GAELIC GAMES: IT'S HARD to set records in Kerry football but by qualifying for a sixth successive All-Ireland final, the current team has done just that. It equals the achievement of Wexford and Dublin in past decades.
The nature of the journey in yesterday’s GAA All-Ireland semi-final was distinctly no-frills, as drizzling rain prevented the explosive patterns of the quarter-final blitzing of Dublin and a truculent Meath although never really in contention, made it hard for the favourites.
Kerry manager Jack O’Connor was at pains to emphasise his team’s heads hadn’t been turned by the expectations triggered by the quarter-final and the assumption that after an unimpressive provincial and qualifier campaign, a corner had just been turned but torn around at speed.
“I felt this game panned out the way I thought it would. I thought it was going to be a dogfight. I thought it was going to be tough. And I thought Meath were going to give a good account of themselves. Especially with the rain, there was no easy ball being won out there, the forwards in particular.
“And I suppose that is the way you’d want a semi-final to pan out. You don’t want a loose, open game where there’s no physicality, or no difficult aspects.”
Whereas there may have been difficult aspects they weren’t immediately obvious to spectators in the crowd of 50,770.
Goals early in each half effectively settled the result, the first a penalty from captain Darran O’Sullivan and the second from Tommy Walsh, who having been dropped, surged back into form as a replacement to score 1-2 and re-state his credentials for the final, against neighbours Cork.
This will be a re-run of the final two years ago. Then Cork imploded on the day disintegrating to a 10-point defeat. But their form this year and the comprehensive dismissal of champions Tyrone eight days ago have made the Munster champions narrow favourites.
If the football was short of talking points the state of the pitch inspired livelier discussion. A few showers of drizzle had made the surface slippery and the bounce of the ball was also causing problems.
O’Connor reckoned it had been the same for both teams and acknowledged the difficulties of maintaining a surface that can tolerate “the amount of traffic that’s out there”.
Meath manager Eamonn O’Brien was frustrated at the impact on his side but didn’t believe it material to the result.
“Particularly in the first half we tried to hit angled ball in but before we knew where it went it was gone out wide or towards the sideline because it was skidding off the ground. That was the same for Kerry as it was for us. I think Kerry’s style of play dealt better with it than ours.”
Stadium director Peter McKenna said the surface would be worked on over the next week to improve performance for next weekend’s hurling final.
“You could say the traditional six-stud boot would be a better boot to wear,” he said of the slipping on both sides. “I’ve talked to some of the players after the match and any of them who had been wearing six-stud boots had no issues; fellas wearing moulded boots or blades certainly did. But we’d like to think the surface wouldn’t be boot-dependent so we have something to consider during the week.
“We can do a lot of spiking, which breaks it up and gives it a bit more traction. I wouldn’t be inclined to scarify the surface and thin out the grass, although it is very lush because it would change the character of the pitch.”
Explaining that the surface, newly laid after the recent U2 concerts, was different to the old one, he said light rain caused greater problems than downpours.
“A good belt of rain where the surface is sodden and you’re not going to have an issue with slipping. This is a soil-based surface and you don’t have the plastic stabiliser in it so it’s more akin to a traditional, natural pitch. What you get with light rain or squally rain like we had today is that it sits on top of the grass and when the grass is lush like it is there you’ll get a greasy interface.”
