Another one for the pantheon. Many more games like this and the Dublin/Kerry nostalgia industry will go out of business, to the disappointment of precisely nobody.
We can wax forever about games of the past but it’s hard to imagine many of them – any of them -– matching this for skill, drama and intensity. Gaelic football’s doom mongers will have to find another dog to kick around for a while.
Dublin are through to their third All-Ireland final in four years on the back of a 0-22 to 2-14 win over a Kerry side who couldn’t have done much more to block their passage.
Éamonn Fitzmaurice has had four years in charge of Kerry and though the 2014 All-Ireland will endure as his finest achievement, arguably the two best displays of his reign have come in defeat to Dublin in All-Ireland semi-finals. We can take it he’d be suitably unimpressed with the compliment.
It’s no faint praise, however, to declare that Kerry have drawn Dublin’s best out of them again here. They blitzed Gavin’s side in the five minutes before half-time and went in to their tea five points ahead.
For context, when Donegal handed Dublin the single championship defeat of the Gavin era in 2014, they only trailed by one at the break. This is not something they’re used to.
Under pressure
Yet time and again, their outstanding characteristic has been the ability to find a response when under pressure.
This makes it 17 league and championship games under Gavin that have been decided by a goal or less – they’ve only lost four of them. For Kerry 2013 and Mayo 2015, see Kerry 2016. Dublin stared into the abyss. The abyss got jumpy and looked the other way.
“I mentioned resolve,” said Gavin afterwards. “It is something they have shown time and time again for me. Any time you are with them, in a game like that when there are so many questions – they were five up and we brought it back. They were up three again, but still, we kept at it.
“From a Dublin football game plan perspective, we kept doing what we wanted to do. And in particular the players who came on, we were very satisfied with that. There was a lot of emotion obviously in the crowd behind me, and they are in the middle of it. But to be so present when they come into the pitch is very impressive and they are the guys who really saw the game off.”
Further ahead
Dublin led 0-9 to 0-4 after 25 minutes and the only mystery was why they weren’t further ahead. Brian Kelly made a terrific save from Philly McMahon and the normally reliable duo of Bernard Brogan and Diarmuid Connolly had a couple of wayward swings apiece. On a different day, they could have been on hammocks by half-time.
But Kerry came with a plan. They got it back to 0-9 to 0-6 and sprang on Stephen Cluxton’s kick-out after Colm Cooper kicked the sixth point from a free. They pushed up en masse and codded Cluxton into a loose ball out to Davy Byrne before pouncing on the young corner-back for a Darran O’Sullivan goal.
“We’d rehearsed some of the kick-out scenarios alright,” said Fitzmaurice, “and it came off for us alright. That gave us the bit of life and belief that we needed at the time, because we started poorly. Our work-rate was excellent but our skill-set was off. We were taking wrong options, our decision taking wasn’t right. To be fair there was no panic, no one getting too worried. When we got the goal it gave us great lift and we kicked on from there.
“In a game like that, when it’s so frantic, you’re not going to bring everything to the table.
“Our subs made great impact, maybe we could have got a bit more out of them. But look, it was a frantic game, and as I said to the lads inside there, I couldn’t be more proud of them. They’re an incredible bunch, so honest.
“We’re very proud of our football in Kerry, very proud of our jersey, and those fellas really filled us with pride today.”
Dublin were shook, no question. A second Kerry goal came courtesy of a second Cluxton mistake – this time under a high ball that Paul Geaney got a touch on. The interval couldn’t come quick enough.
Bit by bit, they took the game back in the second half, drawing level by the 50th minute.
And then Kerry took it back, twice going three points ahead, the second time in the 62nd. The teams were level in stoppage time and when Dublin went one up, Kerry should have had a free to level it when Peter Crowley got blindsided by Kevin McManamon.
It was a crucial call and one for which replays suggested referee David Gough may have been unsighted. Fitzmaurice pointedly bit his lip afterwards, although when as normally placid a soul as Mikey Sheehy was moved to go after Gough and give him a flea in his ear at the end, you knew what Kerry’s true feelings were. Expect Gough to take his seat alongside Joe McQuillan in the Kerry bogeyman ranks.
It’s all dust now though. Dublin endure, Kerry go home. The rest of us get to yak about it.
And we will.
