Kerry have a long history of finding a way. They weren’t always leaders, they weren’t always innovators: they didn’t always have the best players. That didn’t always stop them. For generations there are two things which Kerry have done more prodigiously than any other county: produce beautiful footballers and produce winning teams. What they have always known, too, is that these processes do not necessarily follow in sequence.
Kerry football is the subject of much romanticism — a lot of it generated by fawning outsiders — but they couldn’t have won so much for such a long time if they weren’t arch-pragmatists. Style has always mattered to Kerry people but not as much as winning. For the 2014 All-Ireland final against Donegal, for example, they mutated into a shape and a mode of playing that was a violent departure from their norm.
If they had lost the Kerry public would have swooned because Kerry had effectively agreed to play Donegal at their own game; victory, though, is the scent that masks every odour.
Think back to the beginning of the last decade when Tyrone smothered them with a blanket defence and rabid aggression in the 2003 All-Ireland semi-final and, for a couple of years, Kerry characterised themselves as the curators of football’s core values and goodness. By the end of the decade — by which time Tyrone had beaten them three times in Croke Park — Kerry had tranquillised their conscience about massing 10 or 11 players inside their 45 when the need arose. Gaelic football had changed again and Kerry realised that they needed to find a way of being champions at the new game.
The problem now for Kerry, though, is terrifyingly different. Dublin are not empowered by a certain system of play, like Donegal were at their peak a couple of years ago; they’re not empowered by innovation, like Tyrone were when they first emerged. The architecture of Dublin’s superiority would be familiar to every Kerry follower because here is a team in the image of brilliant Kerry teams from the past: bloody good footballers and supreme athletes with a cold lust for winning.
It was natural to believe that Kerry’s need to win was greater than Dublin’s last Sunday. So what? Over the decades how many teams with apparently more pressing needs were wiped out by Kerry: just because they could and just because they were of a mind to do so. They didn’t need a special cause or mission: winning was their renewable energy. Mick O’Dwyer’s Kerry built an empire on that mentality. There were a couple of games every year that set their hearts racing but most of all they won in cold blood. This Dublin team are in that position now.
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Kerry don’t have better footballers than Dublin right now and they don’t have better athletes. In modern Gaelic football and hurling there is so much emphasis on explosiveness: Dublin have a roster of players with that quality; Kerry have a handful. In the new Croke Park that quality or its absence is magnified.
So, what are Kerry going to do?
When Eamonn Fitzmaurice first emerged as a selector under Jack O’Connor his key brief was video analysis. His task was to deconstruct other teams and help shape Kerry’s response. Dublin must have weaknesses. Fitzmaurice and his management team must have believed they found a couple before the All-Ireland final September and again before last Sunday. But how big are these weaknesses that the layman can’t see? And do Kerry have the players to exploit them? As Kerry manager, Fitzmaurice has developed a reputation for ruthlessness. His team selections were fluid and match-specific. Big names and established players were omitted as he deemed necessary. By the end of last summer it was hard imagine a scenario in which Marc O’Se and probably Aidan O’Mahony would start a big game in Croke Park again; Kieran Donaghy’s future seemed to be as an impact sub, if Donaghy would call that a future. Yet, there they were last Sunday. There were no howls of protest in Kerry when those players were named.
In his man-marking prime Marc O’Se privately expressed the view that holding Bernard Brogan to three points was always a reasonable outcome; Brogan scored four points last Sunday and there was nothing in the game from which O’Se could take comfort. Nothing corrodes like time. In 2013 Fionn Fitzgerald was able to manage Ciaran Kilkenny; last Sunday he couldn’t.
To whom do Kerry turn? Of the injured players, James O’Donoghue and probably Johnny Buckley have most to offer. From the minor teams that won the last two All-Irelands nobody is ready yet. Jonathan Lyne has pace, the commodity that Kerry seemed to lack most last Sunday but he has evidently not convinced Fitzmaurice over the last two-and-a-half years.
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And Tommy Walsh? It is no surprise that he has quit the panel and, equally, it is no surprise that he played no part last Sunday. The Tommy Walsh of 2009 would be a pivotal player for Kerry now; but for various physical reasons that player no longer exists.
He kicked eight points for Kerins O’Rahillys recently in a senior League match but that level of the game is incomparable to playing Dublin in Croke Park. In 16 months he hasn’t done enough. Kerry will need to look for solutions elsewhere.
Will they find them? That will be one of the stories of the summer. It is deep-grained in their nature to find a way.