Lethargic Kingdom leave plenty in the tank

Kerry 0-16 Tipperary 0-10:AS JACK O'Connor stood in the centre of the pitch afterwards with his players circled around him, the set of his shoulders and jab of his finger told of a crankiness that wasn't altogether surprising.

Kerry’s Munster championship opener was a sleepwalk, a careless afternoon’s work from a side who turned up in the full and faithful knowledge that there would be other afternoons to come.

They won by six points but allowed Tipperary enough latitude to rouse the home crowd as the stadium began to fill up for the hurling. It was sloppy stuff at times and it put their manager in waspish form afterwards.

Does it matter?

Very probably it doesn’t.

Even as O’Connor was giving his dressing down, Tomás Ó Sé – one of the better performers in a Kerry jersey all day – was half-turned and half-listening to his young son Micheál.

Ó Sé had the bearing of a man who knows there’s never a lot to be getting exercised about in early June. He’s been at this a while.

Nobody pretended Kerry were happy with much beyond the result here. Tipperary were sticky in places, skilful in others and had enough about them to avoid the massacre we all assumed we were turning up to see. You only have to look at the list of Kerry’s best performers to get a flavour of how O’Connor’s side treated the game.

Daniel Bohan was solid at full-back and Kieran Donaghy did everything to the letter when he came off the bench – both players had something to prove to their manager and it showed.

Of the established names, only Ó Sé and Darran O’Sullivan moved the needle at all.

“It’s fairly obvious that it wasn’t as fluent a performance as we’d have been hoping for,” said O’Connor. “All credit to Tipp, they were very dogged and spirited. They showed good heart. They were in the game right until the end.

“Fair dues to them. I just thought we turned over a lot of ball today. We were sloppy in possession. We tried to be too elaborate at times. I just felt we were a yard off the pace that we needed to be at.”

For Tipp, there was plenty to carry forward into the qualifiers. They played most of the football in the opening 20 minutes, blocking and harrying in defence and kicking some fine scores in attack.

Centre forward Peter Acheson finished off a lovely move to put them 0-3 to 0-1 up after seven minutes and when corner-forward Philip Austin fisted a neat point on 22 minutes, it left the sides level at 0-4 apiece.

Although Kerry reeled off the next five points in a row – and could well have seen at least one green flag as both Darran O’Sullivan and Kieran O’Leary pointed obvious goal opportunities – it was Tipp who finished the half on the front foot.

An Alan Maloney free from all of 48 metres into the wind brought them to within three points at the break, 0-9 to 0-6. They even had the better of the early exchanges in the second half, with scores from Maloney and Hugh Coghlan closing the gap to just a point.

But as soon as O’Connor tossed Donaghy onto the pitch in the 45th minute in a obvious show of displeasure at how close the game was becoming, Tipp’s race was as good as run.

If Donaghy was working his way out of the doghouse after his off-piste sortie to the Champions League final – and, for what it’s worth, the sheer gruffness of his manager’s dismissal of a question about it afterwards suggests that he was – he made plenty of ground here. He ran, he foraged, he tackled. He did everything short of offer to tidy his room and leave out the bins.

His efforts went a long way to turning the game back in Kerry’s direction. Bryan Sheehan converted a couple of frees, Declan O’Sullivan followed with a point of his own and substitute James O’Donoghue did the same. Meanwhile, Tipperary only registered a single point in the closing 30 minutes. They toiled away but kicked some bad wides and visibly tired in the heat near the end.

“The reality,” said Tipperary manager Peter Creedon afterwards, “is that there is no real fear of Kerry in the Tipp dressing room, no matter what people say. We respect their ability and they have players of greater ability than we have but we have no fear of Kerry whatsoever. We’ll keep plugging away and if we get a couple of wins in the qualifiers, it will be good for next season.”

For Kerry, it’s three weeks until Cork in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. They won’t be this slapdash mood that day. Not a hope.

KERRY: B Kealy; S Enright, D Bohan, K Young; T Ó Sé (0-1), E Brosnan, P Crowley; A Maher (0-1), B Sheehan (0-6, five frees); P Galvin, Darran O’Sullivan (0-1), K O’Leary (0-1); C Cooper (0-4, two frees), Declan O’Sullivan (0-1), P Curtin. Subs: K Donaghy for Galvin (46 mins), B Maguire for Young (47 mins0, J O’Donoghue (0-1) for O’Leary (50 mins), BJ Keane for Curtin (50 mins), A O’Mahony for Brosnan (64 mins). Yellow cards: Maher, Brosnan, Donaghy.

TIPPERARY: P Fitzgerald; A Morrissey, P Codd, C McDonald; B Fox, R Costigan, A Campbell; G Hannigan, H Coghlan (0-1); L Egan, P Acheson (0-2), S Scully; A Maloney (0-4, three frees), M Quinlivan (0-2, both frees), P Austin (0-1). Subs: D Leahy for Costigan (26 mins), R Ryan for Scully (48 mins), B O’Brien for Quinlivan (64 mins), A Matassa for Hannigan (72 mins). Yellow cards: Hannigan, Egan, Quinlivan, McDonald, Leahy.

Referee: Marty Duffy (Sligo).

Att: 5,587

‘WE WERE RUSTY BUT IT WAS A GOOD WORKOUT’

JACK O’CONNOR wasn’t in the form for a leisurely chat about his day. “Make it quick lads,” he said. “I’m on the bus.”

A question about why Kieran Donaghy didn’t start the game was brushed off with a brisk: “Ah sure look, we won’t go picking the team here after it being picked already. We’ll leave that one off now.”

It’s likely the bus he mentioned wasn’t at its most boisterous on the way back down the road, so.

“The last couple of years we’ve been beating Tipperary by 11 or 12 points and today they halved that to six,” the Kerry manager said. “So fair dues to them. Their management have obviously done great work with them. They put it up to us. We weren’t at our best today. We were a bit off it.

“I think the game will bring us on, it’s six weeks since we played our last game. We were rusty. But it was a good workout and we’re looking forward now to the Cork game.”

Tipperary manager Peter Creedon was torn between pride at his players’ doughty performance and frustration at the fact that they faded out of it over the closing 20 minutes.

His team came here with the country assuming they’d get a thrashing. Creedon finds it hard to take pride in the fact that they didn’t and wants to set his sights higher in time. This wasn’t a bad first step.

“Mentally it can be easier to play sometimes when you’re written off but we had worked hard in the last seven weeks.

“This game was a hiding to nothing in many respects but we just said we were going to focus, have a go off Kerry and play them 15 off 15 as best as we could and see where the game took us.”

When they got to within a point on 43 minutes, a string of handy frees bought Kerry the breathing space. Creedon saw it as an object lesson in how hard a small team can find the going against a big one.

“I thought the referee reffed some of the Kerry forwards different to our forwards,” he said pointedly.

“It seems that marquee forwards on the well-known teams get greater protection. I was annoyed with the referee. I thought he was very poor.”