Green and gold to light up Croke Park

GAELIC GAMES:JOURNALISM MAY be the first draft of history but most drafts get thrown away. Current events can only be judged historic by posterity and so the impact of tomorrow's GAA All-Ireland football final between Dublin and Kerry will take time to establish.

This can be hard on Kerry who may bridle at the way Dublin’s victories are acclaimed as great contests – the 1977 All-Ireland semi-final and the NFL final of 10 years later – but that’s simply a reflection of their rarity and what is seldom is wonderful.

Tomorrow is the first final between the counties who constitute football’s most regular All-Ireland opponents in 26 years. It is, curiously, the first one in 56 years in which neither county are defending champions. This may have relevance given that the hurling final of two weeks ago and its immediate predecessor featured relatively anaemic displays by the outgoing champions.

Even Kerry, maybe as a reflection of the competitiveness of the football championship, have won only one of their most recent six All-Irelands as holders and lost the last two finals they went into as champions.

All of which isn’t great news for Dublin. A young team with momentum will always prefer opposition to be somewhat sated by success and Kerry this weekend have turned around a remarkable eight players since their last final two years ago.

Yesterday Dublin like Kerry named an unchanged team but also like their opponents they have a fitness question mark over one player, wing forward Paul Flynn whose hamstring injury in the semi-final always looked long odds to heal fully in three weeks.

Kerry’s Eoin Brosnan, the latest of the team’s retreaded centre backs, awaits a final fitness test with anxiety over his ankle injury.

Hard as it would be on the Dr Croke’s player, his team look better equipped to deal with the absence than Dublin would be in the case of Flynn whose work-rate and developing football acumen have been an integral part of the Leinster champions’ game plan.

Leaving aside the imponderables, what do we actually know?

Both sides have had mixed experiences in the championship, combining the humdrum with the spectacular and they can validly claim to have played the best football of the championship – Kerry against Cork and at times in the second half against Mayo and Dublin throughout the All-Ireland quarter-final defeat of Tyrone.

Kerry haven’t been tested particularly thoroughly apart from the second half against Cork but a team with that level of experience doesn’t for the most part have to answer fundamental questions about itself.

They know their way around Croke Park on All-Ireland day and for the most part have enjoyed positive experiences.

Dublin are recidivist victims of Kerry and there are no survivors of the most competitive recent meeting, the draw and replay of 10 years ago, but plenty from the annihilation of 2009 even if many are deployed in different positions.

That will place a burden on Dublin’s psyche, leaving them vulnerable to early blows and late pressure. There’s a great deal to admire about how Pat Gilroy has reshaped the team and its challenge to bring them farther than anyone has managed in 16 years.

But there were unmistakeable signs of breakdown at the end of the first half of the Donegal ordeal.

That they recovered and reached the final despite such mental pressures is a positive but owes something to the opposition’s crippling lack of ambition.

Looked at positively, Dublin will hope to establish the high-tempo they sustained against Tyrone (a performance that like tomorrow followed another poor display, the Leinster final against Wexford) and there is evidence that Kerry share Tyrone’s vulnerabilities at the back.

The chances of keeping that going for 70 minutes won’t be helped if Flynn doesn’t make it but, if it can be managed, Kerry will struggle.

Dublin have a young, fearless defence of intelligent footballers, who will bear the Kerry baggage more lightly than their predecessors two years ago but how do you mark Colm Cooper when he’s in the zone, as he was against Mayo or Declan O’Sullivan who’s likely to recover the form of his season up until the semi-final.

Darran O’Sullivan is having his best season at wing forward and so without asking too much of the others, Kerry have more firepower than anything Dublin have faced so far.

Once they dropped the predictable barrage of high ball into Kieran Donaghy during the sides’ league meeting in February, Kerry caused huge problems with a more varied attacking plan.

They also have a range of man markers at the back. Marc Ó Sé is sufficiently formidable to pose a major threat to Bernard Brogan whereas Killian Young will happily track Alan Brogan all day and on Diarmuid Connolly, Tom O’Sullivan has the pace and evil aura of a man who’s ruined All-Ireland day for corner forwards in the past.

Dublin have to pose questions and do so early if that defence, over 30 as they may be on average, is fundamentally to doubt its karma. They also need to be on the mark quickly and put up a score that gives their backs a chance of defending.

And, crucially, that will mean scoring goals, the flow of which has dried up recently.

Centrefield is an area that could cause problems for the favourites.

Bryan Sheehan was quickly moved out of the middle when playing in the league match and although he’s a super footballer, doubt persists about how well the new role suits him – like a professor of engineering science put to work on a building site.

Kerry are also short of options here with David Moran’s cruciate removing him until 2012 and both Brosnan, who’s played in the middle in a final, and Séamus Scanlon fighting injury and Kieran Donaghy not the sort of box-to-box centrefielder required against Dublin.

It leaves a big responsibility on Anthony Maher starting his first final.There are competing scenarios offering comfort to both counties but the ones that need less imagination are coloured green and gold.