Tom Humphries argues that teams don't need to become Tyrone to succeed - and that Kerry and Galway have enough between them to make tomorrow "interesting"
Time changes everything. A couple of years ago Kerry and Galway went to Croke Park and played a little sweetheart of a league final and afterwards there was great happiness in the Kingdom because all their recent experiences in the city had been bad and this league win was seen as a small good thing on the road to redemption.
This weekend the GAA has downsized the league final by slapping it on to the table at teatime on a Sunday and for Kerry and Galway things have changed to the extent that a win for either would be easily digested and there wouldn't be too much contented rubbing of the tummy afterwards.
Let's be honest. Back when this league campaign was young neither Peter Ford nor Jack O'Connor was doing much beating of creaky dressingroom tables begging his men to take the league seriously. And looking ahead, should the year end badly for either man you won't find him standing before his constituents holding up the league final and defying the naysayers to call that anything less than a substantial meal.
This year more than ever, the league final is served as a modest starter. A few balls of melon served in a shiny stainless-steel bowl with half a tinned cherry sitting on top. Ta da! Ate that and ye'll get your dinner.
And of course the ghost at this most humble of banquets will be Tyrone. Whoever wins tomorrow will be judged on how the performance they submit would measure notionally against the All-Ireland champions in full pomp.
TYRONE ARE unusual kingpins, perceived rightly or wrongly not just to be half a mile ahead of the chasing posse but also to possess all available wisdom on how to train through the winter, how to nurture residual fitness and how to present themselves lean and hungry on the first day of every summer.
Within that context the league final between Galway and Kerry two years ago has been relegated from the top shelf. A fine open game of attacking football, it didn't stand up to the Ulster Test. It was an entertainment rather than a serious work.
"I remember speaking to Pat McEnaney afterwards," says O'Connor, "and Pat said it was handbags. The media say it was puff-pastry stuff. It's hard to know what people want."
What people seem to want is to believe the only way to beat Tyrone at Gaelic football is to play Gaelic football the way Tyrone do. In no two counties does tradition interfere with this simple wish more than in Kerry and Galway.
Everything in football these days is measured against Ulster in general and Tyrone in particular. Galway this week have felt their own sense of bemusement at the phenomenon. They finished the regular league by going to Newcastle in Co Down on a miserable afternoon and fielding a couple of the under-21 side, who had lost the Connacht final the previous evening. They played lovely football and took apart a Down team which had looked to be one of the rising northern forces.
A week later they played Mayo in a game heavily freighted with local concerns. The residue of the under-21 final hung in the air, as did concerns about the summer. Mayo, as Ford points out, play a game with attacking wing backs and a very mobile midfield. Suddenly Galway, the heirs of Purcell, Stockwell and Mahon, were playing a style with lots of men back, a style not too distant from what Pat Spillane once called "puke football". Galway were suddenly being assessed on their degree of Tyroneness.
Likewise in Kerry. Even the achievement of winning the All-Ireland before last hasn't been able to banish the dent to the native self-confidence those in the Kingdom feel when they see no great northern scalps hanging from their team's belt.
Down through the decades Kerry have faced many challenges to their pre-eminence and beneath the purist's love of the game of catch and kick there is a pragmatic streak as well. Kerry are expected to do whatever has to be done.
Tomorrow's performances shouldn't be measured against the best of a team who aren't even there. Tyrone are put together brilliantly and play a pattern and a style which suits their players. In all likelihood they are ahead of everyone else on paper. If they don't win the All-Ireland this summer it doesn't stand to reason that they will have been beaten by their own imitators. Indeed there is an argument that the legions who copy Tyrone's style are doing Tyrone a favour. Tyrone have a jump on everyone when it comes to playing football the Tyrone way.
Perhaps they will be most cruelly exposed by the early ball played into space. Perhaps some deep-seated mental fatigue will undo them. Perhaps they'll just have a bad day at the office. Until then perhaps the rest of the country are best to play to their own strengths.
And Galway and Kerry have many strengths without impersonating Tyrone.
O'Connor has spoken often this spring about creating competition for places among his panel and it's a strange thing to consider that Ford has fewer problems in that regard than Kerry have. Kerry recently announced they were putting into place formal underage structures in the county. And without a minor All-Ireland since 1994 and an under-21 title since 1998, that move is not before time.
The Kerry management concede that after last year's All-Ireland final they felt they needed to add four or five quality players to their panel. As things fell they lost Liam Hassett and Dara Ó Cinnéide permanently to retirement and were temporarily denied the use of Séamus Moynihan, William Kirby and Paul Galvin for other reasons. They have had to get on with things.
Kerry haven't played as well in this league as in either of the last two campaigns and are as surprised as Galway are to find themselves in a final. Still, things are coming up well in terms of options. Kieran Donaghy has had a run of eight games in the Kerry midfield and impresses with his fetching ability and willingness to run. His kicking can be ropy but basketball has given him a decent positional sense, which he uses well.
EAMONN FITZMAURICE began the league by being dismantled by Ger Brady of Mayo on a Saturday night in Tralee. While Brady's league finished with his replacement at centre forward by Ciarán McDonald last Sunday, Fitzmaurice has reinvented himself as a centre forward and has brought his pedigree brand of football to a different sphere of operations with some success.
Kerry's defence has been bolstered by the return of a fresh-looking Moynihan and the success of Mossie Lyons at wing back. And, in Mike McCarthy's recent absence, the surprising ability of Marc Ó Sé to perform at full back has added another arrow to O'Connor's quiver.
It is the Kerry forward lines perhaps which will suffer the most scrutiny tomorrow. Two years ago Mike Frank Russell scored 1-6 in the league final, three points of which came from play. He looked, as he had since the schoolboy days, like the archetypal Kerry forward. Somewhere along the way he lost his edge and appetite, though he is on the bench tomorrow.
Hassett and Ó Cinnéide and Johnny Crowley, who formed that forward line, are gone. Declan Quill never came through as a viable big-day option. Colm Cooper continues to do most of the heavy lifting and that will have to change this summer if nothing else does.
In this regard one suspects O'Connor is playing the Old Man River card. He must know something but he don't say nothing. Darren O'Sullivan, himself the son of a fine former Kerry minor, gave Kerry a much needed electric jolt in last year's All-Ireland final. He has been used sparingly since but his sizzling pace will be interesting to see on the hard ground.
Bryan Sheehan will be a big player come the summer. An engineering student in UCC, he was the county's minor goalkeeper in 2002 and indeed played some under-21 football for the county between the sticks as well. When South Kerry went all the way to the county title last autumn, Sheehan was at midfield though and scored four points in the semi-final and final.
He played in the All-Ireland semi-final against Cork last year, scoring two points before being asked to yield to Ó Cinnéide. He put in a cameo appearance in the final but only got around to making his league debut last Sunday. He has strength and accuracy out of his hands or on the ground.
Last year's star minor Paul O'Connor from Kenmare has been with the panel all winter too. A noted soccer player, he has pace and skill and, like O'Sullivan, could find himself getting thrown into games on hot days when things have gotten a little loose and there's a smart boy wanted. Given that he isn't shopping in the best-stocked store, O'Connor has done well.
Ford's league has been a curiosity but a pleasant one. Galway looked anaemic against Derry on the opening day and not much better winning their first point next time out against Laois. Then Armagh pummelled them and we averted our faces.
Now they are in a league final and have the satisfaction of having just beaten a Mayo who were the darlings of the league coverage. Unlike Kerry, where pickings are thin, Galway have the under-21 All-Ireland-winning sides of 2002 and 2005 to draw from as they look to graft players on to the hard core of experience which is the legacy of the John O'Mahony years.
"This time last year I wouldn't have had a clue what my championship team would have been," says Ford. "The team we played in the Connacht final last year basically came together the first time that day. I think we are well advanced on that this year."
Being well advanced means that Niall Coleman has played almost the full league campaign at midfield with a variety of partners, none of whom has been Joe Bergin or Barry Cullinane. Galway will have massive ball-winning ability in that sector come the summer.
Their forward line needs no more bouquets. Galway reckon Seán Armstrong and Micheál Meehan haven't quite clicked together for the seniors in the way they used to for the minors, but come the day . . .
MICHAEL DONNELLAN returned to the fold for the Down game and was a revelation (again). Derek Savage is playing some of the best football of his career. And so on through perhaps the most potent front six in football.
The defence has yet to welcome the under-21 star Finian Hanley to its ranks (he played against Meath in the league and against Cork in the All-Ireland quarter-final last summer as well as in the Connacht final) but Galway's rearguard looks tough and capable.
Tomorrow will tell Ford a bit more and that's the quiet attraction of the game. Two ambitious teams with smart managers jousting on a serious afternoon to see what they might learn. Each team has just about the right stuff for the other to be worried about.
"Galway have changed a bit," says O'Connor. "They weren't standing back looking at Mayo last weekend. The personnel would be different. They're hitting a good run of form. It mightn't be the free-flowing, open game that we had in Croke Park but it will be interesting."
"Hmmm," says Ford when he considers the Kerry forward lines. "The Gooch will score. He'll always score. So long as it's not 1-7 or 2-5 or something like that it will be interesting."
Interesting. It's not much of a hookline to get the couch potato out of his rut, but in a world of easy hype perhaps "interesting" is as good as it gets.