Everything becomes clearer in retrospect. Potential influences, which were dismissed before the match is played, become obvious factors in the outcome. They might even have been identified but simply not accorded the appropriate weight when calculating the balance of possibilities.
Sunday was considered in advance as likely to be a tight contest, very hard to call. As the final turned out, it shouldn’t have been. What got overlooked or overestimated?
Jack O’Connor was managing Kerry for the eighth time in an All-Ireland final. That’s a lot of experience of both the highs and lows of the occasion, although his style is not to go overboard in either direction. A year ago, after losing the All-Ireland semi-final to Armagh, O’Connor sounded a bit tired by it all if kind of dismissive of the suggestion that he might call it a day.
“Are you trying to retire me? Ah sure we don’t know. This management has another year in its contract or whatever so we’ll hopefully see that out.”
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His final year didn’t get off to a promising start, as he struggled to engage people with the concept of refreshing his backroom team after the departure of a few of his selectors. It was probably seen as a short-term arrangement in a manager’s final year.
On Sunday, he appeared to be signalling that he was finished now that the term of his appointment is over, but the closed door didn’t entirely click shut. Maybe the management team convened for this year can be persuaded to take things on a little longer.
Of O’Connor’s previous four All-Ireland wins, two came through the old qualifier system, which meant that defeat had to be processed along the way. It’s a challenging task and in his memoir, Keys to the Kingdom, he wrote vividly about the dynamic of taking a team bruised by losing and restoring it with all the strained interpersonal relationships that entailed.
That year, 2006, was about restoration and reinvention. Kieran Donaghy was deployed as a full forward. The signature win came against Armagh in the quarter-final, a comprehensive reassertion of Kerry after the All-Ireland defeat by the same opponents four years previously.
The same happened in 2009 after another defeat by Cork in Munster and an alarmingly high-wire progress through the qualifiers during which retired All Star corner back Michael McCarthy was brought back as a centre back.
That year’s reset also came in the quarter-final, against Dublin, a realignment that took all of the few seconds required for Colm Cooper to score a goal.
Fast forward to last month and Kerry, stigmatised by a nine-point beating from Meath, arrived to face All-Ireland champions Armagh. In the second half, they ran off the now famous 14-point sequence and stormed to victory.
O’Connor’s blast at former Kerry players-turned-pundits was an unusual departure from his generally measured approach, but presumably it had a purpose. In Sunday’s aftermath he pushed back at the idea that his anger had been in any way contrived.
“There was a lot of steam coming out of my ears. It wasn’t faked or it wasn’t put on. It was authentic because I felt that we were getting a lot of unfair stick and we were trying our butts off and have been from the start of the year.”
That’s now three of his five All-Irelands won in a campaign that featured a fairly traumatic defeat. The adversity appears to bring out the best in him. Already this year, Kerry have had to juggle injuries to important players but the reset and response have been brilliantly executed.
Speaking to Denis Walsh on these pages only a fortnight ago, in advance of the semi-final against Tyrone, former county captain Dara Ó Cinnéide summarised O’Connor’s strengths in these circumstances.
“Jack is exceptionally good in these situations with his back to the well,” said Ó Cinnéide. “He doesn’t get to use that chip often. Kerry are always favourites and usually come out with a good result. But he’s really, really good with his back to the wall.
“His instincts are really strong. You know, ‘Who’ll do well for me this week? Who’ll do right for me here?’. He’d have watched training the following week and he’d almost have known by a fella’s body language who’s genuinely up for it. He has great sensibilities around people like that.”
Sunday’s All-Ireland triumph was a particularly memorable achievement because of how well Kerry played, regardless of Donegal’s tactical missteps which made it easier. The trinity of forwards, the Clifford brothers and Seán O’Shea, were exceptional but there were performances everywhere:
Shane Ryan in goal, Jason Foley plugging away on Michael Murphy, RTÉ man-of-the-match Gavin White tearing up and down the field, Mike Breen’s presence and presence of mind, Joe O’Connor maintaining his push for the Footballer of the Year shortlist – all combining for a form-driven blitz of attacking execution.
Another aspect of his successful years is the now-maintained track record of winning both league and championship in the same season. Should the consistency of that double achievement have made the All-Ireland final outcome more predictable?
As can be seen from the precedent, those league wins in April or, latterly, March didn’t always trigger a clean sweep through the summer. If a spring title is so important, why have there been down years when his teams don’t appear to be chasing the league?
The answer is that, for the most part, Kerry do turn up for the league.
Eleven years ago, during one of his hiatus periods – O’Connor was managing the minors rather than the seniors – he spoke to The Irish Times about the importance of going as far as possible in the league.
“I think it is critical. The bottom line, even as late as 2012 when we were beaten by Mayo in the semi-finals, I really felt we could have done with another match.
“Andy Moran was saying it after the weekend – how big it was to play Dublin in Croke Park and to experience the pitch and the atmosphere. It plays different to any other pitch in the country because of its size and fast surface.”
That desire to familiarise with the stadium also ties in with the belief that their natural game, now enhanced by the Football Review Committee’s new rules, is especially well suited to Croke Park.
After rearing up on Dublin in the 2009 quarter-final, O’Connor explained the turnaround.
“We felt we had worked very, very hard in the last five or six weeks since the Cork game and somewhere along the line we would click,“ he said. ”No better place than here, where we have the space to play our natural game.”
You’d sometimes wonder how does anyone beat them there.
