Darragh Ó Sé: Kerry’s greater scope for improvement makes them favourites to beat Galway

I played two All-Ireland finals against Galway, both within a fortnight of each other. We drew with them in September 2000 and played the replay in October. When I think of those games, I think of two team meetings.

The first one was on the Saturday night before the drawn game. We were staying in the Tara Towers Hotel in Booterstown and after we had our meal, we were splitting up – there was a meeting for the backs in one room and a meeting for the forwards in another. Myself and Donal Daly were the hardest-working men in showbusiness – the midfielders had to go to both.

Páidí Ó Sé was over us and one of his selectors at the time was Eamonn Walsh, whose father Eddie won five All-Irelands with Kerry back in the 1930s and ‘40s.

Just as we were heading off to these meetings, Eamonn was flicking through one of the newspapers that was lying around. It was a big novelty for Kerry people to be able to get the Sunday papers on a Saturday night so Eamonn was reading away about the match.

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“Colm O’Rourke says we’ll win anyway,” he said, to nobody in particular.

Páidí erupted!

“How many All-Ireland medals has Colm O’Rourke?” he said.

“I don’t know,” said Eamonn. “Two?”

“And how many medals has your father?” said Páidí, his temperature rising now.

“Five.”

“Well shut the f**k up so about Colm f**king O’Rourke! I don’t want to hear what he or any other f**king man says about this game!!”

Every player scattered into corners, trying to hold in the laughing. Poor Eamonn had just plucked the wrong string on Páidí's guitar at the wrong time and he got both barrels for it.

Analysis these days is so sophisticated and advanced that everybody ends up gaming these matches out in similar fashion

The night before the replay, I was in the backs’ meeting and our goalkeeper Declan O’Keeffe was setting out his stall. He was talking about Noel Kennelly playing wing forward on Declan Meehan and how we would have this major height advantage to go after. There was nothing convoluted about it – we should go after him.

“I’ll just pike one or two big ones down on top of them early and Noel can exposé Meehan with his height advantage,” he said.

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And of course, as everyone knows, it only took about five minutes of the replay for Declan Meehan to score one of the greatest goals in the history of All-Ireland finals, with poor Noel chasing along in his wake.

We won the game in the end anyway and a week or two later, when the time was right, I told Páidí the story just to get a reaction out of him. We were in the car together and I told him about Declan’s big plan that he had hatched in the backs’ meeting the night before the game. Poor Páidí nearly drove into the ditch.

“You’re codding me,” he said. “Who told that man he was allowed to think about those things?”

You could see the horror on his face. He thought he was running the whole show here but little did he know that fellas were coming up with schemes and plans that were way above their pay grade. He stewed on it for months afterwards. The upshot was he never allowed those private backs’ and forwards’ meetings ever again.

It wouldn’t happen now, obviously enough. Everything is so much more measured – and we thought we were cutting edge back then. Kerry and Galway meet on Sunday in a game that most people seem to have more or less the same idea of. Analysis these days is so sophisticated and advanced that everybody ends up gaming these matches out in similar fashion.

Here’s the scenario I hear most often when people talk about how it will go. Galway will probably sit in for most of the first half and try to make sure that above all else, they don’t give away an early goal. There will probably be a flurry coming up to the break and only a couple of points at most between the teams going in at half-time.

The game will open up from about 55 minutes onwards and after that, it will be a matter of who can get their match-winners on the ball more often. Kerry will just about come through it in the end, probably by about two or three points.

I wouldn’t argue with an awful lot of that. I make Kerry favourites for a couple of reasons.

One, most of them have played in two All-Ireland finals already – the draw and replay in 2019. David Moran, Stephen O’Brien and Paul Geaney have all played in a winning All-Ireland final team. So has Paul Murphy, who will be coming in if Gavin White doesn’t make it. Murphy was man of the match in the 2014 final. The occasion won’t take a pick out of him.

This is virgin territory for Galway. It might affect them and it might not. But it’s a variable they have to plan for, whereas Kerry are more used to it. I’ve seen players do stupid things in All-Ireland finals because the occasion triggered something in them that wouldn’t normally be the case.

I’ve played in finals where guys tried to win All Stars or go for miracle scores because they got carried away with the crowd or the moment. It happens. You can be as professional as you like but it happens. I see less potential for that with Kerry than with Galway.

The other reason I veer towards Kerry is that they have beaten the teams that have been the standard-bearers over the last few seasons. Dublin and Mayo in 2022 aren’t what they were in 2017 but they have been the dominant teams in the country for a long time and Kerry came through battles against both of them.

I’d say that formline is a bit stronger than Galway’s – I know they beat Mayo in Connacht but when it comes down to it in knock-out football, they have beaten Armagh on penalties and a Derry team that wasn’t set-up to succeed in Croke Park. I’m not belittling either of them, I just think that Kerry have jumped slightly higher hurdles on the way to the final.

Also, they have plenty of room for improvement. Neither O’Brien nor Geaney played well in the semi-final. These are two of Kerry’s most experienced players and they have been match-winners in the past. They know what it takes. If they were rookies, you’d worry about them going into a final off the back of a bad day at the office. But because they know the terrain, I see it as more likely that they will come out all guns blazing and make up for the semi-final.

The best performance by the Kerry subs this year was against Cork – but those subs were David Moran, Paul Geaney and Paul Murphy. Presuming Murphy comes in for White, none of those options are available

Now. Galway have a bit of that going on as well. As a Kerryman, I would be worried that Shane Walsh hasn’t cut loose yet. He has kicked his frees and he has knitted the play together in various games. But the Shane Walsh who gets the crowds on their feet, the player who is one of the most exciting talents in the game? We haven’t seen him yet.

That would concern me if I was in the Kerry camp. You want the other crowd coming in with no room left to improve. What you don’t want is their best player coming with people doubting him and with him ready to show the world what they’ve been missing. If Walsh catches fire, it’s definitely game on.

My other worry for Kerry is that the bench hasn’t brought very much to the table in recent games. The best performance by the Kerry subs this year was against Cork – but those subs were David Moran, Paul Geaney and Paul Murphy. Presuming Murphy comes in for White, none of those options are available.

So if this final gets stuck in a bit of a stalemate with 15 minutes to go, my fear for Kerry would be that their best options for getting out of it will already be on the field. Dara Moynihan kicked a good score against Dublin and gets through a lot of good work but neither of the Spillanes have hit their stride and Tony Brosnan has been in and out, so I don’t see an X-factor among the Kerry substitutes.

Galway won’t panic. They will be quite happy with a low-scoring first half. They won’t be rushing to make a game of it. Kerry will try and push up in those early exchanges but they won’t be going gung-ho either. The one thing we’ve seen from Kerry this year is that they’re far more intent on getting their defensive shape right than they have been in a long time.

If Galway drop 14 men deep, I can’t see Kerry sending 13 men up to try and punch holes. They can’t risk a turnover high up the pitch with only light cover at the back. Cormac Costello’s goal changed the Dublin game but while everybody focused on the turnover that led to it, the big lesson Kerry would have taken from it was how outnumbered they were.

As soon as the ball spilt, Dublin burst forward and when Kerry couldn’t manage the good foul to slow them down, suddenly it was six Dubs against five Kerry players with Dublin in possession on the halfway line. In the blink of an eye, all the good defensive structure that they’ve had since Paddy Tally came in disappeared.

Costello’s finish was brilliant and the turnover was very sloppy – but the killer for Kerry was that the thing they’ve worked on the most this season wasn’t there when it was needed. They didn’t have that extra man in position to prevent the goal chance. Considering they were five points up at the time, it was the one mistake they couldn’t afford to make.

When all comes to all, I expect Kerry to tighten up on those few areas where they have scope for improvement. The reality is that even with some of their most experienced players underperforming and with their bench being underwhelming and with them coughing up the sort of goal they’ve made it their business all year not to cough up – even with all that, they still beat a very good Dublin team.

Tidy all that up and it should be Kerry’s All-Ireland.