It was an insult to Kieran Donaghy too and it was an insult to Kerry GAA.
Everyone likes the high ball. There’s something riveting about watching a piece of O’Neill’s leather scale the top tier of Croke Park and drop beneath the posts. It’s exciting. Anything can happen – or so you’d think.
There’s something mouthwateringly tempting when you have the best in the business under a high ball – waiting at the edge of the square, game as ever – to just throw one up and see what happens. It’s worked before and it will work again.
But the way Kerry resorted to these nothing balls on Sunday during a league final that turned into a massacre was worrying.
It wasn’t working, not by a long shot. And yet they persisted. Again. And again. And again.
The further Dublin stretched their lead, the further out the pitch Kerry players were launching these aimless high passes into an isolated Kieran Donaghy. They weren’t even smart diagonal balls anymore. They weren’t even played to Donaghy, for God’s sake. Just in his general direction.
And, still, it continued.
Every single time, the ball went up, Donaghy went down. He was either penalised for a push in the back, he was lying on the ground, or the ball was breaking to one of three or four blue shirts waiting around for exactly that reason.
After a while, it was just coming out of desperation. Aidan O’Mahony’s red card had scuppered any chance of seeing just what this Kerry outfit was really made of and, as the team gave up one by one, it was left to poor old Star to take the aerial threat to the best side in Ireland and to do so empty-handed.
Dublin sat back and waited for it, ready for it, and, time and again, the Kingdom just handed over possession so consistently that a one-point game with 15 minutes to go ended in a 11-point mercy kill that could’ve been so much worse.
It was as if they had skimmed through one text book in the laws of physics and stuck true to those beliefs that the tall man would eventually have to win one of those balls – it didn’t matter how much they were leaking off the back of it. He was bound to come good.
It was either arrogance or naivety because the tactic – or lack of – completely disregarded the Dublin backline. And it completely disregarded what was happening. It didn’t take into account Dublin’s strength, or their athleticism, or their ability. It didn’t take into account how well they were set up or the simple, bare-faced fact that it just was not working.
All the while, Jim Gavin was licking his lips as men in green opted to roll the dice in a game of chance in complete contrast to the champions’ preparation.
Donaghy grew more frustrated, he was remonstrating with the ref right from the very first high ball and it probably worked against him the one time he might’ve been fouled. But if you’re going to play a chaotic game like that, you have to expect to be met with chaos.
The worst of it was that, for large parts of the game, Kerry were quite good.
Okay, they were still second best but Colm Cooper was producing one of those classy performances that make him Colm Cooper. Darran O’Sullivan was buzzing around and when Donaghy was actually given the ball instead of tossed a 50-50 – or a 20-80 as it transpired – he looked a handful like he always does.
Peter Crowley was having a demon performance in the backline and the rest of the defence weren’t yet cut adrift from the Dublin juggernaut-like attack. Even when O’Mahony’s dismissal saw Eamonn Fitzmaurice’s men reduced to 14, they weren’t out of it. Until they played themselves out of it.
There would’ve been more of an understanding had they just run out of steam but they didn’t. They just decided to stop pumping and, instead, they started pumping cosmic balls high and long and straight down the throats of thankful Dubs. It meant there were no in-roads being made in attack but it also meant there was no reprieve for the Kerry backline and, eventually, they wilted.
You give the ball away against Dublin in any position and you’re going to be punished. You give it away to them every time you have the ball, you deserve everything you get.
That’s the laws of physics. You put yourself under that much pressure against the best attack of all time – which starts from the marauding runs of Jonny Cooper and Philly McMahon – you’re going to buckle. There’s no way around it.
And Kerry got exactly what they deserved because they didn’t only give the ball away, they seemed to actively set up to give it away. If hitting it in high and directionless was a tactic, then their tactic was to hand over possession because after five, six, seven times of it not working, you need to look at what the numbers are telling you.
And Kerry were never that team. Kieran Donaghy was never just that player.
It was an added dimension to an attack that could’ve sprung anything. They could’ve taken you on, turned you, cut you open with a drilled pass, kicked from distance or went high if you weren’t prepared for it. It was a bonus ball that was – and still is – well worth throwing up to test the waters every so often but not when the team is sitting waiting for it and not when the team is dealing with it.
And not every single time.
Not against Dublin. They’re better than that.
And so are Kerry.
