Kerry forwards give fans reason for optimism

THE MIDDLE THIRD:KERRY AGAINST Cork will always matter, even when it doesn't. Since the coming of the qualifiers, why it matters these days is mostly for both teams to get a measure of where they stand.

That’s the beauty of having two of the best four teams in the country living side by side – if you’re good enough to match the other stride for stride, then you can head into the All-Ireland series with plenty of confidence. I’d say it was the same for Armagh and Tyrone when they were at the top of the pile.

You can’t be going to Croke Park blind or confused. You have to have a true notion of what you’re capable of and where your strengths and weaknesses might be. Cork have played Waterford and Clare so far, Kerry have played Tipperary and Limerick.

Nobody learned anything from those games, nobody was tested.

On a very basic technical level, Sunday in Killarney will give both sides the test they need at this time of the year.

On a more rural, tribal level, you just want to beat them.

I was always more nervous before a Cork game than any other game. When I started playing for Kerry, Cork were in the middle of three Munster titles in a row. My first year was 1994 and Kerry didn’t win a Munster title between ’91 and ’96.

You set out each year to beat them first and foremost and even when the qualifiers came along, you couldn’t shake that feeling of needing to beat them. By the time I met them each year, I’d had a bellyful of them. The hay saved and Cork bet, that was the summer’s work.

Even when we met in the All-Ireland final in 2007, there was huge pressure on us. I felt it more so even than the other All -Ireland finals I played in.

You were just playing for history there, you couldn’t be taking a step back against these fellas of all fellas. I made far more friends from Cork after I retired than when I was playing against them.

It’s just the way of it. Those games were physical and tough because we liked them physical and tough. You can be friends when it’s all over and I have great time for people like Stephen O’Brien and Billy Morgan these days. But at the time, I wouldn’t have felt that way. I’d say they wouldn’t have felt that way about me either.

This a great time of the year to be playing and training. The slog is gone out of it and the weather is (usually) better. Everything is done with a ball. We used to have this drill at training come June and July called one-on-ones.

There was no real rocket science to it – you picked a partner and got given the ball 30 yards from goal, the idea being that you had to run at your man, beat him and get a shot in. The fun of it was in trying to pick a partner you fancied yourself against and then stand around laughing at the poor unfortunate trying to pick up the Gooch or Declan O’Sullivan.

Those two will make a fool of you and won’t apologise about it.

You get older and you’re supposed to get cleverer with it. One night early enough in the summer of 2008, I decided I’d take on one of the young lads.

They might be fit but the drill only covered a short amount of grass. I looked around and my eye fell on Tommy Walsh, who wasn’t on the panel very long at that point. He was a big lad but he was a rookie all the same. Raw.

A handy draw. You’ll do for me, Tommy boy! I knew he was strong but I thought he’d be naive with it. I thought I’d be able to bottle him up and push him away from goal. I thought wrong. He bulldozed through me and left me flat on my ass. It was a real note to self moment as I sat there with the whole Kerry team in fits laughing. Never pick the big, raw rookie until you’ve seen what he can do.

There’s a sort of confused feeling in Kerry at the minute. There’s always optimism but people are just a bit concerned about the team. You must realise these Kerry players haven’t had a really big game since the All- Ireland quarter-final against Down last year and haven’t won a really big game since the replay against Cork. You go a full year without a big one and the next one becomes all the more important.

The feeling in Kerry is Eoin Brosnan won’t pick up Paddy Kelly but will go on Pearse O’Neill instead. The thing with a game like this is the managers will call the shots and the backs will be stationed on particular men. The forwards won’t have any say in it. Conor Counihan and Jack O’Connor will be second-guessing each other all week, I’d say.

Kerry’s optimism is down to the fact that some of our forwards are going extremely well. I don’t think the Gooch, Declan and Darran O’Sullivan have ever been in form this good before, not at the same time anyway. If Kerry can get them enough ball, Kerry will win.

But without Paul Galvin and Tomás Ó Sé, getting that ball in around the middle of the field will be a huge ask. I know he’s coming back from injury but I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a cameo from Galvin at some stage.

The kick-outs will be key. Cork essentially have four midfielders who they’ll switch in and out as the game goes on. They’ll start with Alan O’Connor and Aidan Walsh and them obviously Nicholas Murphy will make an appearance at some stage and Fintan Goold might join them too.

Kerry will need to vary their kick-outs to get men on the ball and feed the forwards. I reckon if they can do that, they’ll win by three points.

In Croke Park last Sunday, you have to say Dublin deserved their win in the end, regardless of what happened at the end of the game. Kildare get great credit for their comeback, although I was shouting at Eamonn Callaghan at the end to lay the ball off instead of going for his goal. It looked to me to be a fairly selfish play because there were lads inside for him to give it to. Fair play to him though, it was a cracking shot into the bottom corner.

I’ve written here before about the worth of Stephen Cluxton to Dublin and he was crucial again last Sunday. The few minutes that Kildare were on top in the first half was exactly the spell where they worked out Cluxton’s kick-outs. But when he adapted and went with another plan and started picking out different men again, Dublin got well on top. You’d nearly have to give him man of the match one of these days without him having to make a save.

We got an excellent game in the end. The speed of Croke Park makes a huge difference and it was no coincidence this was by far the fastest game of the championship. The bounce of the ball and the speed of the turf makes a match between two fit teams go in a frenzy.

It looked for all the world like Marvin Haggler and Thomas Hearns standing toe-to-toe and leathering the guts out of each other. That’s some going when you take into account the heat of the day, plus the fact the bowl design of the stadium means players never feel a breath of wind on their faces.

As far as the decision to give Bernard Brogan the free at the end, enough has been said about it since Sunday. I don’t think you can give a free there unless the defender is all over him and Kildare would be entitled to feel very hard done by. They’ve been shafted by a few very bad refereeing mistakes now and you’d have to feel for them. Meath look like they’re in danger of falling into that category as well.

But I feel for referees too to some extent. It’s becoming more and more difficult to be a referee these days. There’s almost a stigma attached to it now because of the epidemic of bad decisions that you see week-in, week-out.

That leads to pundits and columnists giving out about them consistently and in the end nothing is done. The GAA needs to step in here, sooner rather than later. Take some of the responsibility away from them, instead of heaping it all on one man. Let somebody in the stand manage the time-keeping. Have trained referees as umpires. Give them a video ref to help them out.

As well as that, the rewards for referees have to be better than they are. Give them an All Stars-type trip at the end of the year. Make sure they’re well looked after in terms of mileage and everything else. Make refereeing attractive, something a young lad would want to aspire to.

On top of that, given the spirit of the times where every last cent spent by the Government is accounted for and every decision leaves a paper trail, why not come out and make the process for picking referees transparent?

Let everybody know who sits on the committee, what their qualifications are, how they arrive at their decision for each particular game. Are the names picked out of a hat? Make it so the whole thing is so much more professional and clear-cut.

After a while, you will get better referees doing the games. Because there’s no doubt, some of the referees this summer are just poor at the job. And huge games are being decided by bad decisions. That just can’t go on.