For a while, Kerry had a half forward line of Donnchadh Walsh, Johnny Buckley and Paul Murphy.
All quality players but all grafters who do their best jobs in the middle third.
Murphy, for years now, has been thrown to and fro between half forward and half back but he seems to have found a home now on his own 45′ and Éamonn Fitzmaurice looks to have abandoned the idea that Kerry’s most logical way of competing with the best was to have men he could trust to track runners and get back in defence.
Now, he’s got a front six who will put this shits up defenders.
He’s got a front six who will engage man for man and force a team like Dublin to worry about every one of them.
Kerry still have big problems in the backline if the National League is anything to go by but it’s hard not to be excited by them too when you look at the possibilities they have going forward.
Every single one of their half forwards are going to need marking and a tight marking job too. Leo McLoone tried to drop off O’Shea on the Kerry youngster’s league debut and he destroyed Donegal on his own. Wing backs will think twice about taking off with reckless abandon up the field at every opportunity if they have to worry about the pace of O’Brien and Burns going in the other direction.
On The GAA Hour on Thursday, Colm Parkinson explained how Kerry’s new attacking shape and philosophy is going to change their meetings with Dublin (listen from 53:05).
Speaking ahead of the Dublin v Kerry clash on Sunday, Wooly pointed out that the new threesome will force Dublin into a rethink.
“A big change so far, whether it’s by accident or design – I’d say it’s more design – is the half forward line,” he said.
“They don’t have the half forward line now that is going to be dropping back and doing defensive work, that’s not their strengths. Now, Mícheál Burns will cover a lot of ground but he’s always back up trying to trouble the scoreboard.
“Sean O’Shea – they finally have a centre forward so instead of messing around with Johnny Buckley, Paul Murphy, all these fellas at centre forward who weren’t centre forwards and Cian O’Sullivan could just drop off and say, ‘you go on, I’m not going to be too concerned about you’ – he can’t drop off Sean O’Shea.
“That’s a huge thing that we need to look out for at the weekend. That’s one battle we will see later on in the year if these two teams meet each other, Sean O’Shea versus Cian O’Sullivan, how Cian O’Sullivan deals with him and who’s the lad who drops off then?
“Then Mícheál Burns is there, Stephen O’Brien is there – they’re two speedsters so can the Johnny Coopers and the James McCarthys or the the Eric Lowndes (whoever’s playing), can they drop off? I don’t know if they can because these lads trouble the scoreboard so who’s going to look after the Dublin full back line?
“That’s what I think Kerry is building towards, six orthodox forwards.”
