ALL-IRELAND SFC QUARTER-FINAL Down 1-16 Kerry 1-10:IN KERRY they must sometimes wish there were only three points on the compass and that the North could be officially abolished and forgotten about.
Humbled by Armagh and Tyrone in recent years, Kerry found on Saturday that when it came to empire’s end it was Down who emerged from the shadows to shut down the Kingdom.
And so Down’s remarkable record against Kerry remains statistically straight forward. Played five. Won five.
We have almost forgotten how sensational the county’s emergence 50 years ago was but in the McCartan dynasty, which has been a constant from the start, Saturday’s victory will loom large among the family achievements.
James, or Wee James as we knew him in his playing days, engineered this latest coup from the sidelines. His brother Dan was a key component of a full-back line which held Kerry to three points from play.
“I’m glad he won’t be kicking my ass when I go up the road,” joked James McCartan afterwards when considering the reception he might get at home had he become the first of the tribe to baulk at this hurdle. “That record against Kerry will be ruined at some stage but I hope it’s far away.”
Kerry perhaps saw this coming. It was a bad sign to hear Jack O’Connor cawing in the wind last week about his team being victimised. The great man’s moods are a weather vane for the Kerry psyche and Jack was plainly worried Paul Galvin and Tomás Ó Sé would be two aces too many to pull out of the pack of cards.
“We weren’t playing fighting with all our army,” said Jack afterwards. “You’re talking about a current player of the year and a former player of the year. Any team is going to miss them, aren’t they?”
So it proved. Kerry ached for Tomás’s sense of adventure from wing back and they were parched for Galvin’s hustling presence in the middle third, where he normally haggles for every dirty ball . . . on a day when Kerry’s midfield looked particularly anaemic their absences were the tipping point.
Not that Down even paused to consider Kerry’s fate.
With the swagger and confidence which is their trademark on good days they tore into Kerry from the start. Their tactic of playing a two-man half-forward line and a two-man full-forward line may have seemed conservative but the quality of the players making up those lines more than compensated. Their use of the wings and their confidence in playing the ball into open space were a joy to watch.
From the throw-in Ambrose Rogers (another scion) rose and collected the ball neatly, a feat he would repeat at the start of the second half. He took possession and Down didn’t lose it till the damage was done. A Micheál Quirke error let Paul McComiskey in. He fed Mark Poland, who buried the ball in the Kerry net. Goal.
A minute later another Kerry turnover led to a Benny Coulter point and in the fourth minute Rogers calmly slotted a 45, after McComiskey harassed Tom O’Sullivan out over his own endline. We knew for certain by then Kerry were in trouble.
By the 10th minute when the excellent McComiskey popped a wonderful point from the right, Kerry were six down and showing signs of flatlining. They rallied for a 15-minute period during which they won almost every kick-out which Down put into play. They scored four points, three of them from Colm Cooper. The period might have finished with the tonic of a goal but Killian Young’s effort was called back for a hand pass infringement.
At that point Kerry seemed to lose heart again. The final four points before half-time and the first point after the break went to Down.
Whenever one of the Goliaths of the game falls there is talk at the post mortem that they had looked flat and weak and vulnerable and that people had seen it coming. So it will be with Kerry and that is unfair on Down. Some of the forward play they put together was intoxicating.
Opinion was divided as to whether Marty Clarke or Coulter most deserved the man-of-the-match award. If such an arbitrary honour is compulsory we are entitled to point out that neither Poland nor McComiskey were very far behind in the race for individual glory. All four players had patches where they emerged as Kerry’s principal torturers.
Whatever about the trials which had deprived Kerry of Galvin and Ó Sé, hope flew out the window in the 45th minute when Donnacha Walsh received a second yellow, for a high tackle on Poland.
Not a media whistleblower in sight and the timing was disastrous.
Jack O’Connor had just substituted Séamus Scanlon (whose partner Quirke was already gone). Another forward, BJ Keane, had come on and now Jack’s best-laid plans were scuppered.
Kerry were down to 14 men with their starting midfield gone and their workhorse wing forward vanished.
From there on possession was a struggle.
It is true Brendan McVeigh made two fine saves off the boot of Kieran Donaghy but just as true that Down had a goal disallowed and the late penalty awarded to Kerry looked dubious.
Had it not been irrelevant Down would surely have protested more vigorously. As it happened David Moran converted and in the silence you could almost hear the ball whicker into the netting.
For Kerry it was over by then. For 10 years running they have played in the All-Ireland semi-final, an extraordinary record and not one anybody who lived through the golden years of the 1970s and ’80s thought they would ever witness again.
With the grace and class that has been their hallmark Kerry shook hands with the conquerors and vanished from the stage. They won’t be gone for long. If Down are still centre stage when they return it will be a splendid rivalry to behold.
For now, as they used sing back in 1991, the boys in the red and black are back.
“The bottom line is that we beat a Kerry team going for seven finals in a row,” said James McCartan afterwards. “I’m not saying we are world beaters but we got the job done.”
Sufficient unto the day were the words thereof.
