KERRY boss Jack O’Connor insists that “Derry are a really dangerous team” and “probably the hardest draw we could have got.”
The counties meet at Croke Park in this Sunday’s last quarter-final, a repeat of the ever-so-tight All-Ireland semi-final encounter between them last year where Kerry only just got over the line near the end against the Oak Leaf county.
Ciaran Meenagh was in charge of Derry then but it’s a more familiar Tyrone face who O’Connor will see along the sideline – former Red Hands boss Mickey Harte.
O’Connor didn’t want to dwell too much on the personal aspect of facing Harte again in a high stakes Championship encounter, but he certainly does not see Derry as being the ideal draw for his charges some have stated them to be since Monday morning’s draw.
Derry’s response to criticism after three cons ecutive Championship defeats – against Donegal, Galway, and Armagh – has made O’Connor wary:
“They were written off maybe a month ago. They were in a hole and they dug themselves out of the hole and they got a huge win away from home in Mayo, which is never an easy place to go as we know.
“A team like that, who rebound after a period like that, is a highly dangerous team. So we’re expecting a massive battle the next day.”
The Kerry boss feels a lot of things were forgotten by people in assessing Derry’s dip in form since winning the Division One League title, including injuries and the intensity of their League campaign:
“They were down an awful lot of good players. They were down players like (Gareth) McKinless, Conor Doherty, Eoin McEvoy; they were down a good share of players. You take four or five important players out of any team and they’re going to struggle a bit,” O’Connor feels.
“Plus they were going very hard at it in the League and there was a period there where maybe that told against them.
“We consider them a highly dangerous team, particularly a team that were struggling and came through their struggles, have all their important players back and have got a huge away win, that’s a dangerous animal in our estimation.”
Kerry themselves are waiting on their training session on Thursday night before making a decision on defender Graham O’Sullivan’s fitness as he continues his own recovery from an injury that has kept him out since their Munster semi-final win over Cork.
While talking up Derry, O’Connor did not do down his own team, expressing confidence that the Kingdom will be able to hold their own against the Oak Leafers’ highly-rated midfielder pair:
“We don’t take a whole pile of notice of that [belief Derry are stronger in that area], but we do rate that Derry midfield, they complement each other well. (Conor) Glass plays a more defensive role and (Brendan) Rogers is a serious attacking threat so they complement each other well, but we’d like to think our two boys complement each other well. We think that we’re more than capable of holding our own in that area.”
As for tactical approach, O’Connor expects a very defensive set-up from Derry in Croke Park: “If my memory serves that’s the way they played last year. It looked to us like they got a lot of bodies back last year and they did so against Mayo so that’s the way they’ll set up.
“There’s no great mystery to it. Everyone thought that Derry played in a different way against us, but they didn’t really, they still played very defensive - but when they had the ball they attacked in big numbers and that’s the way they’re going to be Sunday as well,” he said.
“We’re expecting the Derry who we met last year, who put us to the pin of our collar. That’s the Derry we’ll be preparing for and we’re expecting.”
