The old enemy.
62 All-Ireland titles between them. History, tradition, rivalry and a fan base that has grown to hate the green or blue over the many years of battle.
The 2015 All-Ireland champions against the 2014 All-Ireland champions. The kings against the kingdom.
Kerry-Dublin. It doesn’t get much bigger than this.
Only one can join Mayo in headquarters on the third Sunday of September though. Who will it be?
Conán Doherty says: DUBLIN
It’s this simple: Dublin have the best defence, the best midfield, the best forward line. Kerry cannot win.
Even in the absence of three All-Star backs, Jim Gavin’s rearguard is more watertight than it ever was. They’re strong, they’re tough and they’re disciplined, cruelly guarding the gates and swatting away any advances.
You can’t hit Dublin on the break anymore, you sure as hell can’t run through them and no matter how many times Kerry tried raining high ball down on top of the full back line in the league final, it doesn’t work. It’s a waste of time. It’s insulting to Dublin’s quality.
Behind them, they have the best ‘keeper in Ireland and, with Michael Darragh MacAuley and Brian Fenton scaling the yards of Croke Park like it’s only a game of hopscotch, they have speed, strength, and steel reinforcing the structure.
Going forward? Christ, do we really need to get into it?
Kerry’s attackers can do damage on Sunday, of course they could. But it’s difficult to see how on earth they could limit the Dublin front six. How do you stop Diarmuid Connolly and not allow Ciaran Kilkenny or Paul Flynn to run amock? How do you focus on Bernard Brogan and not allow Kevin McManamon or Dean Rock or Paddy Andrews to run up a big score on you in a flash of light?
How do you hold them for 50 minutes – how do you even do that in the first place – but then have to deal with subs being flung onto the field in the shape of Mannion, O’Gara, Andrews et al?
Dublin don’t only have the better arsenal but they have the best mentality. They don’t fear Kerry anymore. They actually expect to beat them. Since that epic 2011 decider, they’ve been toying with their former tormentors.
Trophy lift: Stephen Cluxton and Dublin celebrate their All-Ireland win.https://t.co/heVoF5T15f
— The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) September 20, 2015
They hammered them in the 2013 semi, comfortably held them off during last year’s final, destroyed them in the league final in April just to ram the point home and now they go into Sunday’s game knowing that they should win.
Éamonn Fitzmaurice is a shrewd manager who is doing a fantastic job. But if he pulls this off, he should be considered one of the best. Because there’s no logical reason to suggest that they could do it.
Conor Heneghan says: KERRY
If you’ve been following the build-up to the biggest game of the season in the media this week, then you may well have noticed a very strange phenomenon.
High-profile ex-Kerry players, normally the market leaders when it comes to talking down their own team (usually before inflicting a beating on the opposition) have been tipping the Kingdom to upset the odds this weekend.
Darragh O’Sé, ‘Bomber’ Liston, Declan O’Sullivan; they’re all going for a Kerry win, which can mean one of two things.
Either they’re engaging in reverse cute hoor-ology in a desperate effort to boost the confidence of their county men or they’re well aware that they’re up to something in Kerry and have been up to something ever since it became clear the old rivals would meet at this stage of the Championship.
Blind faith it may be, but I just can’t see Kerry lying down and letting Dublin walk all over them again, like they did in this year’s league final and last year’s All-Ireland final.
Against a team as good as Dublin, resistance is sometimes futile, but Kerry are too good of a team with too many good players to take another spanking and if Dublin do humiliate them again this weekend, then it will be just another sign of how special Jim Gavin’s outfit really is.
Ever since last year’s All-Ireland defeat, Eamonn Fitzmaurice has been tweaking his team with Dublin in mind.
As far as individuals are concerned, Paul Murphy has moved to the half-forward line. Marc Ó’Sé and Aidan O’Mahony have been gradually phased out at the back and Bryan Sheehan has been replaced in midfield.
Mobility in the middle eight against Dublin is absolutely crucial and between their half-back and half-forward lines, Kerry have plenty of legs.
Collectively, the forward line now tends to retreat with the intention of engaging the opposition with ferocious pressure between the two 45s.
Facile wins over Clare and Tipperary only tell some of the tale about whether such a system will work against Dublin, but if stories emanating from Killarney about torturous training sessions and Peter Crowley’s broken nose (suffered in one of those sessions) are anything to go by, then they’ve been sparing nothing behind closed doors.
It’s not often that Kerry have to play a game on anyone else’s terms but their own, but they’ve known for a long time that it’s going to take something different to beat the Dubs and I’d be surprised if they don’t have some sort of trump card to show in Croke Park on Sunday.
It won’t be, as rumours suggested, Bryan Sheehan playing in goals, but it could be a 20-minute cameo from The Gooch in the second half. It could be a surprise role for Ó’Sé or O’Mahony in what could be their farewell to Croke Park.
Or it could be an old chestnut, Kieran Donaghy causing havoc at the edge of the square with two of the best inside-forwards in the country, Paul Geaney and James O’Donoghue, sniffing around the big man and picking up the scraps.
Write off Kerry at your peril; there’s a surprise left in this Championship yet.
