THE MIDDLE THIRD:WHEN I heard the draw on Monday morning, my reaction was probably the same as most people's in Kerry. Delighted. If anything is going to lift Kerry's season, bringing Tyrone down to Killarney will surely do it. If they're not going to click for this match and especially against this opposition, then an All-Ireland probably wasn't ever really a possibility anyway. A lot of Kerry people would feel that we owe Tyrone. But the truth is, as a county we owe it to ourselves to find a way to beat them. If we do, it will have been a long time coming.
Let’s start at the start. The problem for us in 2003 was Tyrone were pretty new on the scene and while we knew a bit about them, video footage wasn’t as readily accessible as it would be today. Mickey Harte was a new name to us as well because, outside of the club scene, he wouldn’t have been all that well known.
They took us by surprise because, as far as we could see, they were putting up big scores in the Ulster championship and the football they were playing was free-flowing, getting fast ball into good forwards who were putting it over the bar. They scored 17 points against Derry, 1-17 against Antrim and then 1-17 and 0-23 in the drawn final and replay against Down.
The one thing we were definitely not expecting was the level of intensity they brought to their tackling. It didn’t seem to be there to the same extent in the matches that had gone before. Maybe we dismissed the Ulster championship a bit on the back of the scores they were putting up. Even though we’d lost to Armagh in the previous year’s All- Ireland final, we were still probably a small bit guilty of not getting overly worried when it came to playing northern teams. Looking back, I’d have to say we took Tyrone lightly and to some extent we took a win for granted.
It was the last time we ever did that against them. They brought a whole new game with them that day and they set the tone for how football was going to be played for the next 10 years. It wasn’t just work-rate and it wasn’t just tackling. It was a whole new level of tactics and thought and we had no answer for it.
Little things always come back to me about that day. I’d say I probably found it easier to catch ball in that game than in any other in my career.
It was only as the game wore on that I began to realise why – every time I came down with the ball, it was like being set upon by a pack of wolves. I don’t know if I got a clean ball away all day. Sitting here nine years later it seems like the most obvious tactic in the world but back then you just didn’t see that kind of thing happen with such regularity. We weren’t prepared for it.
Everybody got to see how tactically astute Mickey Harte was in the years that followed but we got our lessons taught to us early. He has this way of getting players to give up their usual game for the sake of someone else on the team. Even in that 2003 game, they were using their wing forward Gerard Cavlan as an outlet for their kick-outs. Cavlan was a fine point-scorer but his main job that day against us seemed to be to collect kick-outs and start attacks. He never seemed to have a problem with it.
That’s been a feature of Tyrone all the way down the years. In the 2005 final, I lined up against Seán Cavanagh. As far as I was concerned, the primary job of a midfielder was to contest the ball and link the play. But Tyrone did it differently and that day, Cavanagh’s job was to get attacks going and to hurt the opposition. What I noticed was Cavanagh seemed to be excused the heavy lifting and that Tyrone were happy enough to leave the likes of Enda McGinley and Colin Holmes to get in and do that for him.
It meant an odd kind of game for me. I actually got forward and scored two points – probably half of my total in all the games I played for Kerry – because I had nobody marking me. I was nominally Cavanagh’s man but marking me wasn’t his job. His job was to get on the ball and attack space. He wasn’t going in to contest kick-outs, he was hanging back about 10 yards towards our goal.
Every Tyrone player in and around the middle knew exactly where he was going to be and all day, he was the one they hit as soon as they picked up any ball around the middle. Again, it was just a small example of Harte thinking his way around a game and it paid off.
This has been the big thing about Tyrone under him. They have evolved, not just with every season but almost with every match.
Kerry lost to them in 2003, 2005 and 2008 but we never played the same Tyrone twice. There was something new each time. That first year, they brought tackling to a new level and completely overwhelmed us.
But they knew the element of surprise wasn’t going to be enough the second time so they outthought us.
They made it a chess game and while it produced the best All-Ireland final of the decade, from a Kerry point of view it always felt like we were one move behind.
They always brought something to the table. I remember playing a league match against them above in Omagh one year where we went in three or four points up at half-time. About five minutes into the second half, they upped the pace as though they had flicked a switch.
I often wondered afterwards whether they had something like the equivalent of the 99 call that the Lions had against South Africa in 1974 because for a sustained period of 10 minutes they played like it was the last time any of them were going to see a ball in their lives.
They tore through us and went from being three or four points behind to four or five ahead. From there to the end of the game, they were like a cat with a ball of wool. They slowed the whole thing down and let us have a bit of possession but they did everything they could to hold on to their lead.
They protected their defence, made sure to make the right kind of fouls nowhere close to goal and in the end they won the game.
We never regarded them as a bogey team or anything like that but, after 2005, there was no doubt we were dying to be drawn against them. In 2006 and ’07, we just wanted a shot at them. Whether it be in a final, a semi-final or a qualifier, we wanted the monkey off our back. We’d beaten Cork, we’d beaten Armagh, we’d beaten Dublin, we’d beaten Mayo. They were the one job that was left to be done.
Going into the 2008 final, I thought we had our best chance of beating them. But they out-thought us again that day.
One of the things they did was to target me, not in any physical way but in a tactical way. Maybe they were targeting my age and my waistline more than anything. Kevin Hughes came on and started running away out to all different areas of the pitch and getting me to follow him. He was going where the ball wasn’t and I was following. After a while, I just decided to leave him go do all the running he liked and to play my own game. But this went on for 10 or 15 minutes until the penny dropped and I’d say it cost me a lot of energy at the end of the game.
Harte’s other masterstroke that year was to bring Stephen O’Neill back into the squad for the final. He didn’t start the game but he came on near the end of the first half. Straight away, we reacted by putting Marc Ó Sé on him. It was only afterwards we realised O’Neill wasn’t anywhere near match-fit enough to have a big effect on the game and that we had basically wasted Marc by putting him on him. Meanwhile, Seán Cavanagh scored five points from play.
They’re on the go for 10 seasons at this stage and I don’t think it’s going over the top to say that Tyrone have changed the game.
Everybody thinks about it now and tries to come up with new ways of approaching it. Even the cynical side of it that I was writing about last week, Tyrone were ahead of the posse in that regard too. They always knew who in your team was on a yellow card and how to niggle away at him to see if he’d boil over. They always knew as well who in their own side didn’t have one and who could afford to pick one up if the situation called for it.
If you had to pick out one thing about them through all the years, it’s that they were well-organised and most of the time they tried to take the right option. Even up to last Saturday against Roscommon, you could see as clear as day from the stand which county had three All-Irelands in its recent past and which county had a bunch of good young players who are still learning.
The Tyrone forwards rarely took the silly shot from the sideline or the endline – they were always trying to work it back for someone in a better position. But Roscommon tried it a few times, with predictable results.
A good player isn’t one who can kick the impossible point, it’s one who knows there’s more to be gained by not going for it. Tyrone are very comfortable in their own skin and they know their own quality.
Kerry know it too and Jack O’Connor has a big job on his hands this week getting his players ready for this one. Things are at a low enough ebb after just scraping past Westmeath last Sunday but the one thing I’d be encouraged by is the fact it was very obvious all of the Kerry players were really trying. Their body language was good and the intent was there. If it wasn’t, I’d be a lot more worried for them against Tyrone.
As it is, I’m hoping for one last big stand from them. There are players in that team that have given the Kerry public such great times over the years and if they were able to find it in themselves to add a win over Tyrone to everything they’ve achieved, it would be something to really savour.
Now, I know plenty of the country wouldn’t feel the same way. In fact, it’s probably only recently that I really learned how people see us.
Funny enough, it was while watching a hurling game – the Leinster final between Kilkenny and Galway. We’d been to the Munster football final between Cork and Clare and we headed down the town to grab a couple of pints and watch the hurling.
There were men in the pub from every county. Clare, Limerick, Cork, Tipperary and all around. All the nationalities. What I couldn’t believe was every last one of them was shouting for Galway. And not just shouting for them but taking complete and utter joy in seeing Kilkenny getting a hammering. They were roaring and shouting and yahooing every time Galway scored.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, the realisation dawned. Jesus, this is probably how people in other counties see Kerry in football.
Now, you’re probably reading this and thinking, ‘Good man, Einstein’ but honestly, this would have all passed me by. When you’re playing, you’re in your own little bubble. You’re aware that other counties probably don’t want you to win but you never experience it first-hand. These guys were jumping out of their skin as if they’d supported Galway all their lives.
I found it very odd they wanted to see one of the greatest teams of all time in any sport not just beaten but absolutely buried. It would be more my thinking that, not unlike Tiger Woods, you’d want to see the best win as much as the best can manage.
Maybe people want to see Kerry beaten out the gate on Saturday, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that neither Kerry nor Tyrone are at the very top of the tree anymore gives this game a different context and people will just be curious to see how it goes.
All I know is that come five o’clock on Saturday, I wouldn’t be anywhere else in the world.
