ALL-IRELAND SFC SEMI-FINAL:IT'S ESCAPED saturation coverage but Kerry are on the verge of making history tomorrow in Croke Park – and that's not easily done down there. Should the county progress past Meath in the GAA All-Ireland football semi-final, they will equal the record for the greatest number of consecutive All-Ireland final appearances.
That record stands at six, jointly held by the Wexford footballers of 1913-18 and Kevin Heffernan’s Dublin between 1974-79.
It’s surprising Kerry don’t already own at least a share of that record. For most of the county’s history the province of Munster has been a duopoly shared with Cork and in pre-qualifier times a Munster title placed the county one match away from an All-Ireland final.
Were it not for the famous semi-final of 1977, won by Dublin and an integral part of the county’s six-in-a-row in the 1970s, Mick O’Dwyer’s Kerry team would have reached eight successive finals between 1975 and ’82.
Leinster, on the other hand, has always been a very competitive province but yet produced both record sequences.
Wexford share with Kerry the distinction of being the only counties to win four successive football All-Irelands. The achievement took up the final four years of their six finals. Kerry this year can emulate the finals total by beating Meath tomorrow and winning next month’s decider against Cork.
Dublin won three All-Irelands out of their six final appearances.
Twice Kerry have managed five consecutive finals, most famously when Séamus Darby’s late goal for Offaly prevented O’Dwyer’s side from setting a record of five All-Irelands in a row. The other occasion was between 1937 and ’41. Dublin also managed five, 1920-24.
Tomorrow at Croke Park Kerry will be fielding seven of the side that won the 2004 All-Ireland (including Michael McCarthy, who has returned after two seasons in retirement). That is a high retention rate for a team going for a sixth successive final.
Dublin 30 years ago also had seven players (it would have been eight but for Jimmy Keaveney’s suspension after being sent off in the Leinster final) still surviving from the 1974 All-Ireland. But the team had virtually fallen into the sixth final, just about fending off Roscommon and were not expected to be – nor were they – any match for Kerry.
Wexford’s great run almost belongs to pre-history. The game had just gone 15-a-side in the season of the county’s first All-Ireland of the sequence. Trained at one stage by the Irish heavyweight boxing contender (a status that lasted for all of the 88 seconds of his title fight with Canada’s Tommy Burns in 1908) Jem Roche, the team lost its first two finals to Kerry, agonisingly in 1914 after the legendary Dick Fitzgerald, in the year he published the first GAA coaching manual, dramatically took the match to a replay, which the champions won.
The team came good in 1915 and defeated a Kerry side that included Fitzgerald and another legend, centrefielder Pat O’Shea, nick-named by Wexford the previous year as Aeroplane O’Shea, an evocative soubriquet that has echoed down the decades.
Wexford benefited when Kerry withdrew from the championship in 1916 at a time when the Rising of that year had resulted in the incarceration of so many players that the Frongoch internment camp in Wales was able to stage its own championships amongst inmates.
Unsurprisingly, the county didn’t manage to bring through as many footballers from the first final in 1913, with only five still there six years later.
It’s impossible to evaluate the relative merits of the eras. Football today demands greater fitness and the physical attrition is higher. Against that, modern preparation methods enable players to meet the greater demands and equipment and playing gear makes the game easier to play.
A major evolution with an obvious impact is the institution of the qualifiers eight years ago. This has given Kerry a route into two of the past five All-Irelands and they are travelling the same outside track this year.
One effect of this has been to create a new benchmark for teams: August football. Kerry, in particular, have become expert in reaching this stage of the championship and raising their performances from here on.
As former All-Ireland winning captain Dara Ó Cinnéide put it before this season’s championship: “Kerry would like to beat Cork on June 7th. It’s a big game but they won’t see losing it as the end of the world. The way they look at it, the championship starts with the (All-Ireland) quarter-finals.”
For Kerry’s Dublin and Wexford predecessors any defeat in the provincial championships would have proved fatal to their record sequences.
But conversely for a team actually to reach the All-Ireland football final has become far more difficult because of the way in which the qualifiers re-cycle the strongest teams and frequently the act of re-cycling strengthens them more by identifying weaknesses and possible remedies.
For instance, the contemporary Dublin team have nearly equalled the Leinster record for consecutive titles with a run of five. But unlike their forebears of 30 years ago, they have failed to reach an All-Ireland final – let alone win one – during that time.
Should Kerry win this year’s title it will mean Dublin have encountered the ultimate champions in three of their five quarter-finals as Leinster title holders. Unlike those opponents – Tyrone in 2005 and ’08 and Kerry this year – Dublin haven’t been able to afford defeat and so don’t get to apply its lessons until the following season.
The benefit of the instructive defeat has been such that half of the All-Irelands of the qualifier era have been won by teams beaten in their provincial championships.
In football a little often has to go a long way. Mayo sustains itself on three Sam Maguires, the last one 58 years ago. Dublin have managed one in 25 years. Down have never lost to Kerry in the championship but still have only five titles and have to go back 15 summers for the most recent.
For Kerry achievement is about multiples. No county has as many All-Ireland titles, 36 (including one hurling), and to register as in any way notable teams and individuals have to win fistfuls of medals.
Three-in-a-row teams are regarded as under-achievers if they can’t add a fourth and the great team of the 1970s and ’80s wanders around agonising about Darby and the fifth All-Ireland that never was.
Allowing for such exacting standards the team that lines out tomorrow is on the verge of accomplishing something never before achieved by a Kerry team. And even down there that has to count as impressive.
SIX FINALS IN A ROW
WEXFORD 1913-1918
1913: Kerry 2-2 Wexford 0-3
1914: Kerry 2-3 Wexford 0-6
1915: Wexford 2-4 Kerry 2-1
1916: Wexford 3-4 Mayo 1-2
1917: Wexford 0-9 Clare 0-5
1918: Wexford 0-5 Tipperary 0-4
DUBLIN 1974-1979
1974: Dublin 0-14, Galway 1-6
1975: Kerry 2-12 Dublin 0-11
1976: Dublin 3-8 Kerry 0-10
1977: Dublin 5-12 Armagh 3-6
1978: Kerry 5-11 Dublin 0-9
1979: Kerry 3-13 Dublin 1-8
KERRY 2004-2009?
2004: Kerry 1-20 Mayo 2-9
2005: Tyrone 1-16 Kerry 2-10
2006: Kerry 4-15 Mayo 3-5
2007: Kerry 3-13 Cork 1-9
2008: Tyrone 1-15 Kerry 0-14
2009: ?
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