Kieran Donaghy and Marc Ó Sé try to come to terms with what was for Kerry a '65-minute performance, writes MALACHY CLERKIN
KIERAN DONAGHY just wasn’t built for this kind of emotion. Depression for Donaghy is bouncing on just one foot, smiling with just the front teeth. His default setting is bouncy, always has been even on the tough days.
None has been tougher than this though. He stops for a moment out of sheer politeness, leans for support on a car parked just outside the players’ lounge and spills dejected words into the tape recorder.
“You never think you have it until the whistle blows,” he says quietly, “but certain games go in certain ways and we had momentum. It was just a little slip then and the ball was in the back of the net and the momentum shifted straight away. Momentum is everything in modern sport and at once Dublin had it and the crowd got behind them.
“It’s tough to take no matter how you lose. It doesn’t matter if you lose by a point or 15 points or whatever. We’ve lost an All-Ireland final and we don’t have the Sam Maguire in the dressingroom. Once you lose, it’s a sickener.”
Donaghy had a fine afternoon, comfortably his best of the season. Wherever he was on the pitch – and he was sent hither and yon throughout – Dublin had trouble laying a finger on him.
His last act of the game was to send a majestic point over the bar at the Canal End to draw the sides level after Kevin Nolan had nudged Dublin ahead with time running dead. Thirty seconds later, Stephen Cluxton was sauntering forward and that was that. Oblivion is never delicate.
“It’s just hard to take but that’s life. There’s people in hospitals all over the country that are far worse off than us right at this moment. This is going to be a tough one to take but we’re just going to have to come back again next year like this Kerry team has always done.”
Marc Ó Sé has now come out on the wrong side of as many All-Ireland finals as he’s won. He isn’t as drained as Donaghy when he talks, not as visibly empty. Maybe when you go through this four times, you learn to be circumspect. It’s not that it’s any easier to take, just more readily stood back from.
“When we went four up, we thought we were nearly there,” he says. “We were still fighting hard but we thought we were nearly there. When you go four points up, you just think, ‘Jesus now, if we keep at this we have it.’ But the goal was a killer and a five-point turnaround is huge. Look, it happened and good luck to the Dubs.”
Did ye relax after the Gooch put ye four up? “Maybe we did, maybe we did. I think, to be fair to the Dubs, you have to give them credit. They really came back and they really came strong. (Kevin) McManamon came through for his goal and that was a great goal.
“You can’t take from the Dubs – we played a very good team today and the likes of Alan and Bernard Brogan are too good not to have All-Ireland medals. They deserve their medals and good luck to them.”
This will pick at them over the winter, he knows that. He knows too that some of the men he shared a dressingroom with yesterday won’t be back to pick through that winter with them.
“There’ll probably be a few people who’ll retire now,” he says. Although he shrugs off the obvious follow-up, we can take it he’s unlikely to be one of them. The endgame here is no way to close a career.
“It was very disappointing to go from four points up with seven minutes to go. You shouldn’t be letting a team back in like that. We worked really hard all over the field and it’s just very disappointing to leave it go like that.
“The second-half performance was very encouraging, the way we came out and reacted to being a few points down at the start of it. We really rallied. I suppose you maybe couldn’t call it a 70-minute performance. Maybe it was a 65-minute performance.”
