In Kerry this week, it feels a bit unusual to be building up to an All-Ireland final. I think it's because nobody really expected this, so people have been slow to really embrace the whole thing. It might sound a bit strange but I do think that people are nearly holding fire for now, as if they're not convinced just yet that this Kerry team is any good.
It’s very unfair, when you think about it. They’re in the final and they got there the hard way. There were other years when Kerry teams got to the final without having to get past too many world-beaters, but the Kerry public had made up their mind about them because they’d won All-Irelands before. I think people are still hedging their bets on this one until they win one of their own.
Talk about hard to please. I went to have a coffee in a hotel in Tralee the other day and I nodded at the man sitting reading the paper across from me as I sat down. It was Kieran Donaghy’s father-in-law. I wasn’t sitting long before two farmers from Dingle arrived in.
“Tea or coffee, lads?” asked the barman.
“Two Jameson, two pints of Guinness,” said our heroes.
Full volume too. I put my head down in case they’d hit me for tickets. They saw me anyway.
“Well Darragh, what about the final?”
Big mistake
So we jawed away, talking it out this way and that. And after a minute or two, one of them slapped his final verdict down on the table.
“I’ll tell you this much,” he said. “We’ll win no All-Ireland as long as Donaghy is playing at full-forward!”
You'd wonder what people want sometimes. Only for Kieran Donaghy, there'd be no final to talk about. Kerry's season was about to be over before he came off the bench in the drawn game against Mayo and we all know what he did in the replay. And apparently we will win no All-Ireland with him at full forward. I did my best not to catch the father-in-law's eye.
My feeling on Sunday is that Kerry will win by four or five points. I think they have more of a scoring threat and won't get caught cold and give away goals like Dublin did. The big mistake people make about the Dublin-Donegal semi-final is that it came down to Diarmuid Connolly and Eoghan O'Gara missing goal chances. All those misses did was keep Donegal in the game. It was giving away the goals that lost Dublin the match.
Sunday is fascinating in so many ways. Even the fact that it’s a double header with both counties in the minor and senior games is going to make it different to other All-Ireland finals. Donegal feed off their support so much, they jump on the wings of it and get flying because of it.
Think of every time Donegal make a turnover and start breaking down towards the other end, and the roar that goes up from all around the stadium. That has an effect on players, no question. I’m not saying that roar will be any less if Donegal get beaten in the minor match. But you can see it being that few degrees higher from the start if they’ve won it.
Defending well against them will be the secret to winning. Stop them scoring goals and it’s hard to see how they can build up a total that Kerry won’t be able to beat. If Dublin had kept a clean sheet against them – and remember, each of the three goals were preventable – then it wouldn’t have mattered how many wides Bernard Brogan and Michael Darragh MacAuley kicked near the end. They wouldn’t have been as rushed and Donegal would have had to chase the game, giving them more space.
Defending well means cutting off the space. It means not giving them the half of the pitch to run into. How many Donegal players this summer have been scoring big points from distance? Michael Murphy, obviously. Odhrán MacNiallais and Rory Kavanagh at a push. Patrick McBrearty a few times when he has come in off the bench after the game has loosened out.
But there aren’t that many of them in total. They do a lot of their shooting from in front of the posts at the end of breakout moves after they’ve turned over the ball. Kerry need to make them take shots from angles and from distance. Make them do things they don’t want to do, the same as they do to other teams.
The tactical game here is everything. I sat down the other day and tried to work out how both managers would second-guess each other. What’s your first job if you’re Eamonn Fitzmaurice? It’s working out what to do with Michael Murphy. Donegal aren’t a one-man team but they have one man who stands out above all others. Stop Michael Murphy influencing the game and you’ve won half the battle.
So what do Kerry do? For Murphy, you need to have Plan A and Plan B. At least. I would guess that Plan A will be to stick Aidan O’Mahony on him. Stick to him wherever he goes. Follow him out the field and in front of goal. Harass him, annoy him, give him no peace. And for Plan B, have Peter Crowley ready to step in and do the same.
Spoil his day
Donegal will go right for the jugular. Remember how they used Murphy at the start of the 2012 final? All year he’d spent his time out around the middle but for the first 10 minutes of the final he went in on the edge of the square. He scored a goal, he caused chaos. Donegal won the game in that period.
Kerry have to stop him. Murphy makes decision on the pitch all by himself. He decides where to go and when the game needs him to influence it. O’Mahony has to get in his way, spoil his day for him. He will crack into him, make it a physical battle from the very first minute. Now, Murphy has no problem with that – he’s as physical a player as there is in the game. But you have to do it. And O’Mahony will love that kind of role.
On the other side, what’s the big issue to work out if you’re Jim McGuinness? It’s Kerry’s inside forward line, Donaghy and James O’Donoghue. I met Neil McGee at the Ulster All-Stars a couple of weeks ago and I came away thinking that he looked half the size in a tuxedo that he does in a Donegal jersey. But he will give them a bellyful of it on Sunday. McGee is a players’ player, a man who loves the battle. You can see it in him.
If anyone believes Kerry are going to be simple enough to think that high ball after high ball into Donaghy is the way to go on Sunday, they haven’t been watching Fitzmaurice. Or Donegal for that matter.
Those high balls will be broken down by one of the McGees and the breaks will be cleared by whatever Donegal player is waiting underneath. That won’t be Kerry’s main tactic. It might get them out of jail and will always be there to be used if the time is right, but Kerry have to create the conditions for it first.
The team that best created those conditions against Donegal this year was Armagh. That game has kind of been wiped from people’s memory now because Donegal went out and took Dublin to the cleaners, but I think it’s extremely relevant this weekend.
Armagh were able to create scoring chances against Donegal because they moved the ball quickly from defence to attack. They turned the ball over and used fast, accurate kick-passing. They scored 1-11 and kicked 10 wides, seven of them in the first half. It was only the conditions and some inexperience that stopped them building a bigger score and leaving Donegal with too much to do in the finish.
That quick kick-passing is the key. Donegal’s system only works because they commit men to attack when they have the ball. When they go, they really go. That’s why you have players such as Frank McGlynn, Anthony Thompson and Karl Lacey popping up in front of goal.
But if they’re up there, it gives you a chance to hit them back at the other end of the pitch. The thing is, pace is the key. You can’t be hand-passing around the middle of the pitch. You can’t be taking a solo and looking around to survey your options. If you do that, you’re better off trying to work a free because the chance is gone. It has to be two kicks and in, right into the full-forward line.
Kerry must draw Donegal out. In the early stages of the game, I would expect them to try to replicate a bit of what Dublin did at the start of the semi-final. They’ll try for long-range points, from distance and from the wings.
But they won’t push as many defenders up into the Donegal half as Dublin did for two reasons – one, they can’t give away goals and, two, getting turnovers can be the key to them feeding their full-forward line quickly.
The whole thing will ebb and flow. I look at this final as one of those where they end up giving the man of the match to whatever fella gets a goal. It could be the sort of game where nobody really stands out because it’s such a struggle.
I was lucky enough to play in a couple of finals where everything was done and dusted with 20 minutes to go. I can’t see this being one of them.
No down time
That’s what the two managers have to prepare the players for, outside their specific jobs, outside what their role is in Plan A, Plan B, Plan Whatever. It’s preparing them for this being one of those games where for 70 minutes, you are going to have to put up or shut up. There will be no down time, there will be no breather. It won’t be over until they play
The Rose of Tralee
or
The Hills of Donegal
.
As I say, I’m going with Kerry by four or five points. I expect them to be disciplined, not to concede goals, to learn their lessons from the semi-final and give away no penalties. Break it down to brass tacks and I think they will find a way to shut Murphy out of the game.
If they do that, I’m confident they can win. And sure then everyone in Kerry will say they knew it all along.
