John Fogarty
“I have never heard as much ifs, buts and maybes – and you can quote me on that.”
These are the words of Kerry defender Tom O’Sullivan last Monday. He undoubtedly heard as many woulds, coulds and shoulds as well.
RTÉ’s evening GAA analysis is sardonically referred to by some Kerry players as CSI Sunday Game but it is their followers who are the most forensic when it comes to a defeat. Right now, so difficult is it to re-watch the game, most of them are basing their opinions on their memories of the game but in the coming weeks the 70-plus minutes will be dusted for prints and swabbed for DNA.
Declan O’Sullivan and Barry John Keane as well as O’Sullivan for an errant late pass are three of the leading suspects but the defeat will have to be absorbed by all.
What muddies the water is the immediate post-mortem which points to a poor refereeing display by Joe McQuillan. Indeed, he wasn’t as favourable to Kerry as he was to Dublin. That’s not to say Dublin got all the breaks but Jack O’Connor’s side have genuine grounds to be aggrieved.
Look back on Kerry’s season and what presents itself is just how good they were discipline-wise. On Sunday, according to Vodafone’s analysis, they were awarded 21 frees to Dublin’s 22, by our reckoning the first time this year their total number of frees conceded has eclipsed the opposition’s in their six championship games.
Yet did that reflect what we saw in the game?
Much has been made too of how many Dublin games McQuillan had refereed before Sunday’s game. Certainly, the two championship games – the Leinster final versus Wexford and the All-Ireland quarter-final versus Tyrone – he officiated involving Pat Gilroy’s side as opposed to none with Kerry was documented by the Irish Examiner on his appointment for the final last month.
Nobody is questioning McQuillan’s integrity. Far from it. He gave a splendid performance in this year’s Leinster final. But if Dublin wanted to play the referee they stood a better chance of doing it than Kerry.
Again, nobody is saying they did that either but whether they did or not they had a familiarity with McQuillan’s officiating that Kerry did not possess.
Aside from Jack O’Connor’s comment that “it was much harder for our fellas to get frees than it was the other way around”, there hasn’t been a squeak about the referee from the Kerry camp.
That could change in the months ahead but for now the dreadful realisation is beginning to dawn on them that they had the game won. In spite of what they might believe about how much the referee did them wrong, they had Dublin right where they wanted.
It’s been suggested by one Kerry player that they had switched on, were already thinking of All Stars and the months of celebrations ahead.
Would it have happened against Cork? In 2009, they were similarly four points with 11 minutes to play and neither team scored until the final whistle. Was it because they assumed Dublin, as Conal Keaney alluded to last week when asked about Kerry's opinion of his county, were just Dublin?
As Darragh Ó Sé remarked this week, Kerry lacked cuteness following Kevin McManamon’s goal, just as he and his teammates did against Armagh in 2002. If they were going to be blown up for fouls, then was the time to do it – in the less critical area of the field, of course.
But what makes this final defeat to any other is that it threatens to define several careers. It was going to happen to somebody but this is the first team that lost to Dublin in the championship in 34 years.
The significance of that? None of the players who took to the field in the green and gold were born when that happened. None of the Dublin players were either.
Losing a final has become a less rare phenomenon for Kerry’s finest. Along with Tomás Ó Sé, Sunday was Tom O’Sullivan’s ninth decider. Their records now read won five, lost four.
The law of averages shouldn’t apply to great Kerry teams – and this current crop is one of them – but sadly for them it does.
In no other county does the dictum “you’re only as good as your last game” apply as much as it does in Kerry.
What’s forgotten right now as the wounds fester is just how brilliant a footballer Declan O’Sullivan is and how decisive a defender Tom O’Sullivan is. Still are.
For the second year running, they face the possibility of having to give a guard of honour to the All-Ireland champions on their own patch when Dublin could travel to Killarney in early February.
Retirements? There will be a couple but this defeat will burn within these Kerry players for some time to come. On the cold nights ahead, the last seven minutes of Sunday's game will keep the blood boiled.
Don’t expect them to be so forgiving next year.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/zR2oGhD8974/post.aspx
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