In the end, I’d say Pádraic Joyce was happy enough with how the weekend went. Whatever about Galway losing to Dublin on Saturday, he surely had his opening line ready for the next time his panel got together: “It could be worse, lads – we could be Mayo!”
Hard games stand to good teams. Galway have had two on the trot now and they’ve played some great stuff at times and made loads of mistakes at other times. They won one by the kick of a ball and lost the other by the kick of a ball. My feeling is that losing to Dublin will do them more good in the long run than beating Mayo.
This is the time of the year to get battle-hardened. The All-Ireland will be decided by three games in four weeks between the end of June and the end of July. You can’t fake it at that point. It’s not like cramming for an exam the night before. Especially in a year like this when there are so many teams at such a similar level.
When the Dubs were in their pomp, it was a different story. They only needed to be at full pelt for a couple of games a season. There were two reasons for this: one, they were so far ahead of everyone, with the deepest squad. Two, they had eight weeks between the All-Ireland quarter-final and the final, giving them plenty of space to play hot and heavy A v B games.
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That used to suit us with Kerry too. I remember one year we brought Brian White down to Páirc Uí Chaoimh to referee an A v B game and I’m fairly sure he was more or less told to leave his whistle in the car. We tore into each other, with barely a free given in the whole evening and we walked off the pitch knowing that we had sharpened each other up no end. I’d say Brian went back up the road thinking these lads hate each other, there’s no way they’re winning any All-Ireland.
I don’t think any team has the luxury of being able to rely on those kinds of games now. When you get to the latter stages of the championship this year, you have no time for clipping the lugs off each other in A v B games. If you win your quarter-final, you have a couple of days of recovery, a couple of tactical sessions and walk-throughs and that’s about it.
Go back to last year’s semi-finals. Both of them were dead level coming down the stretch but Kerry and Donegal faded out of it and Armagh and Galway powered on to the final. I don’t think it was any coincidence that the two teams who came through were the ones who’d had the toughest road.
Donegal had gone six weeks without being involved in a close game by the time they met Galway. Kerry hardly broke sweat in the championship at all – you’d call the quarter-final against Derry sticky rather than anything more ferocious. When it came to the crunch, they both ran out of gas.
I went to Kerry‘s game against Roscommon on Saturday and to me, it nearly looked like the Rossies had decided to keep their powder dry for the games against Cork and Meath. The word around Kerry was that they had been very good against Tyrone in a challenge match, but I was sitting watching them and asking: “Says who? I’d love to meet the fellah who said that. Get the CIA or the KGB on this thing because if this crowd were very good against Tyrone, then Tyrone are in trouble.”
They put up no sort of fight in Killarney. Ultimately, this isn’t going to be any good to Kerry. I know that’s going to sound like a Kerryman being cute but that’s genuinely how I see it. Kerry have won one of the past 10 All-Irelands – there’s nothing cute about that kind of record. In reality, Kerry keep getting found out when it matters most.
You need these tough games and you need them now. You need to have your cracks exposed and to find out where your weaknesses are so you can go and work on them. Kerry‘s two toughest games have been a league final against Mayo in Croke Park and a big test below in Cork. But the league final was in March and the Cork game was in the middle of April. If Kerry are in the last 10 minutes of an All-Ireland semi-final in early July, a wet night in Páirc Uí Chaoimh in April isn’t going to be much good to them.
So when you hear fellas saying Kerry must be laughing at all these other counties killing each other, I honestly think it might be the other way around. Obviously, you don’t want to be going full-bore every day but some of these games are worth their weight in gold.
Galway, Dublin, Armagh, Donegal – these teams have all been stress-tested in high-pressure situations in the past few weekends. They know where they stand. They know who’s up to it when the heat really comes on. More to the point, they know who isn’t. Kerry have a fair idea but they don’t know for sure. And by the time they find out, it might be too late.
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It’s a first-world problem, as they say. And I know that if you were a Dublin or Galway player with your hands on your knees and your tongue hanging out in Salthill last Saturday, you’d be thinking that a nice stroll around Killarney against the Rossies would be very welcome just at that moment.
But when it comes right down to it in the heat of an All-Ireland semi-final or final, I know which one I’d be happier to have in the bank.
