Ian O'Riordanhears coach Pat O'Shea remind people the Kerry footballing kingdom wasn't built in a day, nor was it destroyed last Sunday either
IN THE cold light of day the hurt and disappointment that comes with losing an All-Ireland final can sometimes turn to anger. Pat O'Shea showed a little of that yesterday: anger that his team were being judged on one performance and not all that had gone before; anger over criticisms of the "naivety" of their tactics; anger that anyone's future with Kerry would be questioned right now.
That was without going near the other talking points of Sunday's defeat to Tyrone: the ruckus between the teams on the call for half-time that reportedly had resulted in O'Shea being shouldered from the side, and another Kerry official knocked to the ground; that just after the call for full-time one Kerry player was reportedly struck by a Tyrone fan.
O'Shea didn't want to go there, though the Kerry County Board may do so in time. What upset the Kerry manager was the way some perceived Sunday's defeat as a catastrophic setback that somehow undid everything they had achieved over the past decade.
"Look, people will paint it whatever way they want to," said O'Shea, standing proudly in the Burlington Hotel before the lonesome journey home, "I can only talk from what it's like inside in our dressingroom. And it's not about defining careers. It's not about deciding the best team of the decade. It's not about some lads going without ever beating Tyrone. It's not about that.
"This is an excellent team, excellent players. They've given fantastic service. Last year, people were saying we were playing for 100 years of tradition against Cork. If we lost that final then all the other finals that Kerry played in were going to be erased.
"I mean, that wasn't going to be true. Like whoever won yesterday was going to be recognised as a great team. And whoever lost was still going to be recognised as a great team. And I don't think that has changed."
The devil, he admitted, was in the detail. It wasn't that Kerry did a whole lot wrong. It's just Tyrone did a little more right.
"In post-mortems you always look at the details. If we had put on the socks on a different foot maybe we'd have been able to perform better. If we had stayed in the shower a little bit longer. Sure who's to know?
"It was a great game, an open game, with mistakes made on both sides. What would I have changed? I don't know. Maybe finish the game a bit stronger.
"Sunday was one of those days, because of the magnitude of it, where everything is going to be scrutinised even more. Obviously we wanted to go with the direct ball. We have players on our team capable of making very good decisions with the ball, and do that more often than not. We wanted to try to vary our game as well, maybe carry ball if the opportunity was there. Try to get into better positions to feed our inside line.
"But sometimes the opposition dictates where you're going to kick the ball from, and Tyrone forced us to kick from a little bit further back the field. We wanted to try to get the ball in a little bit earlier anyway, so maybe we could get it over the swarm of blanket defence that might be employed. But the ball just didn't stick inside, whether it was the quality of the ball, or the defenders inside that were able to actually knock ball away."
There was no way Kerry underestimated Tyrone, and that includes their last minute switching of defenders, so that Conor Gormley and Joe McMahon went into the full-back line. O'Shea had always expected the unexpected. "You have to plan for all eventualities. How they came out and set up didn't unduly upset us. We were a point up at half-time. We kicked six wides in the first half. They kicked one. And anytime they passed halfway they seemed to score. From quite difficult positions.
"We still felt we were a little in control, and came out looking for a good start to the second half. Unfortunately it was Tyrone that got it."
Kerry's failure to score for the last quarter of an hour obviously proved fatal. Why that was so is more difficult to say. Tiredness, the burden of chasing three-in-a-row, may have been factors, or maybe other things.
"We've had a very, very exciting year. It culminated yesterday, and from that point of view 2008 is over. Obviously we're exceptionally disappointed with the way it ended. But it's hard though to quantify the exact magnitude of being in five All-Ireland finals in a row, and literally, what that can take out of you.
"This year itself has been turbulent, and in some respects, Sunday's match summed up that year. Got off to a poor enough start. Came back into it. Took control. Went a point clear. And then didn't score for the last 13, 14 minutes. I'm not really sure if it all just caught up with us. It has been a tough year, individually, for some of the lads. And I genuinely think some of the things written in respect of some of the incidents that happened this year were over the top.
"The line was crossed, unfortunately. I've thanked the media for their involvement all year. But there is due respect due to everybody. We have to take responsibility for what we do on the field, and I think everybody else has that onus as well."
Before departing O'Shea was asked the hard question about his own future, and that of some of his players. Although his two-year term with Kerry is up there was no looking beyond that for now.
"Look, that's a question that really shouldn't be asked today. No one should ask a player 24 hours after losing an All-Ireland if they're going to play on or not. Everybody wants to crawl into a corner right now. Take a bit of a break for a couple of weeks, and then come back.
"There are some players, obviously, coming to the end of their careers. And they should be afforded the time to make that decision in their own space, with their own people around them."
They have the space and time for that now. Lots of it.