NFL Division 1 final: Donegal 3-20 Kerry 2-10
After all of the suspicion directed at Donegal and their motivations – are your intentions towards our competition entirely honourable? – Jim McGuinness’s team blazed a trail across a sunlit Croke Park, not only to win the league final but hand Kerry a walloping.
If there were to be a stewards’ inquiry, it wasn’t going to focus on the Ulster champions. They brought their powerful, running game, an ability to concentrate for sustained periods and a robust rate of conversion and maintained the squeeze long after the match had been realistically won.
Kerry manager Jack O’Connor felt that the previous week’s arm wrestled in Armagh, which earned their place in the final, had drained more from the players than originally thought and actually deprived him of two starters, Brian Ó Beaglaoich and centrefielder Seán O’Brien, who was sorely missed in those vital contests,
Who knows what happened Kerry but this was an anaemic outing, completely at variance with the All-Ireland champions’ measured and impressive progress through the competition until the final.
READ MORE
This impressive afternoon’s work will do something to redress Donegal’s misery of last July’s All-Ireland final when they never managed to raise a gallop against their rampant opponents.
On this occasion, the tables were turned at centrefield where Kerry had dominated the All-Ireland but endured lengthy barren spells on their own kick-outs and struggled to make a mark on the game.
There was no flying out of the traps and a far cagier overture was enacted. It could have been different had David Clifford’s shot, which dropped short in the second minute, ended up in the net after Graham O’Sullivan got to it but Péadar Mogan was there to scramble it off the line.
Intimations of trouble could have been detected in the ease with which Clifford subsequently broke through the defence to slot the opening point and the hounding of Donegal defenders into conceding a 45, which was uncharacteristically missed by Seán O’Shea.
There might have been trouble for goalkeeper Gavin Mulreany had referee David Gough punished him for pushing Clifford into the net but on we went and Donegal began to create themselves.
Michael Langan notched their first three scores, two two-pointers, to open up a lead that would never be lost. It was the 15th minute.
The detail of Kerry’s abjection can be discerned in two sterile phases: from the 13th-minute point by Joe O’Connor to an O’Shea point 20 minutes later and from Keith Evans’s point three minutes after half-time to the next score, by Armin Heinrich in the 56th minute – all told 38 minutes without scoring.
Of all the scenarios dreamed up before the match, the notion that Kerry, holders of the league and championship double, would find their scoring returns drying up like a gambler’s credit, would have been seen as the least likely.
Clifford hardly got his hands on any ball such was the failure to establish supply lines. His day was summarised in the point before the break when he actually slipped but got the ball to O’Shea for what was only Kerry’s third score of the afternoon.
These unforgiving minutes were filled with dynamic movement from Donegal, who held possession with assurance and worked chances for the flying support players.
If Langan was the cutting edge in the early stages, there was plenty of assistance. Michael Murphy, who had tried to keep things afloat last July but ended up being tormented by Kerry’s artful kick-outs, stamped his authority on this chapter, even if his enthusiastic pummelling of Dylan Casey in a 16th-minute tackle ended up, perhaps fortunately, in just a yellow card.
His dead-ball kicking was impeccable, including two two-point frees, which helped the side’s momentum in either half. Murphy also intercepted a pass from Mark O’Shea to Jason Foley in the 44th minute, strode forward and without a glance at an unmarked team-mate, drove the ball into the net.
It was one of a trio of goals within three minutes early in the second half, and if Kerry had harboured any notions of a scoring, bull run after two unanswered points on the resumption then this rapid absorption of a further nine points’ deficit surely suppressed even the most optimistic impulses.
The others came from Conor O’Donnell after Donegal had turned over possession and kept the ball in a languid sequence before a killer burst of pace opened up the goal.
The third was set up by Max Campbell, who started instead of Finbarr Roarty and began the afternoon eyeballing O’Shea, who was very off-key throughout the afternoon, especially disappointing for him after his exploits in Ballyshannon in the regulation fixture.
Anyway, Campbell sent in Caolan McGonagle, whose floated shot – initially it looked like an attempted point – drifted over Shane Murphy and into the net.
A Michael Murphy free made it 3-14 – a resonant scoreline from the 2014 ambush of Dublin and Jim Gavin’s only championship defeat – to 1-4. It was impressive that Donegal didn’t relent until well into the final quarter, but in the closing 16 minutes, they were outscored by 1-6 to 0-1 – the goal tucked away by Clifford.
Kerry have a good few players to come back but it’s unlikely that they will be allowed – or allow themselves to – write this one off to misfortune.
For Donegal it was a measure of restorative justice but they won’t mistake it for anything more than that.
DONEGAL: G Mulreany; P Mogan (0-0-1), B McCole, C McColgan; C McGonagle (1-0-0), M Campbell (0-0-3), EB Gallagher; J McGee, H McFadden; S O’Donnell, M Langan (0-2-2), R McHugh (0-0-3); C O’Donnell (1-0-1), M Murphy (1-2-1, 2tpf, 1 45), S Malone.
Subs: F Roarty (0-0-1) for Murphy (56 mins); S McMenamin for Malone (60); S Martin for Campbell (63); E McHugh for R McHugh (64).
KERRY: S Murphy; D Casey; T Morley, J Foley; T O’Sullivan (0-0-1), M Breen, A Heinrich (0-0-2); M O’Shea, L Smith; J O’Connor, S O’Shea (capt) (0-0-1), G O’Sullivan; D Clifford (1-0-1), D Geaney (0-0-1), K Evans (1-0-1).
Subs: T Kennedy (0-0-1) for Smith (32 mins); M Burns for G O’Sullivan (46); TL O’Sullivan for Foley (inj, 53); P Geaney (0-1-0) for D Geaney (56); C Trant for Evans (60).
Referee: D Gough (Meath).
