Kingdom back where they want to be

ALL-IRELAND SFC FINAL KERRY v CORK:WE'VE ALWAYS said the Kerry football press day is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're going to get. In Páidí Ó Sé's time you might get few a shakes of the head and that was about it, but since Jack O'Connor got the keys to the kingdom there's been a period of glasnost.

The knack, however, is being quick. Kerry footballers don’t mind talking, but they do mind repeating themselves, and once they said their bit in Killarney on Saturday they quickly disappeared back into hiding. Only O’Connor was left for a more thorough discourse on Kerry football during this turbulent summer.

Like how confident he was of beating Dublin: “I was fairly confident we were going to lose.”

On bringing back Mike McCarthy: “I felt for the last three years that Mike Mac should be playing with Kerry.”

And the chances of beating Cork on Sunday? “I think we’re a better team than we were in June. I think we’re a fitter team. There’s a better shape to the team as well.”

O’Connor knows Kerry have crossed a few creaky bridges to get to their sixth All-Ireland final in a row: “Sure we’re not worried about whether it was straightforward or not. We’re there anyway.

“It was a fairly scenic route alright, but in many ways maybe that has stood to us, because it helped us to change the team around a bit, streamline the team a bit. We’d three very tough games in the qualifiers . . but once we got through, and got a smell of Croke Park, I think we found our feet again.”

Some people believe the turning point in Kerry’s season wasn’t so much the first 10 minutes against Dublin, but the last 10 minutes against Antrim. O’Connor recalls: “Against Antrim, remember, we went in at half-time a point down, having played with the wind. And then Antrim kicked the first point of the second half.

“We were facing into the wind, and it was hard to see where we were going to get the scores from. I think that was a fierce test of us there. Different players have done it on different days for us, and Mike McCarthy took us back into the game that day, drove us on.

“I saw something in the team the last quarter of an hour. There looked like they were expressing themselves again, enjoying playing, and the enthusiasm was back. Whereas before that it was a bit of a struggle. I felt we would bring some of that into the Dublin game. But how confident was I of winning?

“I was fairly confident we were going to lose. Never in my wildest dreams did I think we’d cut loose like we did. But I did feel the three games we’d played before that were going to stand to us in Croke Park.”

McCarthy was just one of the Kerry players to cut loose in Croke Park against Dublin, and O’Connor doesn’t play down the significance of his return: “I made a tentative enquiry at the start of the year, and he didn’t think about it seriously. He didn’t think he’d the appetite for it.

“Then I got on to him a couple of days after the Cork game, and he came on board. I think he felt the same hurt as the rest of us did after being beaten so comprehensively by Cork, and felt that if he could help us out at all, he would.

“I’d watched him play club football, and enquired about him. I knew he’d kept himself in good shape. So it wasn’t a risk really, to bring him back. I know he’s defied the odds. A bit like Brian Corcoran. But class is permanent. And Mike Mac is a natural athlete, and didn’t take that much time at all to get back into the groove.

“The other factor is him playing at centre back. He was a bit marooned in the full back line before, a bit like Séamus Moynihan was for years. There was a great footballer inside him somewhere that wasn’t being expressed.

The fact Kerry are playing Cork on Sunday, not Tyrone, has not diminished Kerry’s hunger. Chances are most Kerry players will tell you it’s harder to lose to Cork than it is to Tyrone.

“Yee fellas were saying I was only coming back to play Tyrone. I was coming back because I wanted to try to train the team to win another All-Ireland. It was the media who were saying we needed to get back and beat Tyrone in a final to justify ourselves.

“That’s not the reality. There’s no more rivalry between Kerry and Tyrone than there is between Kerry and Cork. So we’ll be short no motivation going into this final.

“I think to be fair to Cork they knew we just weren’t going to disappear after they beat us in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. But remember they beat us by eight points, so that’s a good bit of ground to make up.

“Certainly, Cork have taken a few things on board this year, tackling ferociously, and getting a lot of bodies back. The key for us is to move the ball very quickly.

“If you dwell on the ball, well these boys have brought tackling to a new level, and physically they’re very strong. That’s the challenge for us. Not taking the ball into the tackle. We’d be sitting ducks with that kind of tactics.

“But against Cork in the replay we feel ourselves we only played for 15 minutes in the second half. We’ve a new full back, a new centre back, a new midfielder in Séamus Scanlon, and a new centre forward in Tadhg Kennelly.

“If you look back at the last 10 minutes of the replay we were almost looking in at the game, mentally making notes of what adjustments we would need to try to strengthen the team, and we set about doing that in the qualifiers. This game is now the opportunity to try it all out . . .”

“You just want the opportunity to get back into the final again. . . once they got back to Croke Park they got their motivation back.”