Darragh Ó Sé: Surefooted Kerry ready to take the rocky road to Dublin

Well, I see the Dubs are back anyway. Con O’Callaghan didn’t get any smaller during his break, nor did he get any weaker and he surely didn’t get any more willing to settle for the easy point when a goal might be on. So that’s it all sorted out then: Dublin back to being the team to beat, the rest of the country back to trying to come up with a way to do it.

In Kerry, we congratulate them on getting back to the top of the pile and we thank them for taking the spotlight onto themselves. When Kerry won the league at a canter, we were worried that they would walk through the summer with everyone saying it was Kerry’s All-Ireland to lose. This way, we can at least make a case for it being Dublin’s to lose. Whether anyone takes us seriously or not is up to them.

There is no doubt that Kerry are heading in the right direction. Even the cutest Kerryman would struggle to yerra his way out of something that obvious. It wasn’t just the fact that they won the league that was impressive. It was the way they did it.

At full-back, Foley looks like a player who has copped on to the fact that the rest of the team need their number three to be secure in himself

When I look at Kerry this year, I see a team that looks a little bit more confident in itself. Players like Tadhg Morley, Jason Foley and Brian Ó Beaglaoich hadn't been playing well. They have been in the team for a number of years but you would never have thought of them as being established. It was more that they were in the team because there wasn't much of a queue lining up behind them to take the jersey off them.

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All three of them look different this year. At full-back, Foley looks like a player who has copped on to the fact that the rest of the team need their number three to be secure in himself. He catches balls now that he used to break away. That might sound like a small thing but it ripples through the team.

Foley always looked to me like somebody who nearly didn’t trust himself on the ball. I always got this sense that he wanted it away from his general area, first and foremost. That’s fine and it’s a good instinct for a defender to have, especially one who does his business close to his own goal. But it’s pass maths stuff too, at the back of it all.

Honours paper

If you’re going to do the honours paper, you need to be taking control of the ball. It isn’t enough just to clear the danger. You need to be making sure that the next phase of possession is one where it’s obvious to everyone where you want to go next. The best players make their teammates better – that goes the same for a full-back distributing turnover ball as it does for a centre-forward trying to lay on a pass in front of goal.

Foley is more confident on the ball after a string of good performances. Ó Beaglaoich was always a good man to carry the ball up the pitch but he tended to get blocked or took the wrong option when he got into a scoring position. Now you can see him being more tuned in. He doesn’t shoot if it’s not on. He finds the best man in the best position. He backs himself when he has to.

That's such an important facet of any attacking wing-back. You need someone who is going to pull the trigger because everyone watching can tell when a player doesn't fancy it. A few years ago, there was a game when Killian Young came striding forward into space and the chance opened up for him to kick it over the bar.

But he waited and he waited and eventually turned back and the crowd jumped on him for it. It suited a left-sided kicker but he just didn’t have the confidence to take it on at the time. I don’t mean to single him out – he was a fine player for Kerry and won Young Footballer of the Year. But on that occasion, he didn’t back himself and it had an effect throughout the team. Ó Beaglaoich needs to keep driving on. No turning back.

Kerry have matured physically as well. The players from all those minor teams are hitting their mid-20s now and size isn’t the issue it was when they had just moved out of their teenage years. It wasn’t that they were lacking height, more that they were short of bulk. Size was catching Kerry. When Tom O’Sullivan was running into Ciarán Kilkenny, he was conceding a couple of stone in weight. But Kerry are bigger men now. That brings its own confidence.

Without fear

Overall, Kerry look to be playing without fear. When you have guys like Foley, Morley and Ó Beaglaoich concentrating on the game in front of them and not looking to the sideline to see if there’s a curly finger coming, that radiates throughout the rest of the team. It means that the players who are actually established can get on with doing what they’re there for.

So when you can have the likes of David Clifford, Paudie Clifford and Seán O'Shea not having to worry about doing the heavy lifting of others, that frees them up to cause the damage they're supposed to.

It also means that newer players are able to find their feet in a team that is a good environment to be starting in. Someone like Dan O’Donoghue has had a much easier ride in the introduction to his Kerry career than Foley or Morley had when it was their turn. It looks like there is less fear around the place, less nervousness about making mistakes.

Jack O'Connor has more or less gone with the same cast as Peter Keane had. In general, he has tweaked a couple of things tactically but I don't really accept that Kerry are playing all that differently than they were under Keane. They're getting a lot of bodies back, it's true. But Kerry did a fair bit of that under Keane too. Winning writes its own story.

Ultimately, Kerry are defending better than they had been. I'm not sure I buy the idea that this is all down to Jack or to Paddy Tally or pretty much anyone outside the players themselves. They are more cohesive now. They're stronger in the tackle. Most of them have been on the scene now for four or five years at least.

The game always comes down to the players. I used to laugh when I heard three different people being credited with putting Kieran Donaghy in at full-forward for Kerry, as if (a) it took a genius to see that a big attack-minded basketball player might be useful on the edge of the square and (b) the Stacks hadn't already done it first. In the end, the man most responsible for making Kieran Donaghy a success was Kieran Donaghy.

Magic wand

It’s the same with the improvement in Kerry’s defence through the league. There hasn’t been any magic wand or anything. They are harder to break down – or at least they have been so far. We’ll see what the coming weeks and months bring.

This is a slightly awkward period for Jack. Nothing has gone wrong yet. I would say when he looks at Tyrone and Mayo and Armagh all getting beaten early, he would have preferred it if at least one or two of them were still happily playing away and didn't know yet that they were in trouble.

Jack can mould his team now to get ready for the Dubs, knowing that when they meet, it will be kitchen sink and all that they're facing

If they fix their problems and come storming through the qualifiers, an All-Ireland quarter-final against any of those three will be no picnic. There's no good time to find out you're not going well, but it's obviously far better to know now than in Croke Park in the middle of a knock-out game.

That's why, all joking aside, Kerry will be happy enough that Dublin annihilated Wexford last week. That's something to really focus the mind. Kerry were always going to have to deal with Dublin somewhere along the way to win the All-Ireland – at least now there's no chance of anyone being surprised by them or finding out when it's way too late that they're back on track. Jack can mould his team now to get ready for the Dubs, knowing that when they meet, it will be kitchen sink and all that they're facing.

Kerry will play Cork this weekend with one eye on Dublin. That’s the long and short of it. Absolutely, they’ll be taking it one game at a time and everything will be done professionally and properly. But at the back of their minds will be prep for the big battle coming down the track against the Dubs.

Finding the right answers to the right questions: Who will mark Con? What will the plan be for Kilkenny? Will it be the tried-and-tested route of Jack Barry on Fenton? What can be done on the Dublin kick-out? All this stuff is far off in the future but you can be sure they're starting the prep work now.

We’ll find out quick enough on Saturday if Cork are as hard done by as they seem to think they are by the whole Ed Sheeran thing. But based on their general form in the league and in last year’s championship, it will be a huge surprise if they’re up to the standard needed to beat Kerry on Saturday.