From deep in their very souls, Kerry found passage to the All-Ireland final.
It took a boomeranging free from Seán O’Shea to get them there, kicked from 55 metres into the wind with the clock long turned red.
They ended 13 years of torment at Dublin’s hands and though Jack O’Connor tried to kid on afterwards that it wouldn’t mean much if they didn’t win the final, he was fooling nobody. It meant plenty when it happened.
They had a point to spare when the music stopped, seeing it out by 1-14 to 1-13. For a team that was six points up and cruising five minutes after half-time, that probably counts as a careless day’s work.
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Dublin were allowed back into a game that ought to have been out of their reach. A missed first-half penalty by O’Shea, a couple of badly-timed wides by David Clifford, a display of epochal defiance from James McCarthy – it all added up. Somehow, we were headed to extra-time.
But O’Shea said different. His kick was an ornament, the kind of score that keeps light in old men’s eyes.
[ Kerry tie up the loose ends of a decade of torment at the hands of DublinOpens in new window ]
The wind had been churning the air down at the Hill 16 end all day, turning some of the best forwards in the game into Lotto players. Jack O’Connor turned away to talk to his selectors as O’Shea lined it up, looking to get Kerry’s ducks in a row for extra-time. Dessie Farrell reckoned it probably wasn’t the worst foul in the world to give away and did the same.
Not so fast, lads. O’Shea started his kick so far outside the right-hand post that some Dubs on the Hill started to celebrate midway through its flight. But it curled, right to left, like a golfer’s draw.
Dublin goalie Evan Comerford stood underneath it shaking the post, roiling in mania, as if pleading with the upright fold down on itself and swat the ball away. It seemed only marginally less unlikely than O’Shea scoring from where he was.
“Personally from the line, I didn’t think it was kickable to be honest with you,” said O’Connor afterwards. “Straight up, I didn’t think a man could get the distance. Because Seánie O’Shea had emptied the tank. That was in the 76th minute and he had given a ferocious performance up to then.
“To have the resilience and the strength and, more importantly, the technique to kick that with the instep and just get it in on the right hand post into the Hill. That has to be one of the best pressure kicks that I’ve seen here in Croke Park for a long, long time.
“I don’t think the penalty affected him, because he had a great start in that game. He had kicked 1-2 when he missed the penalty. Seánie is a resilient character so that was never going to affect him.”
This was a weird kind of classic. You couldn’t really call it a ding-dong battle – there was far too much distance between the ding and the dong for that.
Kerry were comfortably the better team in the first half, rattling through the Dubs at will and with David Clifford at his unplayable best. He had five points on the board by half-time, including three from play and one of the best marks you’ll ever see.
Had O’Shea iced his penalty on 25 minutes with Kerry already four up, they’d surely have been out the gap. But he prodded a wan shot straight at Comerford and then followed up with an accidental boot to the Dublin goalkeeper’s head.
It kept Dublin within range, so that when Cormac Costello speared home a brilliant goal 10 minutes into the second half, Farrell’s side were suddenly alive.
Ciarán Kilkenny came into it, finding three points from a nothing display. Brian Fenton escaped the clutches of Jack Barry for just long enough to throw into the pot as well. McCarthy roared forward for a point from the 2010s and then rose to win the kick-out to set up the next one as well. Kerry couldn’t get up the pitch.
But when they absolutely had to, Clifford won possession and drew a free, albeit one 55 metres from goal. It shouldn’t have been a chance – of the 12 wides kicked across the afternoon, eight were into the Hill 16 goal. And all of them were closer in than the kick facing Seán O’Shea. Didn’t matter.
Kerry in the final, then. Galway waiting. Anyone picking a winner with confidence is dealing in spoof.
