Kingdom targeted weak spots - O'Keeffe

GAELIC GAMES CHAMPIONSHIP 2009 NEWS:KERRY HAD identified several weaknesses in the Dublin team ahead of Monday's All-Ireland football quarter-final – almost all of which proved to be entirely accurate. Inexperienced players, playing out of position; a defence that hadn't been truly tested; and an inability to deal with sustained pressure, particularly in front of their Croke Park crowd, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

But, according to Kerry selector Ger O’Keeffe, that doesn’t mean Dublin need a football revolution in order to be competitive at this level. Their problem may actually be more psychological than physical, particularly as their wait for All-Ireland glory goes on even longer.

“We did feel they were playing a few players out of their natural position,” says O’Keeffe, “or at least players who might be athletic enough, but wouldn’t be used to playing in that position all of their lives. Whether that’s an outfield player moved into the defence, or vice versa. I think we found that out in quite a number of situations.

“So we were able to capitalise on that inexperience. Some days that works for you, and some days it doesn’t. In many ways we also got the dream performance ourselves because so many of our players had a good game. I mean the way our forwards played on the day you’d have to wonder if any team could have dealt with them.

“As well as that, we felt a few Dublin players might be tired, such as Darren Magee. He’s had a very long season going back to the club run, and wasn’t the force at midfield that he should have been. But I still think they have the players. Everyone was talking about Bernard Brogan being one of the best footballers in the country before Monday.”

O’Keeffe was captain of the last Kerry team to lose to Dublin in the championship, in the 1977 All-Ireland semi-final, and says that’s one record he’s glad is “still intact”. However, he doesn’t expect it to stay intact indefinitely.

“It’s the old saying that a team doesn’t become bad overnight, and I think that’s relevant to Dublin. But you would have to wonder if Leinster football is as strong as it used to be, say, 10 years ago. Back then you had five or six teams capable of winning, but now it seems you only have Dublin. Kildare are getting stronger again, but I think Dublin more or less had it all to themselves again this year, and that can’t have been a help.

“The bottom line is that they’re not getting as tested as much as they should be any more.

“The other problem Dublin have is there is so much expected of them. And, of course, the longer they go on without winning, the worse it will get. Every team that goes out to play Dublin wants to beat them, and because of that, they usually end up raising their game in an effort to beat them. I suppose that was the case with us again on Monday.

“I actually think it may be a matter now of Dublin playing in Croke Park actually being detrimental to them. I believe if Dublin came down to Killarney to play Kerry they would actually perform a lot better. We actually had a very good record in Croke Park, but for Dublin, going out there expected to win, in front of their own crowd, has almost become a noose around their neck.”

But as Kerry look forward to an All-Ireland semi-final against either Mayo or Meath, O’Keeffe says Dublin can still look forward to some positive football days, if they can somehow turn the negative experience into a positive one.

“I wouldn’t say it’s all doom and gloom for Dublin. I mean just a week ago everyone was saying that Kerry were finished. Things can be turned around. They’ll just have to stick at it, and give it time.

“We knew we had to get to them early on, put them under real pressure, and to knock them off their perch. We knew if we did that we’d ask real questions of them, and that’s exactly what happened. We felt there was a bit of inexperience in that team, and that if we could put them under pressure early on, in front of their home crowd, they might have a hard time dealing with it. If you look at Dublin in the Leinster championship, they really imposed themselves on the opposition early on, and we felt we had to do that to them.

“Having said that we were no way 17 points the better team. We definitely hit a real purple patch early on, went 1-2 in front, and in some ways that’s really what won it for us. At the same time Diarmuid Murphy made one very important save, and another Dublin goal chance came off the crossbar. If those two goals had gone in I think it would have been a very different game.”