We're hurting in Kerry this week.
It's one thing to lose an All-Ireland semi-final when you're outclassed or when winning it wasn't really on the cards. It's another when you lose one like this, when it's a game that you could have built a lead in by being a bit more ruthless in front of goal and a bit less naive in your approach. Those are the worst losses to absorb.
Tyrone fully deserved their victory. They were so much more attuned to the needs of the day, they were far better at understanding what Kerry would bring than vice-versa and they were every bit as merciless as you have to be when their goal chances came.
And yet, Kerry only lost by a point after extra-time in a game where they got so much wrong. That tells you it was a game that was there for the winning.
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The Kerry players lacked nothing in effort or spirit or hunger. They left every bit of themselves out there. To come back from that terrible start in extra-time and score five points to get back within a kick of a ball distance was really admirable. They have no reason to hang their heads – they gave it everything. Nobody down here faults the application or the commitment of the Kerry players.
But the simple truth of the matter is that Kerry played a game that suited Tyrone on Saturday afternoon. Take away everything else – the missed goal chances, the injury to David Clifford at a crucial time, all the Covid stuff, everything else. Ignore every bit of that and ask yourself what sort of game Tyrone would have been hoping for coming down to Croke Park.
Did they want one where Kerry were careful with possession, moving it around patiently and stretching the pitch like Dublin have done to them with such success in the past? Or did they want one where Kerry ran at them in single file and tried to play intricate passes around them in tight spaces? Door Number Two, every time.
Surely in the Kerry camp for the past fortnight, their own siege mentality should have been building. They should have been getting crankier and crankier at being made to wait
Never solve the other crowd’s problem for them. Kerry had long enough to analyse what Tyrone do well. They protect their full-back line. They keep teams where they can see them. They leave you space down the flanks to kick the ball into and then they attack you there and try to turn you over. Above all, they try to draw you into a messy, chaotic game where everything is down and dirty.
In all the slagging off of the Dubs for those periods where they keep possession for so long, it got a bit forgotten why they came up with it in the first place. It was first and foremost devised with blanket defence teams in mind. The whole idea behind a blanket defence is to send players down blind alleys, to isolate them and to force turnovers. Dublin refused to be drawn into that.
They basically wanted to take back control of who blinks first. If you’re an attacking team and you lose patience and try to break a line that isn’t for breaking, you are the one who has blinked. Dublin decided that they would hold onto the ball and move it around until eventually someone in the blanket defence team blinks and goes for an intercept or a tackle that the Dubs see coming.
No excuses
Tyrone were only delighted to see Kerry coming and trying to play through them. Clifford looked unplayable in the first 10 minutes – and he was – but nobody else was getting much traction. Instead, they were getting turned over time and time again. Why would you try to play that game against Tyrone? Why would you give them what they want?
Kerry can have no excuses. I’ve heard people try and use the Covid thing and say that Kerry couldn’t really know what to expect from Tyrone but I don’t buy that at all. They had to know that if Tyrone were coming down to play the game, they were coming in the best shape possible. There’s no way Kerry should have expected anything less.
In fact, it should have been the perfect motivating factor for Kerry. I know everyone likes to make out that Tyrone thrive on a siege mentality but, to me, that’s another cop-out. There’s no monopoly on that kind of thing. It’s not a finite resource. There’s plenty of siege to go around if you want to make use of it.
Surely in the Kerry camp for the past fortnight, their own siege mentality should have been building. They should have been getting crankier and crankier at being made to wait. Not in public, obviously – you have to play nice. But amongst themselves, they should have been thick and cranky at having their championship rhythms and plans upset. Tyrone should have felt the full force of it in that opening quarter.
But after Clifford's opening point, the first thing Tyrone did the next time Kerry had the ball was show Dara Moynihan over to the sideline, where Frank Burns just shouldered him out for a line-ball.
Burns literally pointed at the sideline and instead of turning around and recycling the ball, Moynihan took the bait and tried to run him down the line and Burns forced him out. That sort of thing happened over and over again. And every time it did, Tyrone got that bit more comfortable in the game.
If Tyrone are pressuring you all over the pitch but they're letting you get your kick-outs away, you have to be able to cop that there's some reason for it
The game was won and lost in close combat situations. Tyrone’s skill-set was way ahead of Kerry’s in that arena. Every team practices those tight, suffocating game situations where you have to find a way to keep possession even when you’re bottled up. Tyrone’s ability to get a handpass away to a teammate even though they were being manhandled was far above what Kerry were able to do in the same tight spot.
So much of what Kerry did played into Tyrone’s hands. The kick-outs are one of the best examples.
People went on afterwards about the fact that Kerry had a 100 per cent success rate from kick-outs. But sure of course they did! Tyrone didn't once try to stop them going short. Shane Ryan was never under any pressure to find a man. Tyrone were happy for him to do it. So why, if you are Kerry, would you keep making them happy?
That’s the sort of thing you have to be able to work out in real time. If Tyrone are pressuring you all over the pitch but they’re letting you get your kick-outs away, you have to be able to cop that there’s some reason for it.
And the longer the game went on, the more obvious it became – they were happy to tire out the Kerry defenders by making them do the dirty work of bringing the ball out every single time.
Wasted chance
I couldn't for the life of me work out why Kerry kept playing into their hands like that. Especially when David Moran and the others around the middle third were doing so well on Niall Morgan's long kick-outs. If the Tyrone midfield was dominating the long ones, fair enough. But Kerry were getting joy on the Tyrone kick-outs and still persisting with the short one themselves. No wonder so many Kerry players went down with cramp!
Simple things like this feed into the feeling of a wasted chance around Kerry this week. Tyrone were much smarter in what they did throughout. They worked the referee better. I thought David Coldrick had a poor game, the sort of display a fella puts in when he's trying to get noticed for the final.
The Tyrone physios were on and off so many times I thought they’d be in danger of cramping up themselves. Coldrick didn’t seem to be able to keep tabs on them. But they fairly took the sting out of the black cards all the same. I don’t hold that against Tyrone at all. They were tuned in to what the game situation called for.
Tyrone have brilliant footballers but they also have smart footballers. They knew what their game plan was all about
But the Kerry players needed to be leaning on the referee when all this was going on. There are games within games – everyone knows that. If you’re not in his ear, you can be sure the other crowd will be. You can’t be naive enough to leave him to his own devices. Adding on the time is all fine and dandy but a 50/50 free wouldn’t go astray either. You have to pressure him into feeling like you might be getting shortchanged, regardless of whether or not it’s the case.
I’m not saying it’s big or clever. I’m saying you have to do what you have to do. And you especially have to do it when you’re playing Tyrone. They know every trick in the book – they invented half of them – so you have to meet them on the same battlefield with the same mindset. Because if you don’t you concede an advantage. It’s only a small thing but it can make a difference in a game that is as close as this one was.
Tyrone have brilliant footballers but they also have smart footballers. They knew what their game plan was all about. It wasn't just running Kerry down blind alleys and turning them over, it was punishing them with scores. Two of the three Tyrone goals came from turnovers. Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher couldn't have been happier with how their game plan worked out and how their players implemented it for them.
Black mark
Obviously enough, there's a lot of talk about Peter Keane in Kerry at the moment. The one thing nobody can say is that the players didn't play for him. There's no talk of trouble in the camp or anything like that. He has been there three years and the squad obviously believe in him and what he has tried to do. That's not always guaranteed.
But this is a black mark against the management. Not so much the defeat – any team can lose a game, especially an All-Ireland semi-final against a good side. But the fact that Kerry played the game on Tyrone’s terms is what makes it tough to get over.
And the fact that there was no adjustment during the game, no realisation of what the terms and conditions were. That’s all hard to ignore.
At least we have David Clifford. He was incredible on Saturday and he gives us all hope for the future. But down here, we’re hurting right now. And we will be for a while.
