THE decision to play in Austin Stack Park on Saturday night was left entirely to the Glen players themselves says Derry boss Mickey Harte.
Six days after winning a maiden All-Ireland club title, the late inclusion of captain Conor Glass, Ethan Doherty and Ciaran McFaul in the starting team came as a mild surprise in Tralee.
Harte insisted that they had “never asked anything of them” during their club run and that they had joined up with the squad on Wednesday and Thursday night before travelling down. “When it was finished, we let them enjoy a night or two. We just had a chat with them if they could come back and be with us, even just to integrate as part of the group again.
“They did that on Wednesday night on their own for a while and then they joined us on Thursday night again. We left it entirely up to them.
“They were happy to put themselves forward and be considered for selection. I think it’s a great credit to them, given what they’ve put through over the last two years, not just this year.
“To go into a game of this high altitude, they deserve great credit for just even putting themselves forward for it.”
Asked if he had considered taking it out of the hands of his players and telling them to take a break, Harte replied: “We think of everything that we can and we discuss it with them. I’m not inside their heads. I can only talk to them.
“They know what’s inside their heads and inside their bodies and they know what they’re prepared to do.
“Nobody forced them to do anything. The door was open for them to decline or come in and they decided to come in.”
The one-point victory looked a sure thing for a long time until Kerry notched two goals in the space of five minutes, and left another couple behind them as they tightened the screw.
Chrissy McKaigue twice got hands to the ball to prevent Kerry walking it into the net, but Derry gathered themselves up to crawl across the line thanks largely to the late play by Cormac Murphy to engineer a free in front of goal.
“That was maybe the most pleasing thing of all because they were sucker-punches,” said Harte of his side’s response to the goals.
“We were in a degree of control in the game until we conceded the first goal. Then we hauled ourselves back into a good position again but they got a second goal. It’s not easy to deal with that.
“In fact, the scramble to keep out the third goal maybe epitomised what they were about tonight. Anywhere else, that was a third goal 99 times out of a hundred. But they just defied that.
“They defied the physics of letting that ball under the bar and they kept it out. That just epitomised the spirit that they played with tonight.”