AS THE CAMERAS panned around the pitch soon after the final whistle, they came to rest on a clearly aggrieved Derry forward, Shane McGuigan.
The Slaughtneil man had been instructed about the final play of the game by referee Joe McQuillan. He knew the deal. Lob it in and hope that Conor Glass could use his vertical jump to good effect.
But he just put too much juice on it and the ball carried over the bar. McGuigan was shattered as the Kerry players celebrated making it to the All-Ireland final.
Had McGuigan been targeted for multiple late hits and high tackles? He was. And here’s the thing; that’s what it is at the very top level. There is no use complaining. Other teams who have come from relative obscurity to stick a spike in with the summit in sight, have discovered that the elbows arrive that little bit sharper up there.
With 38 titles, it’s little wonder that Kerry are market leaders not only in terms of how many times the All-Ireland has wintered there, but also the methods of how it got there.
In general, they have always been sharp at spotting trends coming towards them and taking action.
The 1930 All-Ireland final between Kerry and Monaghan was described at the time as the final battle of the Civil War. Kerry’s team was stacked with numerous IRA men, including the head of the Kerry IRA in John Joe Sheehy, while Monaghan had a number of Free State Army men.
Kerry walloped the Ulster side on the scoreboard, but afterwards, the Monaghan county board protested against ‘The brutality’ of Kerry’s play.
At a meeting of Central Council in December, the Monaghan delegate objected to the result, claiming the match resembled, “A Spanish bull-fight.”
On then, to the 1946 All-Ireland semi-final, when Antrim emerged as the opposition. They had refined and reinvented the game on their own terms, with a fast style depending heavily on the hand pass.
Prior to the game, the speculation was how Kerry might cope with this. They had the answer, by pulling and dragging down any player who made a pass, so that they could not go for the return.
Antrim scored ten points, seven of them from frees. Afterwards, the Kerry defenders admitted their intentions were premeditated.
You get the picture. The trauma inflicted upon them by Tyrone’s game-changing All-Ireland semi-final in 2003 prompted incoming Kerry boss Jack O’Connor to meet with the late John Morrison of Armagh to gain a greater understanding of the latest coaching trends.
Outside of Donegal in 2012, they have seldom been beaten with an innovation that was completely foreign to them since.
Where Derry folk will smart though, is how this is sometimes painted.
In 2014, Kerry manager Eamonn Fitzmaurice handed a role to Aidan O’Mahony to follow Donegal captain Michael Murphy all over the field, and not to worry about the football. Work the body, instead.
And while all is fair in love and war, this move was described by those that fall into fawning mode, as being ‘cute.’
Eight months later and Tyrone’s Justin McMahon did the exact same thing to Murphy at a rainswept Ballybofey in the preliminary round of the Ulster championship and the usual ‘typical Ulster football’ accusations followed.
Back to the game.
In the RTÉ studio, Sean Cavanagh pointed to a couple of late decisions by McQuillan, questioning how they could have gone the way of Kerry.
“I would say they were incredibly soft,” he said. The comment needs to be qualified by the understanding that Tyrone men aren’t given to much charity towards Derry.
Certainly, the bringing back of the ball for a dubious foul on Shane O’Brien will be on a loop in Derry.
The incident where Kerry goalkeeper Shane Ryan turns his hip into Shane McGuigan at head height was reckless and had no regard for McGuigan’s safety. The odd thing was that Sean Hurson, the Tyrone referee, gave a free for Dublin the night before when Gary Mohan raised his knee when rising to catch a ball. Mohan carried a fraction of the risk.
So Kerry are back in the final again, this time as champions. As Darragh Ó Sé said only this week, ‘In my experience playing semi-finals with Kerry, the attitude among the players is to win it pretty or win it ugly. It doesn’t matter.’
In the last two games, Kerry’s aggression levels have been off the charts. In some ways you can understand how they cowed Tyrone. There was a serious history there from 2021.
Derry are different. They have been out of sight and out of mind for Kerry for almost a decade as they began their long slide down the divisions and gradual rise again. And yet, they played like a team that had been slighted.
For all their progress and sophistication, Derry have a few bald spots. Odhran Lynch was blocked down twice trying to take shots in open play. In attack, there are too many of the supporting cast who are doing some sort of a job; but mainly they are watching Brendan Rogers, Lynch, Conor Glass, Gareth McKinless and Shane McGuigan getting on with business of trying to get scores on the board.
The good news for them is that their conveyor belt is brimming with emerging talent and their current age profile is favourable.
For Kerry, it was a good day to win ugly. There’s was an even more desperate scramble than Dublin’s the previous night, but there was still a great measure of control all the same.
On the hour mark, they were two points down. The introduction of Stephen O’Brien, Brian Ó Beagláioch and Micheál Burns had the desired effect. They scored five points to Derry’s final act of the game.
They got there. Kerry V Dublin again. It’s all that matters.