Kerry still trying to hit on best way to use hit man Donaghy

IN THE days of rampant homogeneity Kieran Donaghy is different. Even in the throes of a media afternoon, one of the least natural conversational environments imaginable, he chats away – giving a good impression of spontaneity, as people try to discuss the ways in which this is different to all of the other years looking forward to an All-Ireland final, as autumn falls in Killarney.

There are, of course, a couple of ways to differentiate. Firstly Kerry had their worst championship for 12 seasons last year and the mood is driven by the desire to make amends; for Donaghy himself, there is the uncomfortable feeling that his own year hasn’t stepped up on 2010 as he might have wanted.

Skirting around someone’s struggle for best form eight days before an All-Ireland is delicate work even when the respondent is affable and willing to talk.

“Ger Cafferkey is a good full back and he gave me plenty of it,” he says speaking about the Mayo semi-final. “He caught a few balls over me and broke a few balls and certainly frustration grows. You have to try other things to get yourself going, get a turnover or something, and that’s what I tried to do.

“It’s not about Kieran Donaghy getting 10 out of 10 in the paper. It’s about the team and I think we’re all like that. We’re very team-orientated.”

It’s a guarded response but in the broader context he’s prepared to speculate on the pressure of obsolescence. It’s just five short years since he burst on the scene.

Initially a lanky centrefielder, his was the inspired switch after a demoralising Munster final defeat by Cork that changed Kerry’s season. Jack O’Connor decided to act on the evidence of the previous year’s county championship, when Donaghy had been given a run at full forward for Austin Stacks.

Six feet five inches with the hands and feet of the serious basketball player he has been in an alternative sporting life, he proved dynamite on the edge of the square. In four matches in Munster Kerry had failed to score a goal; in the four that followed they hit 11, with Donaghy’s presence causing havoc.

The traditional full forward was back and “catch and kick” had a function once more. By Christmas he was the 2006 Footballer of the Year. They’re the standards against which he gets judged. An All Star followed in ’08. Injury hobbled him for most of the following year and he has struggled to find his rhythm again over the past two seasons.

There is also the rumbling sentiment that his career has too much of the shooting star about it. He wasn’t a minor, played on the under-21 team that uncomfortably made history by losing a Munster final to Waterford and came to people’s attention on the reality-TV programme for aspiring footballers Underdogs.

He acknowledges that in the space of five years teams have learned to get the hang of defending dropping ball on the edge of the square.

“It (my role) certainly has changed. The management said we were lacking a focal point in 2006 and all of a sudden I was thrown in there. There were balls lumped in there and I was catching them.

“Teams weren’t used to that and teams were basically playing a flat six-on-six at the back. If I caught a ball and gave it off to a fella on the run we were getting goals and teams didn’t really catch on in 2006. It was a bit too late once the final was over but teams have adapted.

“Systems have changed. They are dropping men back, forwards back, much like Dublin did. If we play as naively as we did in 2006 in this final I think Dublin would swallow that up. We will have to have a very different approach the next day.”

Naive? He half recants but references the league match against Sunday’s opponents when Seán Murray successfully contested the dropping ball in Croke Park and it was only when Kerry began to play it short and allow Colm Cooper dictate the forward play that they began to reel in the match before losing narrowly by a point.

“It wasn’t naive then but it would be now. If you look at the league game against Dublin this year we started shaky enough. Dublin were putting serious pressure on us out the field and we were just lumping ball in. They had a big fella playing full back and they were breaking it down and sweeping out and that’s their game.”

The question is where best to deploy Donaghy if the long ball in isn’t working as efficiently as it used to. There had been talk of relocating him to centrefield but his greatest impact has been at full forward and that’s where he will continue to try and develop his game.

“A bit of everything,” is his description of this evolution. “Try and do a lot of jobs for the team to the best of my ability and whether it is winning ball out in front or winning it high or going out getting a few kick-outs or tackling defenders it’s whatever the management decides as games change.

“I have said it before: I wouldn’t care if I didn’t touch the ball as long as Kerry got over the line.”