The first thing any Kerry person has to say about the weekend result is hats off to Armagh and to Kieran McGeeney.
Anyone who watched them in the Ulster final and elsewhere had to know that they are a team that has loads of brilliant kickers and if they brought that level of long-range point-taking to Croke Park, they were going to be a match for anyone. They are in the final and deservedly so. I’ll talk about them more next week.
But first, Kerry. It was obvious to everyone watching that Armagh had more energy and power about them coming towards the end of normal time and into extra-time. But I don’t buy the theory that Kerry weren’t fit enough. These fellas are in the middle of their career and they all have five, six, seven years of intercounty conditioning on them. Fitness isn’t the problem.
I think it’s more to do with how Kerry play. Jack O’Connor is going to have to come up with a more efficient way of moving the ball over the winter. Kerry looked gassed at the end of normal time on Saturday because they had spent the whole day running the ball up the pitch. That’s going to catch up with you eventually.
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It starts with their kickout. Shane Ryan almost always plays it short, except when he’s forced to go long by the opposition pressing up. I presume the Kerry camp would say that possession is nine-tenths of the law and that short kickouts ensure they keep the ball. But at what cost?
The problem with every kickout going short is that your defenders have to do so much work, all the time, to get Kerry up the pitch. There’s no breather, mentally or physically. Short kickouts look great in the stats but think of what it means for the players involved.
If Ryan is taking a kickout, it means the opposition have just had a shot. That means the Kerry backs are after having to chase around trying to get in a tackle to prevent it. And now, straight away, they have to make a run to get a short kickout and start again. Realistically, they have to make multiple runs – three of four of them sprinting to get into space so one of them can get the ball.
The next problem is the fact that some of the Kerry backs aren’t overly big men. Tom O’Sullivan, Paul Murphy, even Jason Foley is no monster. Or let’s say Dara Moynihan, Tony Brosnan or Paudie Clifford drop back to help out and give an option. They’re all hardy boys, they’re all incredibly fit but you can’t coach size.
My point is, when they’re coming out with the ball after a short kickout, none of them are bursting through a tackle. They’d be silly to even try. And so they’re always having to go the long way around to avoid contact. That’s more yards to cover, more energy to spend, all to keep possession – and they probably haven’t even got out past their 45 yet.
This stuff adds up. If you do it 10, 15, 20 times in the first hour of a game, then you’re going to be gasping for air in the closing stages. Foley took Kerry’s first shot in extra-time and immediately went down with cramp after it went wide.
He spent the game either running for short kickouts or getting himself up into the full-forward position when Kerry had the ball. This is one of Kerry’s fittest players, an underage athletics champion. But he was goosed by then. Why?
I know I’m going to sound like an old dinosaur here but you can’t tell me that long kickouts have no place in a proper game plan anymore. There’s a reason armies use long-range missiles – they want to avoid hand-to-hand combat as much as possible.
I get the feeling that Jack doesn’t really trust his midfield over their heads. But he’s going to have to find a less energy-sapping way around that problem for 2025.
Jack would probably be wise too to not be letting it look like he’s blaming the small Kerry crowd for being outnumbered. Every one of us who ever played for Kerry knew the terms and conditions when we signed up. You don’t get big Kerry crowds unless it’s a Munster final or an All-Ireland final – and even a Munster final is a bit of a dead duck at this stage. There’s no point crying about it. It’s part of the gig and it’s always been a given. You deal with it and you move on.
Kerry’s defeat wasn’t down to the crowd. It was down to the fact that Armagh are a serious team, first and foremost. And even then, Kerry just made too many stupid mistakes. Tom O’Sullivan’s miss was unforgivable for a man of his skill and experience. It came down to him having no right leg – that’s not good enough in an All-Ireland semi-final. You have to finish a chance like that. Seven points up and it would have been game over, ball burst.
The other killer mistake was the goal Kerry conceded. Shane Ryan just can’t be making mistakes like that – you have to keep your eye on the ball, in every sense.
The other big problem Kerry have is that there has been very little evolution in the playing pool over the past few years. Killian Spillane was the first man off the bench to try to change the game in the drawn 2019 final against Dublin. Five years on and he was the first man off the bench again on Saturday.
Fifteen of the players who played in the replay against Dublin in 2019 were on the panel against Armagh – and I’d be fairly sure that if Jack Barry and David Moran were still available, they’d be there too.
For all his qualities as a manager, Jack never has much interest in future-proofing the business. He is a good man manager and very good tactically but he tends to make sure he has good tools to work with and then he works them until they’re done. If you were buying a used car off Jack, you could be sure the mileage would be high and the service history might not be hectic.
You see the likes of Dessie Farrell and Pádraic Joyce having the self-confidence to put up with relegation to Division Two and to develop new players while they’re down there. Whereas with Kerry, both Cliffords went away up to Monaghan in early February and both were on the pitch by the start of the second half. Kerry always seem to want to get wins on the board so that nobody starts cribbing at them too early in the year.
But the season is long and winning only really matters at the end of it. The winter is going to feel even longer down here.
