Kerry get to spend the winter celebrating with Sam Maguire while Donegal get to spend the winter harbouring All-Ireland final regrets. A first for neither.
Kerry were hugely impressive last Sunday – from the very start they seized control of the game. Few could have foreseen a sense of inevitability falling over this final after as little as 12 minutes, when Kerry led 0-10 to 0-3, but that is exactly what transpired.
Donegal were so flat, they never laid a hand on Kerry. It was quite staggering to watch in terms of just how passive they were by allowing the opposition to play with oceans of space and time on the ball.
Donegal stringently stuck to their game plan but it was quite clear from early on it wasn’t working and something needed to change. But it never did. That’s what will be most disappointing from a Donegal management’s perspective: they didn’t really act.
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Nothing is left to chance on All-Ireland final day so you can be sure both Jack O’Connor and Jim McGuinness had mapped out a detailed plan for their teams.
There has been a lot of debate over Donegal’s decision to leave the prematch parade early, but I don’t think it had an impact either way on the outcome of the game.
If you want to manipulate those events to be mind games, you can use them in that context. The outcome determines the narrative – if Donegal broke form the parade early, started the game well and proceeded to win the All-Ireland, then the spin would perhaps have been that they’d gained a psychological edge on Kerry by doing so.
Personally, I wouldn’t labour much on what teams do before or after games. All that matters is what they do once the whistle is blown.
Ultimately, nobody kicked a point during the parade.
But Kerry kicked one after 12 seconds of the start – that’s how you influence a game, that’s how you lay down a marker, that’s how you go about winning All-Ireland finals.
At the start of both the first and second half Kerry got scores from training-ground moves, with Gavin White central.
Ciarán Thompson was caught at the start of the game as White put on the burners and accelerated from the centre back position just as the ball was thrown in. The Kerry captain was brilliantly positioned to take the knock-down and immediately Donegal were on the back foot.
Seconds later Dylan Geaney, in his first final, kicked the game’s opening score, a huge confidence boost for him personally and also an ideal start for Kerry.
For Donegal to get caught with that play once was disappointing, but it happened again at the start of the second half. Only on that occasion White sped away from Ciarán Moore to take the knock-down from the throw-in.
It all reminded me of Eoin Murchan’s goal at the start of the second half in the 2019 All-Ireland final replay against Kerry. When a set-play like that comes off, it gives a team such energy and confidence.
It reinforces everything; “We set out with the intention of doing this and we carried it out straight away”. It lends itself to a group gaining momentum and delivering a performance.
Kerry just implemented their game plan to perfection, whereas Donegal huffed and puffed but mostly let the match be played on Kerry’s terms.
Donegal’s game plan needed to have more flexibility. It seems strange there wasn’t a willingness to change. There was instead almost a stubborn insistence that “we’re going to stick to this plan no matter what”.
Paudie Clifford’s 76 possessions with zero turnovers is a remarkable achievement for a player, but it also raises questions of the opposition and how they allowed him so much time and space on the ball.
You must have a Plan A and a Plan B. Several times over the years, particularly against Mayo, we had to change to Plan B when something wasn’t working.
There would have been matchups we’d have looked to switch mid-game or an alteration to our kick-out strategy, all possible eventualities you would have prepared for in advance.
Donegal, for some reason, refused to change. Now, you do need to have conviction in your game plan and confidence it will eventually come right. But at the same time there has to come a point when you accept it isn’t really working.
At half-time Donegal would have had all the stats at their disposal. They were seven points down and the stats would have confirmed what the naked eye could see in terms of who was doing the most damage.
But it seems they chose not to use that information to change what they were doing, which was most surprising.
They did bring on Hugh McFadden at the break but the zonal defensive system remained in place. Nothing really changed.
Late in the second half it appeared Donegal finally decided to push up man-to-man, but by that stage the game was long up, they didn’t have enough time to wrestle it back.
If you build an early lead with these new rules then it is possible to almost control the game from there and Kerry were helped in that regard by Donegal’s approach of sitting in and not putting pressure on the ball.
Crucially, Kerry were hungrier on breaking ball too, their positioning was exceptional on kick-outs and their work rate all over the pitch was superb.
Their defensive system probably went a little bit unnoticed throughout the year but they defended really well last weekend, and all over the pitch their big players performed when they were needed most.
The age profile of this Kerry team is quite good and you’d imagine players such as David Clifford and Seán O’Shea are only approaching the peak of their powers. It should be remembered, too, that Kerry also won the All-Ireland essentially without Diarmuid O’Connor and Tom O’Sullivan.
People had questioned Kerry’s midfield but they must be given huge credit for their part in nullifying three of the best goalkeepers in the game from the quarter-final onwards – Ethan Rafferty, Niall Morgan and Shaun Patton.
The injuries had the unintended consequence of allowing unheralded players such as Seán O’Brien and Mark O’Shea to get a run of games in the middle of the field, and they really grew in confidence over the summer.
It was noticeable to hear several of the Kerry players last Sunday evening talking about how they had felt disrespected this season.
A lot of the criticism was coming from their own, which does hurt. It stings a lot more when it’s your own people writing you off and it certainly does put fire in the belly. They won’t be able to harness that as a motivating factor next year, though, because once again Kerry will be the hunted.
For Donegal, there are still lots of positives for them to take from the season, but just like in 2014, their All-Ireland final display won’t be one of them.
From the moment White collected the ball from the throw-in last Sunday, a window was shoved open to show us how the season was going to end.
It was going to be Kerry’s day.
And Kerry’s year.
