It must be pretty tiring to be a Kerry footballer. With 41 minutes gone in their All-Ireland-quarter-final against Armagh, their critics had them pegged. They just didn’t have the quality. They were being brought face-to-face with their own limitations.
The 15 minutes that followed have changed the dynamic of this championship entirely. At the start of that second half, it seemed Armagh were going to grind their way to another All-Ireland. They were five up on Kerry and would surely close it out from there. They might struggle in the semi-final, they may have to beat Donegal after a replay. Everything would be hard-fought, but they looked, at that moment, like the best bet.
Now, all of a sudden, it’s Kerry’s to lose. In fact, it’s fundamental to the sport that Kerry win this All-Ireland. The enhancements have released the skilful players from invisible shackles; they have been crafted specifically to allow teams like Kerry to win. And there’s no other team like Kerry, let’s face it.
Kerry won the centenary final. They won the millennium final. And in its own way, this championship now belongs in that particular pantheon – Kerry must now also win the Gaelic Football Liberation Day Final (too on the nose?) This is all arrant nonsense of course, but that’s what comes with the territory when you’re a Kerry footballer.
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Those 14 unanswered points represented a paradigm shift in how people look at this team, but it’s interesting that their dominance was not necessarily multifactorial. They marmalised the Armagh kick-out and it all flowed from there. When Armagh got their hands on possession, they kicked the thing wide. Kerry were able to win two kick-outs of their own in that time and off they went. But the building block was the Armagh kick-out.
Looking back now, you could say that Ethan Rafferty should have started losing his kick-outs much farther away from his own goal than he did. Someone suggested to me that he could even have kicked the ball long and deliberately out over the sideline and let Armagh defend the lineball from there. That sounds like an interesting idea now, having seen the end result, but it would have been fairly humiliating for Rafferty in the moment.
There is a suggestion that his ego may have been what undid him. The manifesting mindset means you have to back yourself . . . but maybe that mindset does not allow you to abandon the plan and start failing in unglamorous ways that are nevertheless far less damaging to your team. Maybe it’s to Rafferty’s credit that he never stopped trying to force it. It hurt him against the Kingdom, but he may well reap the benefit of that mental doggedness down the line.
You can surely expect Tyrone to be better and there’s an excellent chance Kerry won’t be as good again
If it was the central plank of Kerry’s victory, you also can’t ignore the fact that they had one of those spells where they literally couldn’t miss. For every shot to be on the money during a half-hour stretch of football is a rare occurrence. But Armagh’s kick-out malfunction was no everyday thing either. Kerry would do well to acknowledge all of these factors.
This Saturday they are playing a Tyrone team that beat Dublin playing badly. That is the hardest square to circle in all this. Dublin were so poor and converted so few of their chances that it’s difficult to get a read on Tyrone. Their two most dangerous forwards, Darren McCurry and Darragh Canavan, could hardly play as badly again as they did against Dublin. And yet here they are, in an All-Ireland semi-final.
The gap between the respective quarter-final performances could hardly be bigger. You can surely expect Tyrone to be better and there’s an excellent chance Kerry won’t be as good again.
Donegal’s third-quarter purple patch against Monaghan was not quite as explosive as Kerry’s against Armagh. It came against more modest opposition, too. But it was a reminder that for all that they have played in fits and starts this year, their best is pretty bloody impressive.
Meath might do well to look at what happened to the Dublin hurlers last Saturday before dedicating themselves to the gung-ho, man-for-man approach that has served them so well this season. They have beaten enough top-tier teams to be granted maximum respect and they may well be given that by Donegal.
[ How Kerry dismantled Armagh in just 15 minutes of ruthless dominanceOpens in new window ]
My concern is that being afforded such respect might not work out too well for them. If they can avoid conceding goals to a Donegal team that hasn’t been overly bothered about scoring them, Meath’s two-point threat may be enough to keep them in it. But there are very few questions left with this Donegal team.
Looked at dispassionately, Donegal are still a safer bet than this Kerry team. There are fewer doubts about them than there are about Kerry, for all the brilliance of that second half against Armagh. Kerry are cock-a-hoop, but their own players, and particularly their manager, are acutely aware of the slings and arrows of public opinion.
They’re riding high right now, but they know they’re never too far from a fall. Fifteen minutes was enough to upturn everything about their season two Sundays ago. Another 15-minute spell this weekend could see another change, and maybe not for the better.
