An authentic, natural love of the game

LOCKERROOM: Kerry have perfected the art of championship football and, inadvertently perhaps, turned modern thinking about football on its head

YOGI BERRA, baseball’s king of the malaprop, was asked once after a big game if he had been apprehensive. He replied that no, not at all, but he had been scared. The footballers of Cork must have gone through the narrow gamut of emotions between apprehensive and scared in the past week.

They came out of a semi-final and into the All-Ireland with an enjoyable and novel buzz growing and growing within the borders of their county. And as people piled on and made them marginal favourites, at least they must have begun feeling a little apprehension. The table was tilting nicely for Kerry.

Then they got a goal after 10 minutes yesterday, and the response issued by Kerry was positively frightening. Kerry scored nine of the next 11 points, including a run of six without reply. Bad memories had to come flooding back.

It’s probably no secret to the residents of Cork and Kerry that the rest of the country gave a deep and depressed sigh when the lads’ pair of cards were drawn from the All-Ireland deck and represented another edition of the eternal football squabble between the southern neighbours. But this was enthralling.

It used to be said in better times for Dublin football that no Cork team should ever beat a Dublin team because a bad Cork team would always be beatable and a good Cork team would beat itself with hubris. Kerry probably feel the same way, but there was a tangibly different feeling about this Cork team.

Conor Counihan’s maxi-sized team caught a good portion of the imagination of a Cork public keen to put internal strifes behind them.

Nobody mentioned much the middle one of the three strikes which have stalled Cork GAA this decade. As with the initial upset which brought Donal O’Grady to the hurlers, the footballers’ strike can retrospectively be justified by the quiet and dignified success of Conor Counihan.

It’s a funny thing, but a typical GAA type of thing, that some counties never fear other counties. Kerry teams never truly fear Cork. Even excellent Cork teams never really incite trembling within the citadel of the green and gold.

The Cork team, say, which won the All-Ireland of 1973 was potentially as good as any team which that decade produced. They lost an epic semi-final the following year to Dublin, and then got locked into Munster by Kerry for eight years running.

They escaped in 1983 only to be scythed by Dublin again, and then returned to Munster chokey as Kerry performed a lap of honour by winning three more on the trot. They could mark the passing of the years by the number of times Mick O’Dwyer came to their dressingroom and told them, sincerely no doubt, that they were the second-best team in Ireland.

Yesterday that self-belief was the difference between the sides. Kerry won the game in the second quarter after Cork’s goal. The second half was a matter of containment, a job which was made slightly easier by Cork’s tendency to shoot wides.

For Kerry, this was the best of their five All-Ireland wins this decade, and the quality of it surely puts an end to any discussion about who had been the team of that decade. Five All-Ireland wins and eight finals represents an incredible achievement in the modern game.

And what a testimony to the bite in Kerry’s enduring hunger. The feelings of ennui and cries of so what which greeted the dawn of another Cork v Kerry final were never shared by the men who work in Fitzgerald Stadium.

They might have preferred another crack at Tyrone, but for a team which was derided in some quarters for beating up Mayo in a couple of All-Irelands Cork represented a very tasty alternative.

Counihan’s team of pacey mammoths represented a new challenge for a team which literally and figuratively has had to be put together again this season. And putting that team back together and winning a final like yesterday’s must surely put an end to any questioning of Jack O’Connor’s greatness as a manager.

He won a schools All-Ireland for Coláiste na Sceilge in the spring, then brought Kerry to a national league and an All-Ireland, replacing the spine of the team as the summer went on, getting his tactics perfectly right on the big days in August and September.

Bringing back Mike McCarthy was always good business, but his total eclipse of Pearse O’Neill yesterday was a massive extra dividend. Declan O’Sullivan on Kieran O’Connor, for instance, was a dream match-up. The manner in which Tommy Walsh was kept on a leash, knowing he had something to prove, was a wonder stroke of man-management. Kerry’s breaking down of Alan Quirke’s kick-outs was a serious piece of work which took hours of training ground practice.

Just about every team he has touched has been transformed. From his own club in Dromid, into which he gave the breath of life, to Coláiste na Sceilge and their momentous All-Ireland semi-final losses earlier this decade and their win this year, to the jaded Kerry team he took charge of in 2004 to whom he gave the momentum for six All-Ireland final appearances in a row. It is an extraordinary record for an extraordinary man. He should write a book.

And who else? Tadhg Kennelly may have just been taking a gap year from Aussie Rules, but he had the humility to learn and re-adapt and eventually to play a huge part in this team’s success. Darragh Ó Sé might have finished his career looking down from the Hogan steps at an ocean of green and gold. Or maybe not. It’s not beyond the man to slip back into Fitzgerald Stadium some evening next spring and to launch himself at another championship.

There were many contenders yesterday for man of the match for Kerry (Tom O’Sullivan, Tommy Walsh, Mike Mac, Tomás Ó Sé) but man of the season has to be Paul Galvin.

For a story of personal redemption, even to have gotten through this season after the misery of last summer was the act of an unusually dogged man. To play the way he has, playing a huge part in dragging Kerry to this All-Ireland, was an act of great selflessness for a character who could have wallowed in bitterness having missed his chance to lead Kerry to an All-Ireland last year.

Yesterday he was quietly extraordinary, paying only notional attention to his wing forward posting and motoring tirelessly around the Kerry defence, mopping up whatever he could, diving into the chaos created by the giants in the middle third of the field, putting in hits which must have the effect on his body of a bad car crash and then galloping forward to join in Kerry’s attacks. His day’s work should have been covered by a separate, dedicated camera.

Sin é. Another season down. Kerry may not reach a seventh All-Ireland final on the trot next September, but they will expect to and they will demand it of themselves. They have perfected the art of championship football and, inadvertently perhaps, turned modern thinking about football on its head.

They lose no sweat over development teams or developing fine instruments for measuring the career pathways of young players. They produce footballers who are authentic and natural. And as each generation of greats passes from the field and into the twilight world of retirement, they put their expertise back into the next generation. It’s a culture and a tradition, and yesterday was as fine an expression of a county’s love for a game as we have seen this decade.

Kilkenny and Kerry on the thrones at season’s end. It’s not novel, but it is right and it is meet.

They put more in. They take more out.

“ For Galvin to play the way he has, playing a huge part in dragging Kerry to this All-Ireland, was an act of great selflessness for a character who could have wallowed in bitterness having missed his chance to lead Kerry to an All-Ireland last year