Sport

Kerry blow Lilywhites away

Kerry's Colm Cooper goes for goal during Sunday's demolition of Kildare at Croke Park<br />Picture: Colm O'Reilly&nbsp;
Kerry's Colm Cooper goes for goal during Sunday's demolition of Kildare at Croke Park
Picture: Colm O'Reilly 
Kerry's Colm Cooper goes for goal during Sunday's demolition of Kildare at Croke Park
Picture: Colm O'Reilly 

All-Ireland Senior Football Championship quarter-final: 


Kerry 7-16 Kildare 0-10

SO EXACTLY who was it that suggested Kerry are often vulnerable in All-Ireland quarter-finals?

Admittedly, the Kingdom did stumble at this stage, particularly against northern opposition, over the last five years, losing to Down and Donegal in 2010 and 2012. But from the opening moments of this Croke Park tie – Kerry scored after just 10 seconds – it was apparent that there was unlikely to be any repeat of those outcomes.

In fact, at the end Kerry were kicking scores for fun and running up the sort of tally apparently reserved for when Dublin play outclassed opponents in the Leinster Championship. Goals from Colm Cooper and Darran O’Sullivan, two apiece, as well as Donnchadh Walsh, Barry John Keane and Stephen O’Brien secured an August 23 All-Ireland semi-final clash with Monaghan or Tyrone long before full-time.

Yet while the battle was easily won the war ahead has been placed in jeopardy by a potentially serious setback for reigning Footballer of the Year James O’Donoghue. The corner-forward kicked that opening point and added two more before crashing to ground in the process of attempting to round Kildare goalkeeper Mark Donnellan.

Almost immediately, O’Donoghue signalled to be taken off and left the field nursing his right shoulder, the same one that required surgery last winter and kept him out of the game for over six months.

“He got a bang on the shoulder so we will just have to wait and see,” said manager Éamonn Fitzmaurice.

“Hopefully it is not too serious.”

On the day itself, O’Donoghue’s loss wasn’t felt. In fact, it was a day when Kerry displayed their full arsenal of attacking talent in quite spectacular fashion, blowing a hole through Kildare’s Championship challenge with seven goals in the second-half.

At half-time Kerry led 0-10 to 0-3 and, while it was a convincing margin, they also led Cavan by a similar score at this stage two years ago only to be outscored in the second-half.

Alan Smith duly gave Kildare some hope immediately after the restart with a fine point, reducing the deficit to six and hinting that after beating Cork the previous weekend they could add Kerry to that list of Munster scalps. Two minutes later, however, Kerry scored their first goal and, not to put too fine a point on it, that was that.

From there on, the goals rained in and the gloss from Kildare’s mid-season renaissance following a similarly heavy defeat to Dublin in Leinster began to wear thin.

For Kerry, it was an entirely positive experience with Cooper, in for Kieran Donaghy because of a groin strain, helping himself to 2-3 and proving a rejuvenated force. When the game was actually a contest, O’Brien was excellent, while the impact of substitutes O’Sullivan and Keane, who contributed 3-4 between, confirmed that Fitzmaurice at least has plenty of cover if O’Donoghue is ruled out of the semi-final.

Asked if there was anything he was unhappy with, Fitzmaurice smiled: “You must be a complete perfectionist!” he shot back. 

“Ah, I’m sure when we look back on it there are things we won’t be overly happy with and things will want to improve on, but any time you come out with a big win in a quarter-final like that, you are going to take it and you are going to be happy.

“The lads are happy with a job well done. I think 21 Kerry men took to the field today and I’d say most of them would have done their job quite well. Maybe one or two might have been slightly disappointed, but it’s just satisfaction really at a job well done. And we move on now to the next challenge.”

Inevitably, that challenge will rise sharply. Kildare simply weren’t at the races and looked more like the side that suffered back to back NFL relegations across 2013 and 2014 than the one that powered beyond Cork’s brittle challenge in Thurles.

There was a brief spell midway through the first-half when they reduced the gap to two with points from Niall Kelly and Alan Smith. But when Kerry responded to that with five points in-a-row they laid down an ominous marker and deservedly led by seven at half-time.

Kerry’s opening goal in the 40th minute put them in a strong position, but it was O’Sullivan’s introduction that truly elevated them to another level. The speedy forward has been frustrated by a lack of opportunities as he made his way back from injury but ran with pace at Kildare straight away, opening up vast channels.

He laid on a goal for Cooper, then finished one himself when Cooper turned provider. There would be a second for O’Sullivan who finished with 2-1 and planted a seed firmly in his manager’s head.

“The impact of all our subs was satisfying because it is something we struggled with up to the drawn Munster final when we weren’t quite getting the impact we should have been from them,” said Fitzmaurice. 

“But since then they have all contributed which is great. Tommy Walsh was another man who was frustrated he got no action in either of the Munster finals and had been going well in training. So it was great to get him in.

“He came on and got 10 plus minutes and caught a couple of kick-outs and played a bit of football in Croke Park. So at no stage of that game did it cease to be useful to us.”

Kildare are in limbo now, not quite sure if it was a good summer or a bad one considering the two heavy defeats that sandwiched their run to the quarter-finals. Manager Jason Ryan could now step down – or face the axe.

“We’ve lost heavily and it’s very hard right here and right now to put a finger on why the performance, from the level we were at a week earlier, was nowhere near it,” said Ryan. 

“It’s very hard to say that it’s because of x or y. If it was one thing, then we would have tried to press that button after five minutes or after 10 minutes or at half-time or the start of the second-half. But it was a multitude of things, as a collective we just weren’t up to scratch.”

MATCH STATS


Kerry: B Kealy; M Ó Sé, A O’Mahony, S Enright; J Lyne, K Young, P Murphy; A Maher, D Moran; S O’Brien (1-4), B Sheehan, D Walsh (1-0); C Cooper (2-3, 0-1 free), P Geaney (0-2), J O’Donoghue (0-3, 0-1 free); Subs: BJ Keane (1-3) for O’Donoghue (31); D O’Sullivan (2-1) for P Geaney (42); P Crowley for O Se (44); P Galvin for Walsh (54); J Buckley for Sheehan (55); T Walsh for Maher (60).


Kildare: M Donnellan; O Lyons (0-1), C Fitzpatrick, M O’Grady; K Murnaghan, E Doyle (0-1), E Bolton; T Moolick, P Cribbin; E O’Flaherty (0-1, 0-1 free), N Kelly (0-2), P O’Neill (0-2); E Callaghan, 


A Smith (0-2), C McNally; Subs: P Kelly for Callaghan (43); F Conway for Murnaghan (51); P Fogarty for Kelly (54); C McNally for Sherry (57); F Dowling (0-1) for Moolick (62); G White for Bolton (67).


Referee: D Coldrick (Meath).