Pig luck or a numbers game?
FOR the first 20 minutes in Armagh on Sunday, it was as if someone had just put on a recording of that famous spell in last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final.
Not only was the 0-10 to 0-0 wipeout a similar outcome, but how it happened off the Armagh kick-out was distinctly familiar.
Like last July, it wasn’t a period massively affected by any big wind, which is what tends to facilitate a lot of the spells in games where a team just can’t get out.
Why are Kerry able to overwhelm an opposition’s kick-out in a way that nobody else can? They’re so switched on that they make their own luck.
There were times when Blaine Hughes might have gotten out short.
At 0-5 to 0-0 down, they created a 3v2 to his right-hand side. Greg McCabe recognised it and stepped right into Graham O’Sullivan’s face, blocking him off and creating an easy get-out to Gareth Murphy.
Instead, the kick went to the other side, where Kerry had a 3v1. They won the break and scored again to make it 0-6 unanswered.
That creation of extra bodies beneath the break is something they are brilliant at. A lot of it comes from the diligence and workrate of their full-forward line.
When Armagh were desperate to get out, Kerry were happy to press five into the full-forward line and keep forcing it long.
Their forwards are brilliant at forcing a goalkeeper long and being really alert to the ‘keeper’s body shape to get to the break zone first.
If any forward unit can replicate that energy, they automatically make themselves favourites for the second ball because their starting position is invariably closer to the target zone than the defender.
On Armagh’s first kick-out, Kerry had a 5v4.
On the second, it was 6v5.
The third, 2v1.
The fourth was a straight-up overload where numbers were even, 7v7. Sean O’Shea just happened to be in the right place on that one.
Then a 3v1, a 4v3, a 3v2. It was such a constant theme.
How do you get around what they do without taking huge risks around your own arc?
It’s ironic that when you watch back the All-Ireland final from last year, Donegal actually managed it on a lot of occasions.
Of Shaun Patton’s first ten kick-outs, which take you up to the point where Kerry led by 0-13 to 0-4, Donegal were only outnumbered beneath two of them – and Michael Murphy won both.
It makes for interesting watching. As they prepare to meet Kerry again this weekend, there must be a big part of McGuinness that has stewed all winter thinking that he didn’t do as much wrong as people think he did.
The first long kick, Donegal had a spare man but Joe O’Connor caught it clean.
The second, numbers matched, Donegal won the break.
The one where Joe O’Connor ploughed over Finnbarr Roarty to win the break, a moment that came to symbolise what Kerry brought to the kick-out battle all summer, Donegal had a 4v3.
How much is luck, how much is numbers, and how much is sheer aggression and energy?
Kerry got the last two parts right in a big way during Sunday’s first 20 minutes. If you can do that, there’s not really any luck in it.
Playing the ref as much as the conditions
IT has been a league campaign of two halves for Antrim. An horrendous start, three consecutive defeats including a tanking at home to Longford, made way for four straight wins.
Mark Doran referenced the early-season absences of a number of players. In the win over London, the difference that Peter Healy and Dominic McEnhill make in particular was very obvious.
Speaking to Antrim GAA afterwards, Doran said that the win “feels like a defeat because the last 20 minutes, we started doing our own thing, got sloppy, started taking the ball into contact”.
The latter point was key. Referee Ian Howley had been death on overcarrying all afternoon. Anyone that hesitated at all got blown.
In the final 13 minutes, they didn’t take a single shot. They only had four possessions and on three of them, they were blown for overcarrying.
Against a strong wind, they’d fallen into the trap of trying to play keep-ball and eat the clock.
Referees are human and no matter what the rulebook says, there will be a human tendency that when a team is trying to take the sting out of a game, they’re more likely to be blown up when the contact does come on.
Antrim kept moving the ball sideways and backwards, and the higher London squeezed, the harder it got to keep it until eventually they got turned over.
They stopped trying to win the game and went about trying not to lose it instead.
They’ve shown signs of improvement but even in Division Four, no matter the strength of the wind, you can’t go 13 minutes without taking a shot any more.
Mattie Donnelly keeps on cementing his greatness
IT has been a pretty rough ride for Tyrone over the last few months, their form now intertwined with constant inferences of disquiet among the ranks.
One man who has always found a way to rise above noise is Mattie Donnelly.
Tyrone has unquestionably had better, more naturally gifted players in its history but the jersey has been worn by very few better soldiers than the Trillick man.
Playing almost all of his football at full-forward now, the 35-year-old would have been disappointed by the Meath game. He recovered by kicking six points from play against Cork at the weekend.
His age and injury history would suggest that ball-winning should no longer be in his repertoire yet he remains their best option for a kick pass.
It is six years since he tore his hamstring tendon off the bone in an Ulster Club game against Derrygonnelly and questions started to surface over his future.
With Peter Harte opting out, it was anticipated that Donnelly might go too. It’s a long time since he owed the jersey anything.
Not only is Donnelly still playing, he is holding them together.
No dud teams for Division One final
WHATEVER form Sunday’s Division One final takes, what you probably won’t see is dud teams sent out.
How hard the two teams really go at it is one thing, but in terms of personnel, recent history tells us this conversation about playing being rested is almost always a waste of time.
Kerry’s league final team last year contained 12 of the 15 that would start the All-Ireland final, with the injured Sean O’Shea the only obvious absentee at the time. By the summer, Mark O’Shea had come in for Barry Dan O’Sullivan and, with a reshuffle, Sean O’Brien would replace the injured Paul Geaney.
Mayo were in more of a state of flux but their five changes from league to their All-Ireland group stage exit to Donegal were more about how moveable their pieces were at the time.
The previous year, Derry’s starting XV that won the Division One final was the same 15 that started a few weeks later in Ulster against Donegal.
Dublin were still easing some of their veterans back in, with none of Stephen Cluxton, Michael Fitzsimons, Jack McCaffrey, James McCarthy and Paul Mannion starting the league final. Four of them would retire at the year’s end.
The 2023 final between Mayo and Galway saw 11 and 12 respectively of their sides that would meet in a preliminary quarter-final down the line start both games.
When Kerry won both in 2022, only Sean O’Shea and David Moran started the All-Ireland final having not started the league decider.
Kerry go strong, and Donegal will be well aware of it. Psychologically they can’t afford another heavy loss to the Kingdom in Croke Park, so they will go strong too.
