A DONEGAL FRIEND who has discovered a sixth, and hopefully final, phase of grief has his own theory as to why the rest of the country gets to pay rent to live in Kerry’s world.
He has finally found acceptance, but only by accessing some hammed-up begrudgery.
“The only thing that amazed me was that the Healy-Raes did not nominate Eamon Fitzmaurice for president,’ he addressed his local hostelry recently.
“In 2014, he won the All-Ireland against us by not allowing his half-back line cross the half-way line and this year he beat us by not allowing our half-back line into our own side of the field.
“There are strokes and then there are strokes,” he concluded, hammering his gavel, or at least his pint glass, on the counter to much approval.
It served as his punch-line as to why Kerry are not just the All-Ireland champions, but also back-to-back champions in-waiting.
Others may lack his comical flourish, but our friend was not going on a solo run without support runners in prosecuting his belief.
When it comes to Kerry, it never takes much to frighten the market but, even so, this time it has been spooked to the point that there is a better interest return on a deposit account than in the ante-post odds for next summer.
Eamonn Fitzmaurice. James Lawlor / INPHO
James Lawlor / INPHO / INPHO
Fuelling that market certainty is what the FRC, in which Fitzmaurice – who argued early and often for the introduction of an offside rule – was an influential voice, has bequeathed Gaelic football to much acclaim.
It has allowed the game the space to breathe again, but with the consequence that it is those with the deepest lungs who get to breathe best.
There is nothing new about winners getting to write history, but while the pen is still in their hand, they also get to ink how the future looks.
That’s the thing with champions; success gifts the perception of conviction where once only doubt resided.
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And when it is Kerry, that conviction hardens into something closer to invincibility.
It is understandable, especially when the highlights reel from last summer in Croke Park is a green and gold blur of total football, sauced by the presence of, most likely, the greatest player to have ever put a boot to an O’Neills.
And the fact that it was the trio of Ulster’s finest, perceived to have been hard-wired into a strategic-heavy game-plan that Kerry often struggled against, that were eviscerated at the business end neatly reaffirms that by stripping the game back to its fundamentals, it might as well have come gift-wrapped in green and gold ribbons.
But then the eyes see what the mind is only able to comprehend.
Go back in time to a stuttering mid summer and those same eyes saw Kerry as something very different.
A stumbling campaign – a shellacking from Meath followed up by an incoherent display against Cavan in which the dependency on David Clifford went far beyond the boundaries of good health – and five minutes into the second-half of the All-Ireland quarter-final when Rian O’Neill eased Armagh five clear, who exactly was paying rent to who?
One foot-perfect 15-minute blitz changed everything, Kerry catching flight and by the time they rest had caught their breath, the thing was done.
Kerry’s Paudie Clifford, Gavin White and goalkeeper Shane Ryan celebrate at the final whistle of their game against Armagh. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
The expectation now is that it will be done again, and, most likely, again after that.
There is nothing new in that.
When Kerry got over the line in 2022, their victory was sold not as a breakthrough win, but as a green and gold dynasty succeeding a Dublin one, the likes of which had never been seen before.
It hardly rolled like that, but what Dublin achieved did not so much raise the bar in terms of serial success, as obliterate it.
All Kerry have done to this point is simply remind that the path blazed by Jim Gavin’s team will be long grown over by the time, if ever, it will be travelled again.
Going back to back is a stretch that the market odds – Kerry are at 6/4 – miserly fail to grasp.
One of the suggestions as to why Jack O’Connor had his head turned to sign up for a new term was to do something he has failed in three previous attempts, but if that is true then it is an itch that will take some scratching.
Jack O'Connor celebrates their All-Ireland win with Jason Foley. Morgan Treacy / INPHO
Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO
In fact, over the last 40 years only once – 2007 – in seven attempts have Kerry managed to stage a successful title defence and that was achieved by a noughties team that rank in the county’s heart and mind as only second to Mick O’Dwyer’s Golden Years tribe.
Yes, they crossed the line, for the most part, without Diarmuid O’Connor, whose early season form had him on most player of the year shortlists prior to sustaining the shoulder injury that required intervention in the close season.
Add him to the mix and, in an instant, the case can be made that Kerry have found the margin of improvement they know they will have to find to make a successful title defence.
But what the treatment table giveth, it may also taketh away. Kerry’s mid summer struggles were rooted in the fragile fitness of Seanie O’Shea and Paudie Clifford, but the prospect of something ever happening to the head of that attacking trinity is a fear a tribe dare not even contemplate.
And even for David Clifford maintaining the form – it is a mark of where he is at that we have been reduced to ranking his player of the year seasons – that in the past 12 months somehow found an even higher level, may become a challenge even beyond his reach.
On top of that, lessons will surely have been heeded in how to limit the champions’ offensive threat.
What is certain is that a strategy rooted in defending the 40-metre arc, one which was deployed with catastrophic consequences for Armagh and Donegal, will hardly be rolled out again.
The counter-argument is that teams can hardly afford to go man for man with Tyrone’s ambition in that regard deemed to have been naive in the aftermath of the semi-final but one of the fundamental principles driving football’s redesign has been to take the game down that road.
Ultimately, Kerry thrived by embracing that. It was their driven and at times manic intensity, in not just edging but demolishing the opposition in man to man battles, that provided them with the possession to go and exploit the talent they possessed to the full.
Kerry's Paudie Clifford and Finnbarr Roarty of Donegal. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO
Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO
Much was made of Donegal’s failure to man-mark Paudie Clifford in the final which ignored the reality that had Jim McGuinness gone down that route, O’Shea would have taken up the baton which, as Armagh will testify, hardly qualifies as an act of self preservation.
The issue was not who was on the ball but who got to win it in the first instance.
That intensity was sourced in the collective hurt of a group that had won just one out of four All-Ireland finals, as well two semi-final defeats inside six years, as well as the individual slight suffered for having been cartoonishly portrayed as extras in a one man show.
Finding the provocation to go do it all over again will be their biggest test.
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The 2025 Kerry highlights reel is a green and gold blur - trying to repeat it will be the test
A DONEGAL FRIEND who has discovered a sixth, and hopefully final, phase of grief has his own theory as to why the rest of the country gets to pay rent to live in Kerry’s world.
He has finally found acceptance, but only by accessing some hammed-up begrudgery.
“The only thing that amazed me was that the Healy-Raes did not nominate Eamon Fitzmaurice for president,’ he addressed his local hostelry recently.
“In 2014, he won the All-Ireland against us by not allowing his half-back line cross the half-way line and this year he beat us by not allowing our half-back line into our own side of the field.
“There are strokes and then there are strokes,” he concluded, hammering his gavel, or at least his pint glass, on the counter to much approval.
It served as his punch-line as to why Kerry are not just the All-Ireland champions, but also back-to-back champions in-waiting.
Others may lack his comical flourish, but our friend was not going on a solo run without support runners in prosecuting his belief.
When it comes to Kerry, it never takes much to frighten the market but, even so, this time it has been spooked to the point that there is a better interest return on a deposit account than in the ante-post odds for next summer.
Fuelling that market certainty is what the FRC, in which Fitzmaurice – who argued early and often for the introduction of an offside rule – was an influential voice, has bequeathed Gaelic football to much acclaim.
It has allowed the game the space to breathe again, but with the consequence that it is those with the deepest lungs who get to breathe best.
There is nothing new about winners getting to write history, but while the pen is still in their hand, they also get to ink how the future looks.
That’s the thing with champions; success gifts the perception of conviction where once only doubt resided.
And when it is Kerry, that conviction hardens into something closer to invincibility.
It is understandable, especially when the highlights reel from last summer in Croke Park is a green and gold blur of total football, sauced by the presence of, most likely, the greatest player to have ever put a boot to an O’Neills.
And the fact that it was the trio of Ulster’s finest, perceived to have been hard-wired into a strategic-heavy game-plan that Kerry often struggled against, that were eviscerated at the business end neatly reaffirms that by stripping the game back to its fundamentals, it might as well have come gift-wrapped in green and gold ribbons.
But then the eyes see what the mind is only able to comprehend.
Go back in time to a stuttering mid summer and those same eyes saw Kerry as something very different.
A stumbling campaign – a shellacking from Meath followed up by an incoherent display against Cavan in which the dependency on David Clifford went far beyond the boundaries of good health – and five minutes into the second-half of the All-Ireland quarter-final when Rian O’Neill eased Armagh five clear, who exactly was paying rent to who?
One foot-perfect 15-minute blitz changed everything, Kerry catching flight and by the time they rest had caught their breath, the thing was done.
The expectation now is that it will be done again, and, most likely, again after that.
There is nothing new in that.
When Kerry got over the line in 2022, their victory was sold not as a breakthrough win, but as a green and gold dynasty succeeding a Dublin one, the likes of which had never been seen before.
It hardly rolled like that, but what Dublin achieved did not so much raise the bar in terms of serial success, as obliterate it.
All Kerry have done to this point is simply remind that the path blazed by Jim Gavin’s team will be long grown over by the time, if ever, it will be travelled again.
Going back to back is a stretch that the market odds – Kerry are at 6/4 – miserly fail to grasp.
One of the suggestions as to why Jack O’Connor had his head turned to sign up for a new term was to do something he has failed in three previous attempts, but if that is true then it is an itch that will take some scratching.
In fact, over the last 40 years only once – 2007 – in seven attempts have Kerry managed to stage a successful title defence and that was achieved by a noughties team that rank in the county’s heart and mind as only second to Mick O’Dwyer’s Golden Years tribe.
Yes, they crossed the line, for the most part, without Diarmuid O’Connor, whose early season form had him on most player of the year shortlists prior to sustaining the shoulder injury that required intervention in the close season.
Add him to the mix and, in an instant, the case can be made that Kerry have found the margin of improvement they know they will have to find to make a successful title defence.
But what the treatment table giveth, it may also taketh away. Kerry’s mid summer struggles were rooted in the fragile fitness of Seanie O’Shea and Paudie Clifford, but the prospect of something ever happening to the head of that attacking trinity is a fear a tribe dare not even contemplate.
And even for David Clifford maintaining the form – it is a mark of where he is at that we have been reduced to ranking his player of the year seasons – that in the past 12 months somehow found an even higher level, may become a challenge even beyond his reach.
On top of that, lessons will surely have been heeded in how to limit the champions’ offensive threat.
What is certain is that a strategy rooted in defending the 40-metre arc, one which was deployed with catastrophic consequences for Armagh and Donegal, will hardly be rolled out again.
The counter-argument is that teams can hardly afford to go man for man with Tyrone’s ambition in that regard deemed to have been naive in the aftermath of the semi-final but one of the fundamental principles driving football’s redesign has been to take the game down that road.
Ultimately, Kerry thrived by embracing that. It was their driven and at times manic intensity, in not just edging but demolishing the opposition in man to man battles, that provided them with the possession to go and exploit the talent they possessed to the full.
Much was made of Donegal’s failure to man-mark Paudie Clifford in the final which ignored the reality that had Jim McGuinness gone down that route, O’Shea would have taken up the baton which, as Armagh will testify, hardly qualifies as an act of self preservation.
The issue was not who was on the ball but who got to win it in the first instance.
That intensity was sourced in the collective hurt of a group that had won just one out of four All-Ireland finals, as well two semi-final defeats inside six years, as well as the individual slight suffered for having been cartoonishly portrayed as extras in a one man show.
Finding the provocation to go do it all over again will be their biggest test.
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