I WAS at a match at Lamh Dhearg on Sunday. Afterwards, I went into the clubhouse for a pint of stout. “£3.10?” I said, “that is great value.” A chap from St Gall’s piped up “It’s a rip off, Joe, you can get it in St Gall’s for £2.88.” I’ve been drinking in all the wrong places.

I’ve always liked the Lamh Dhearg clubhouse. Even though I won the £150 in the tombola there one night and Terry McCrudden, who was operating the grinder, said into the mic “You’re not getting it Brolly, you’re rich enough.” They proceeded to do it again, and someone else won it. I stood up and held my arms out wide in protest. “Sue us” said McCrudden. Everybody laughed. He sat down with me when he had finished and said “Sorry about that Joe, come on, I’ll buy you a pint mate.” Which cost £1.20 at that time.

When the stout had settled on Sunday afternoon, the chat turned to Dublin. Paul Buchanan said “Joe, the Dubs are like that fella we had in the club who can swallow anything. He swallowed a Rubiks cube, and when he spat it up again, the puzzle was done. He invited an audience member up on stage and got them to scramble the cube. He swallowed it again. You could see the cube moving down his gullet. Then, he burped and squirmed and after a minute you could see it coming back up his gullet again. When he spat it out into his hand, the puzzle was solved. Like the Dubs. No matter what you do to confuse them, they always solve the problem.”   

Kerry confused Dublin no end for a full 10 minutes in the drawn game by using a high zonal press on the kick-out. But after Kerry turned his kick-outs over three times, Cluxton, and his team mates, adapted. In the space of the next 10 minutes, Cluxton kicked long over the press three times, Dublin scored 1-2 and Kerry were forced to back down. The Rubiks cube had been swallowed, then successfully regurgitated.

It is obvious that Peter Keane and his management carefully studied the drawn game. Having done so, they meticulously crafted a very clever, very different and totally logical plan for the replay.

In the first game, Dublin depended on two things to get their scores. Firstly, that high Kerry zonal press, which yielded 1-2 from play. Secondly, seven fouls inside the ‘45’ which yielded seven points from frees for Dean Rock. These two aspects of the drawn game alone resulted in 1-9 of Dublin’s total.

So, Keane changed things up, and made the smart play. Kerry abandoned the high press, instead permitting the Dubs to kick out as normal (as it happens, they won all but one of their own kick-outs). Secondly, they played a full time sweeper in front of the full-back and set up a zonal defence at the periphery of the scoring zone. The results were – looked at in isolation – spectacular.

Dublin did not get a single breakaway score from their own kick-outs as there was no longer any option to kick over the top. So 0-0 there. Secondly, Kerry defended brilliantly without fouling, with the result that they did not give away a single free inside Dean Rock’s scoring range. 0-0 there as well.  

If you had been told beforehand that Dublin would not get a single free-kick from scoring distance throughout this game, you would most probably have concluded that Kerry would win the game. After all, Dean Rock’s frees have been a huge part of Dublin’s march towards the five-in-a-row.

In their six All-Ireland finals matches (including the replay in 2016) before Sunday’s replay, he had kicked 0-28 from frees, an average of almost 0-5 per game. On Sunday, he didn’t score a single free, his only placed ball being from a ‘45’ with a few minutes to go and the game over.  

The most surprising feature of their strategy was their blanket defensive counter-attacking system. Who would have thought a Kerry team would borrow from the Mickey Harte playbook, but this is precisely what they did. Surprisingly, this worked rather well for a while. Kerry soaked up the Dubs, then hit them on the break, causing Dublin defenders to run towards their own goal with their backs to the play. By half-time, Dublin had been sucked into this trap and the scores surprisingly, were level.

Then, 14-year-old Eoin Murchan went roving forward from the tip off, shook off David Moran, then had a good look at the ’keeper and the defenders, before passing the goal expertly to the corner of the net with the outside of the right foot, leaving the goalkeeper and his full-backs standing there open mouthed like the audience at the Lamh Dhearg club.

Kerry stuck with it, but the Dubs were slowly ratcheting up the pressure and were soon three ahead again. Kerry then had a superb opportunity to draw level, but O’Brien, instead of squaring it for Clifford to palm to the empty net, tried to shoot through Dublin bodies, and any slim chance they had was gone.

The rest was a master-class in winning. Dublin, as they appear to do in the championship moments, began to look as if they had two or three extra men. As they went harder and faster and stronger, an exhausted Kerry wilted.

Sean O’Shea was by now hobbling around the park in the forlorn manner of an exhausted marathon runner coming to the finishing line. Inside him, Clifford limped about, knowing that all hope was lost.  For the last 15 minutes, Kerry did not score, and this improbably brilliant Dublin team strode imperiously to a six-point win, just as John McCarthy had predicted.

For all the fact it was an emphatic win, the game was thoroughly absorbing. Brian Howard has invented a new way of playing the game, where gravity and earth is irrelevant. His catching, positional sense, courage and balance is a joy to behold.

James McCarthy, restored to his favoured midfield berth, was back to himself. In the drawn game, David Moran had given Kerry an attacking platform with his high fetching from the kick-outs. On Saturday, James was all over him, punching the ball away in the air and forcing Kerry to go back into their own defence to retrieve the breaks.

For me, McCarthy was the most important player on the field. Long before the end, David Moran was completely subdued, and his legs had been run off him. Insult to injury when McCarthy drove forward near the end and picked off a delightful point from a difficult angle.

It is not possible to give Con O’Callaghan a bad ball. Again, he performed stupendously. Then, there was Mannion, who was impeccable in every way, and that flawless Dublin defence. We laughed at Cluxton’s audacity, with some of his kick-outs whispering past the outstretched Kerry forwards’ fingers. Dublin could even afford to give Diarmuid Connolly a lengthy, fruitless run out.

Afterwards, Dublin’s assistant coach Declan Darcy said of Diarmuid Connolly’s return:

“First and foremost it was really important for us, the care of Diarmuid. Things weren’t going really well for him probably outside of football and I think he needed football, he needed structure and whatever about whether he was to function within our group or not, to bring him back into the group was the right thing to do. No matter whether we won an All-Ireland, I still think it would have been the right thing to do because we were looking after one of our own and he needs to be in our family.

“Because the lads are brilliant to look after him, and reach out to him, which is really, really important. It was very impressive to see it, when it operated, and how Diarmuid flourished in that environment, and that friendship being shared to him…it was brilliant to see. He is one of our own and we are looking after one of our own, and I think in the context of sport, the GAA is a really good powerful community within, right around the country at looking after their own.”

Long after the stadium was empty, the stewards at Croke Park went into the empty Dublin dressing room, only to find Stephen Cluxton mopping the floor. Indeed…

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