FORMER KERRY STAR Seán O’Sullivan locked eyes with Paul Galvin’s brother Reggie during the opening phases of the Kingdom’s 2013 All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin.
It was a Croke Park clash that proved to be a game for the ages. At the time, both sides were operating under new management teams, with Jim Gavin leading Dublin’s charge while Eamonn Fitzmaurice was new to the throne in Kerry.
It was also the first championship meeting of these two traditional foes since the 2011 All-Ireland final, where a last-minute Stephen Cluxton free settled the tie.
By half-time in 2013, there were already four goals on the scoreboard, three of which were nabbed within the opening 12 minutes of the half. There was also a perfectly executed penalty from James O’Donoghue, who came of age in the Kerry jersey that day.
Sitting near the Canal End was O’Sullivan, who wasn’t long out of the Kerry panel after calling time on his inter-county career with four All-Ireland medals. Reggie Galvin was looking on at his brother put in the yards in the Kerry half-forward line.
“When these goals were flying in, we were looking at each other thinking ‘is this actually happening?’” O’Sullivan recalls in conversation with The42.
“Kerry in Croke Park, you’d always be confident.”
Gooch The Quarterback
Despite Dublin’s seemingly impenetrable defence, Kerry stuck three goals past Stephen Cluxton in the first half.
O’Donoghue applied the finishing touch for two of them — including his penalty — while Donnchadh Walsh was also on target.
At the heart of the Kingdom’s goal-scoring threat was Colm Cooper. Normally seen devastating defences from corner-forward, Cooper moved out to the 40 for the semi-final against Dublin.
“He pulled the strings in the first half and he was instrumental in everything Kerry did up front,” recalls O’Sullivan. “He was playing in that pocket like a quarter-back.”
The move for the first goal began with Tomás Ó Sé soloing forward deep into Dublin’s territory. He spreads the play out wide before finding Cooper in the middle with a fist-pass. Two Dublin players converge on the Dr Crokes star as he throws them off balance with a dummy before curling the ball through to unlock the Dublin defence.
Walsh rushes out to collect possession and flicks a pass over his shoulder for O’Donoghue to gather at speed on his way to the Hill 16 goal. Cluxton was powerless to keep out the shot.
Even the incoming block from Dublin’s Kevin O’Brien did little to throw the 2014 Footballer of the Year off his stride.
“If you wanted a move straight out of a coach’s handbook, that was it,” O’Sullivan says, summarising the precision of that move.
“Playing Colm in that withdrawn role was a masterstroke really.
I played with Colm from 2002 all the way up to 2009. When he played at 13, he absolutely destroyed corner-back and full back-lines. But he was just that type of player that could play anywhere in the forward line for you because he had that vision and ilk to open up defences.
“He was coming to the stage of his career where maybe he needed that reinvention and needed to be pulled out of the corner.”
Donnchadh Walsh’s unseen work
Walsh and Cooper linked up for the second goal too with some assistance from Johnny Buckley. After picking up a pass from Paul Galvin, Walsh floated the ball across the field towards Buckley who quickly fed it to his club-mate Cooper.
In the meantime, Walsh had managed to sneak behind enemy lines and was totally unmarked when Cooper picked him out with another excellent pass. The Cromane man was utterly composed as he slipped his shot into the bottom corner to push Kerry into a 2-2 to 0-3 lead.
Again, the focus of the plaudits were on Cooper’s vision and touch, but Walsh put in the unseen work.
“Donnchadh had that innate ability,” says O’Sullivan. “I often heard Tomás O Sé talking about Donnchadh and saying that he hated marking him in training because Donnchadh never stood still for a minute.
“He would release a pass and off he went again.”
“He just glides into that position. I have to say, Donnchadh was a fantastic finisher. He had this brilliant ability to pass the ball into the net.
Myself and Darran O’Sullivan, the only goals we got for Kerry were rifled into the net because we were moving at such pace. Donnchadh was able to just coolly find himself in a one-on-one position and pass the ball into the net. He was able to slow everything down.”
The Rise of the Dublin Superpower
Dublin issued a quick response with a goal from Paul Mannion a minute later. It came from a Diarmuid Connolly pass, which some dispute was an attempt at a point.
O’Donoghue’s penalty brought Kerry’s goal tally to three but Gavin’s side were still in contention. They outscored their Munster rivals by 0-3 0-2 in the closing stages to leave them just two points adrift at the break.
The pace didn’t dip after the restart. There was still plenty of fight left in both teams and they were level seven times in all.
It took another Kevin McManamon special — with shades of his 2011 effort — to separate the sides. Diarmuid Connolly added a point and Eoghan O’Gara kicked a goal to leave no doubt about the result, but it was the McManamon goal that really stung.
An All-Ireland final against Mayo followed where they lifted the Sam Maguire for the second time in two years.
Of the Dublin team that started that day, 11 of those players featured in their march to five-in-a-row glory last year. For Kerry, they were heading for winds of change. Stalwarts like the Ó Sé brothers, Paul Galvin and even Walsh were coming into the twilight of their inter-county careers.
Gavin’s Dublin were just getting started.
“Dublin were at the start of their curve,” says O’Sullivan about what was to come for that team.
“Kerry won the [2014] All-Ireland while being in transition I feel. Fitzmaurice was blooding in a few new players every year whereas Dublin were really at the start of their curve. These lads were going to be household names for the next seven or eight years.
“You’d be hoping that this current Kerry crop of [David] Clifford, [Seán] O’Shea, Tom Sullivan. The guys we’re looking at now are our equivalent of that Dublin ’13 team. They got very close last year, particularly in the first game.
I definitely think there’s parallels in that Dublin 2013 team being the seed of what we’re seeing now. A lot of those Kerry lads were coming to the end.
“They got their All-Ireland in 2014 but they probably got it coming down off the curve.”
This epic tussle will be shown again on television this weekend as part of TG4′s All-Ireland Gold series.
While we’ve been starved of live sport, these classic games have proved to be a huge hit with GAA audiences in recent weeks.
“For somebody who has grown up in the noughties, it’s definitely up there as one of the great games of our era,” says O’Sullivan when asked whether or not this game belongs in a conversation about the best matches of the modern age.
“The scoring, athleticism and skill. It was a great game for showing the abilities of both sides, but it was a hell of a battle.
There wasn’t an inch given, fellas were laying their bodies on the line which was always going to happen anyway. You’ve two counties with a great tradition, two good managers at the time. It was a great game to watch and see your county involved in but it wasn’t much good to us when we were hitting down the M50 with our tails between our legs.
“We would have been playing Mayo in an All-Ireland and you would have fancied your chances. But that’s history.”
The 2013 All-Ireland SFC semi-final between Dublin and Kerry will be shown on TG4 at 15.25.
The42 is on Instagram! Tap the button below on your phone to follow us!
