THE MIDDLE THIRD:Colm Cooper's genius helped Kerry overcome Mayo and if Dublin adopt a high-tempo game they can overcome dogged Donegal to clinch a coveted final place against the Kingdom

A GOOD semi-final win can calm a lot of minds. People in Kerry were getting a bit edgy and a bit worried going into last Sunday purely because they hadn’t had any top-quality opposition to overcome on the way there. It was playing on everyone’s mind going in and it made people nervous. In the end, the nine-point win was down to that nervousness. Kerry wanted a big performance and they got it.

Above all, they got it from Colm Cooper. Most players are just normal. They have to do what their bodies allow them.

I’ve often been in training sessions that were going badly or played on teams that were losing and have heard the word coming from the sideline to work harder and to lift it and get into it. And at the back of your mind, you’re always thinking, “Well feck you anyway, this isn’t just a matter of flicking a switch and suddenly everything will work like it’s supposed to”.

Except with the Gooch.

He’s one of the few people I’ve ever seen who can do that. He can just flick a switch and make it work and when he does, it’s usually game over. No better example than the goal he got on Sunday.

A few things stood for me about his goal. The first was that he’d no right to get it. That ball into the Canal End belonged to either the Mayo goalkeeper or the full back, but Colm got in there and caused enough disruption for it to hop clear of them.

The second was that when it did, a point would have been plenty.

Watch where he was when he collected the ball into him – on the 13-metre line, facing Hill 16, with three Mayo defenders and the Robbie Hennelly between him and the net. Most players would have just hooked a shot over their shoulder and taken an easy point.

But the Gooch wanted a goal to suck the life out of Mayo who had just got one down the other end.

The third thing was his balance.

That particular area of Croke Park is by far the slippiest part of the pitch. From the end-line out to the 21 can be like an ice-rink at times. They’ve managed to rectify the problem with the rest of the pitch, but you still see lads slipping down that end the whole time. I’m not much of an expert now, but I’m convinced it’s something to do with the fact that it’s the last bit of the field that gets the sun in a day.

Go back over the last few years and think of the incidents of fellas slipping at that end of Croke Park at crucial times. Darren O’Sullivan slipped kicking a penalty in 2009. Eoin Kelly of Tipperary slipped when he was taking a shot for goal against Kilkenny in the 2009 final.

Even watch the Gooch’s goal again from Sunday and keep an eye on Hennelly – just as Colm turns Tom Cunniffe, the Mayo goalkeeper slips and goes on his hands and knees for a split second. If it was a road it would be an accident black spot.

But the Gooch is like a cat. He doesn’t fall. He tells his body what the story is and unlike the rest of us, his body listens. The angle of his turn left Cunniffe standing, the balance meant he could turn tighter than anyone expected and the whip on his turn made the space for him to get a shot away on his left foot. He made that goal out of nothing at all. He flicked a switch and the game was over.

Mayo were in the game at half-time, but I felt that was because Kerry did a lot of messing about with the ball out around midfield. Time after time, they took a hop and a solo before delivering it in. You have no idea how much damage that does to the runs being made inside. It meant the Mayo defence had time to set themselves and so the forwards inside looked worse than they were. Whoever Kerry meet in the final, that ball has to go in quicker.

Kerry’s defence had a great day. People have questioned a lot of them, from Brendan Kealy in goal all the way up. But they all played well. Kealy has had a massive job on his hands taking over from Diarmuid Murphy but he’s come on an awful lot.

Aidan O’Mahony had his best game for Kerry for a few years, Killian Young was back to his 2007 form. Tomás Ó Sé came through the hamstring problem he’d had at the start of the week and drove on and Eoin Brosnan showed everyone who’s been waiting for the shoe to fall off that he’s well capable of playing at number six.

Paul Galvin really stood out when he came on. His discipline was very noticeable because Mayo were laying it on pretty hot and heavy.

I’ve given James Horan plenty of credit here for what he’s done with Mayo in his first year, but I thought they overdid the cynical stuff on Sunday. They were fouling out the field, slowing the play down, interrupting the rhythm of the game and throwing in some desperate tackles that caught players high at times. And when Galvin came on, they were lining up to provoke him.

But he just played his game and played it very well. Even though David Coldrick – who I thought had a poor game – was basically sending a message to the Mayo players telling them they could do as they wished, Galvin just got on with it. His industry and bravery diving in for those balls was ferocious and he lifted the tempo of the game every time he got involved.

When you consider that he’s coming in out of the cold without having played a full game for Kerry for a couple of years, giving the run-around to someone like Trevor Mortimer, who has had a super year, was some achievement.

Last week, I wondered how Mayo would use their Plan B in Ronan McGarrity without really thinking about Kerry’s Plan B in Galvin. Jack O’Connor used him to perfection and as a result, McGarrity had no effect on the game.

Anthony Maher and Seamus O’Shea were the two stand-out midfielders on show on Sunday. Bryan Sheehan suffered the same downfall as some of the other Kerry players in that first half in that he didn’t get the ball into the forwards with the pace needed to break down a defence that is trying to clog the whole thing up.

That won’t do against Dublin or Donegal in the final.

The team that wins on Sunday will be the team that plays at tempo and doesn’t let the other side get its defence set. Dublin should have the advantage in that Croke Park is a real kicker’s field and in the likes of Bryan Cullen and Paul Flynn, they have some fine kick-passers in their half forward line who are both having excellent seasons.

If Dublin can play at speed from the off, I can see them getting the better of Donegal.

Tempo is the key to beating a team that wants to funnel everyone back and clog up their defence. Play the game at speed, move it with intensity, don’t give them time to think and look around them to check if everyone’s doing their job. Sometimes you will lose a little bit of accuracy but you don’t mind that in the beginning.

What you want to do is make everything happen at a hundred miles an hour right from the start and above all, get that ball into the forward line as quickly as possible. Make them feel like it’s an onslaught inside in the full-back line. Make them question whether they have the gears to stay with you.

And if they have the gears, do they have the skills?

Chances are, they’re playing this kind of system because their players don’t all have the ball-handling and kicking skills required to play 15-on-15. So make them do everything faster and test their ability on the ball.

This is a very interesting game because it will be so tactical. It’s one to be in the stand for because you won’t be able to see all the moving parts on television. The Donegal half-forward line will work very hard back behind their midfield and I’ll be interested to see will the Dublin half-back line follow them. If they do, they might only clog up that half of the pitch even worse than it is already.

As for Donegal, their first job is to work out what they do with Stephen Cluxton’s kick-outs. They have a tendency to fall back and invite teams onto them, leaving them have the ball and letting them come out with it. But most of Dublin’s attacks begin with Cluxton so Donegal are going to have to come up with some plan for him. Nobody has been able to come up with one that works so far this summer.

In the end, I will go with Dublin to come through it. Flynn and Cullen are just the men to link the play through the swarm of Donegal defenders that will come to meet them and in the two Brogans and Diarmuid Connolly, they have match-winners who are able to perform all the skills of the game at high intensity and high speed.

While Donegal are a very difficult team to play against, I just feel they lack the extra bit of quality to be able to create enough openings and score enough when the game moves up a couple of gears.

Dublin to come through by three or four points.