Allianz Football League Division One: Derry 1-24 Kerry 5-15
THE result of a game of football is never irrelevant but this was the nearest it’s come in a long time.
Kerry won. Stole it, by their own admission. Derry played almost all the football but having led by five points, they conceded three goals in the dying minutes to lose.
Jack O’Connor couldn’t believe his luck. Kerry weren’t great. For a lot of it they were poor enough. Diarmuid O’Connor fished them out of the hole really with a magnificent display.
Derry played the majority of the football. From hitting four on the bounce just before half-time, one of them a two-pointer for Ben McCarron, until the final bend they were in good shape.
When Conor and Ethan Doherty did the donkey work for Shane McGuigan to brilliantly fire home a goal, Derry looked safe. Paul Cassidy scored from the kickout and then when referee Martin McNally penalised a Kerry defender for running too close to Shane Ryan on the restart, a five-point cushion had opened in a matter of seconds.
Then they got caught.
First Eoin McEvoy misjudged the flight of the ball. Paul Geaney took a risk, stood in behind and when it landed in his basket case, he swivelled until he got his half-yard to finish.
McGuigan kicked a great point at the other end and Derry were three up again. Settle.
But Mark Doherty’s slip gave Kerry a chance that Donal O’Sullivan palmed to the net.
In a moment of panic, debutant goalkeeper Neill McNicholl, who’d done really well up until that point, fluffed his kickout. Kerry were in behind and walked the ball to Paul Geaney, who kept his cool to find the net and win the game.
It finished 1-24 to 5-15.
When the same two teams met at the All-Ireland quarter-final stage last summer, it was a dour stalemate. Derry were in a weakened state then and set about stifling the Kingdom in a slow game. The paying population in Croke Park were bored to tears.
Nobody was looking a refund walking back down the sunlit Lonemoor Road yesterday.
“Mad game. Mad,” said Jack O’Connor afterwards.
“I think we were five down with five minutes to go, so you wouldn’t give us much of a chance. It is a different game with the two-pointers. It is almost turning into hurling style scoring. Just a mad game.
“Obviously the turnover for the goal that Donal O’Sullivan finished was the key. It looked like we had lost the ball and turned it back over, that goal was crucial. We came at the right time, basically.”
In a game of 45 scores, choosing the moments of greatest significance will challenge press boxes as much as it will coaching teams.
Derry boss Paddy Tally did, with some justification, point to a three-point swing when Derry were penalised for breaching the three-up rule at 0-19 to 2-9.
Kerry’s Dylan Geaney had breached it first, chasing a breaking ball. He didn’t get caught. A Derry defender stepped out and up goes the linesman’s flag. Instead of a 13m free that would have pushed Derry five up, Sean O’Shea kicked a two-pointer that cut the gap to two.
Teething problems are inevitable though. And if a bit of ironing is the price of a spectacle like this, it is one spectators will gladly pay.
Tally argued that the three-up rule was “not natural” for players who are used to doing their defensive duties.
The Galbally native also felt that the game lacked a bit of physical contact, but he had to concede that it had its good points.
“I think it’s exciting. It definitely was an exciting game.
“I think the game lacks a wee bit of the physical contest it used to be. Maybe today’s were much, much better. Maybe it’s going to get a little bit of time to get back to use that.
“There was definitely more contact tackles on today. There’s a bit more edge in it but there’s still a little space out there. Maybe that’s the way the game’s going to go.
“We have to run with it. I just think sometimes the game lacks that little bit of bite that we’re used to in terms of just tackling and working.
“The three players having to stay up the pitch is very difficult. It’s not natural when you’re playing an invasion game that you can only come so far and you have to stop. That’s a hard one to get used to. But we just have to run with it.”
There was so much for Derry to be happy with.
Outside of the last kickout, the Neill McNicholl experiment was pretty successful.
The Glenullin man had never donned goalkeeping gloves for a competitive game before. He attacked Kerry’s kickout well but it was the pace and comfort in possession that he added in the Kerry half that stood out, without him ever running the show in an Ethan Rafferty manner.
Having shipped colossal criticism locally after the Tyrone game, Anton Tohill had a magnificent first half, breaking and catching.
But as the game went on, its best player took over the middle sector. Diarmuid O’Connor was outstanding for Kerry, fetching, carrying, kicking. Barry Dan O’Sullivan did rightly beside him. One of the big fears over Kerry is that they might struggle to compete in the aerial lottery that is the new kickout but they held their own in Celtic Park.
They’d scored two first-half goals, poking holes in a Derry rearguard that was still in a mindset of defending zonally and leaving gaps in behind.
But Brendan Rogers, Ethan and Conor Doherty, Conor Glass and in the first half Tohill and Ben McCarron were the players owning the ball. Derry went in leading by 0-13 to 2-5, although kicking just two two-pointers in that period into the scoring goals with the breeze behind them is a concern.
For all the talk of fly goalies, Shane Ryan’s save from Conor Glass was a key moment as well.
It shouldn’t have been. Derry let two points go and in a campaign where they have only three home games, it’s already looking like a relegation battle for last year’s league champions.
About the only thing that hasn’t changed is Kerry having the knack of doing just as much as they need to at this time of year.
Defeat mattered to Derry, of course it did, as winning matters to Kerry, always.
But the conversation in the stand wasn’t of winning and losing. It was of the game. The joy. The excitement. The chaos.
A victory for Kerry and a victory for Jim Gavin.
MATCH STATS
Derry: N McNicholl; D Baker (0-1), E McEvoy, M Doherty; C Doherty, B Rogers (0-3, 1tp), D Gilmore (0-2, 0-1m); C Glass (0-2, 0-1 45), A Tohill; C Murphy, Paul Cassidy (0-2), E Doherty (0-3); N Toner (0-4, 0-2f), S McGuigan (1-4, 0-1f), B McCarron (0-2, 1tp)
Subs: L Murray (0-1) for C Murphy (48), P McGurk for McCarron (54), D Higgins for Tohill (60), D Cassidy for Gilmore (61)
Blood sub: J McDermott for Baker (64-66)
Kerry: S Ryan; D Burke, J Foley, T O’Sullivan; G O’Sullivan, T Morley, Seán O’Brien (0-1); D O’Connor (0-1), BD O’Sullivan (0-2); P Clifford, S O’Shea (0-5, 0-2f, 1 tpf), R Murphy; C Geaney (2-2), K Spillane, D Geaney (0-2, 1tp)
Subs: D O’Sullivan (1-2) for R Murphy (46), K Evans for K Spillane (50), P Geaney (2-0) for C Geaney (55), C Ó Beaglaoich for BD O’Sullivan (58), E Healy for S O’Brien (65)
Referee: M McNally (Monaghan)
Attendance: 4,866