded to the chutzpah of the former Meath football player and journalist Liam Hayes, who questioned the mythical status afforded to several contemporary Kerry players and declined to rank this Kerry team as being the best of the football teams we have seen this decade.
It is unclear if those Sunday Tribune columns were what Declan O'Sullivan was alluding to in his fiery acceptance speech in the Hogan Stand. But given the vast majority of newspaper, radio and television coverage is respectful to the point of genuflection, it seems likely the squad were made acquainted with Hayes's views prior to their semi-final and All-Ireland final matches.
Under Jack O'Connor, Kerry managed the great trick of playing with the us-against-the-world cussedness of underdogs despite being either outright favourites of joint favourites to win the competition. In the past few weeks under Pat O'Shea, they managed to bring that same jagged mentality onto the field. You challenge these Kerry boys and a kind of glazed look comes over them. It is, in the best sense, a kind of "thickness" that combined with their football skills and the sense of entitlement with which Kerry teams play makes them very hard to beat. And yet Monaghan could have - should have? - defeated them. Dublin left the field knowing they might have beaten Kerry. Easy comparisons have been made between Kerry and the Kilkenny hurlers as peerless in the native games. That is true. But it is also too simple. Hurling is such a lightning and cruel sport that shortcomings are almost inevitably exposed.
In Gaelic football, organisation and fitness and belief can compensate for much. Without downplaying Monaghan's football acumen this summer, those fundamentals are what enabled the Farney County to bring Kerry to the brink of defeat. After that match, manager Séamus McEnaney seemed to be in physical pain as he spoke about how he felt as though "my heart has been removed without an anaesthetic". It was the most succinct summation of what is ritually described as the pain of the championship.
McEnaney had fielded a brilliantly prepared and motivated team and could have been celebrating an historic day. It was true, as he said, that Kerry had the luxury of bringing on three marquee substitutes when the match reached its critical period and the loudspeakers were calling all stewards to their end-of-match positions. Yes, Kerry had the fresh legs and men like Bryan Sheehan to pluck the huge scores from the maelstrom.
But surely the small voices also grew louder inside the heads of the Monaghan men, doubts caused by the fact this was Kerry, the champions, breathing down their necks. Surely the Kerry heritage, as much as anything else, caused the fatal hesitation and tiny lapses in concentration that saw Monaghan switch from the team in command to the team desperately chasing an equalising score? The team that will beat Kerry next summer will have to be radical.
Yet again, Kieran Donaghy brought a wrecking ball to the hopes of another county on All-Ireland final day. Donaghy is wonderful, great for the game and fascinating to watch. And no manager has yet truly tried to work a plan to stop him. If moving Donaghy to the edge of the square was such a leftfield move, why not try an equally avant-garde solution? Why didn't Cork bring back Michael Cussen to mark the towering Tralee man? As it was, Donaghy scored goals with ludicrous ease. How much worse could Cussen - who can match Donaghy for jumps - have fared? What if Cork had played Nicholas Murphy in full forward for the first 10 minutes of the final, just to keep Kerry second guessing? It is, of course, easy to be wise afterwards. Cork were just hit with the same juggernaut as Mayo the previous year.
Whoever wants to beat Kerry next year will need to acknowledge that yes, they are the best team in the land, probably one of the best ever to play the game. And then they must, in the best sense, disrespect Kerry. They are going to have to forget about the potency and allure of those storied green and gold hoops on the shirts. In summer, Kerry play their football with a deep sense of entitlement that all other counties, whether consciously or not, facilitate. They are never arrogant. Kerry behave with a lot of class in victory. But they do possess the arrogance that all champions have. The rest have to face that down and they have to find a cause, a sense of hurt that is deeper than that which will motivate the All-Ireland champions. The team that will beat Kerry will unquestionably have to be very good but they will also have to be brave and brazen. So as Bill the Butcher demanded: Do you have the sand to give them a grand finale?
