All-Ireland SFC quarter-final phase one: Kerry v Mayo (tomorrow, Killarney, 4pm, live on RTÉ2)
IF MAYO are to make it a three in-a-row over Kerry this year, they are going to have to do it in a setting where the Kingdom haven’t lost a Championship match in all of 24 years.
The Connacht men got the better of Kerry twice in the National League in the spring – in Tralee in round six of Division One and then at Croke Park in the final, but Killarney in high summer is a different proposition altogether.
And they will have to do it without the influential Paddy Durcan. The Castlebar Mitchel’s defender has failed to recover from the injury he sustained in last Saturday's All-Ireland SFC Qualifier round four win over Galway.
With Durcan joining captain Diarmuid O'Connor and Matthew Ruane on the casualty list, his Castlebar clubmate Donal Vaughan, who came off the bench against Galway, looks set to step into the void, with Stephen Coen switching to the half-back line and Vaughan partnering Aidan O'Shea at midfield.
Kerry’s injury problems, on the other hand, seem to have abated somewhat, with manager Peter Keane reporting yesterday that James O’Donoghue, Jack Barry and Killian Young were all back in training this week.
Mayo have done what Mayo do yet again this summer: battling their way through the Qualifiers to Championship crunch time after an exit in Connacht. This term, they have beaten Down, Armagh and Galway following their provincial semi-final exit to Roscommon in May.
The Kingdom’s progress to the Super 8s has been much smoother and comfortingly traditional – a saunter against Clare in the Munster semi-final being followed with victory over Cork in the decider.
Mayo were without regulars of the stature of Lee Keegan, Cillian O’Connor, Colm Boyle, Séamus O’Shea and the aforementioned Durcan when they journeyed to Austin Stack Park in March, but a late Matthew Ruane goal proved enough to see them leave Tralee with maximum points.
Ruane was on target again later in the month as Mayo downed Kerry again in Croke Park to take the National League title. With Durcan and Keegan back in the starting line-up and Colm Boyle coming off the bench, the real significance of this game was James Horan’s men ending an incredible 10-game sequence of failing to get over the line in a final at Headquarters.
These are the kind of omens of which Mayo supporters will have been going to bed thinking about over the last load of weeks and a third win over Kerry, this time in Fitzgerald Stadium, would surely send their imaginations into overdrive.
Kerry, however, should be a different animal to the team which lost in the league and, indeed, the one which failed to find top gear in the Munster final against Cork.
If David Moran is fully fit, he should be more than a match for Aidan O’Shea, while David Clifford and Stephen O’Brien will be expected to produce big performances in the forward line.
But still, Mayo have been playing football with their backs to the wall for a number of weeks now, while Kerry have been kicking their heels in anticipation. Last week, against Galway in Limerick’s Gaelic Grounds, Horan’s men appeared to again have reached peak Mayo.
If the likes of Cillian O’Connor and James Carr can reprise their performances of last weekend, Kerry may well find it tough to find the gear to match them from a standing start.
