All-Ireland SFC semi-final
Kerry (holders) 1-17 Derry 1-15
DERRY boss Ciaran Meenagh doesn’t feel that his team should be preparing for an All-Ireland Final against Dublin – he said that they already were.
Many managers might have bridled at being asked ‘Did you throw it away?’ but the Tyrone native accepted that harsh analysis, answering: “We did. We came here to win this game…”
Meenagh described an Oak Leaf camp in “a state of shock” that they hadn’t dethroned champions Kerry, insisting that they fully believed they would beat the Kingdom.
For much of this match they bore out that belief, and not in a boring way.
With probably the best/worst shot he’s ever struck in his life Gareth McKinless scuffed the ball into the Kerry net in the fifth minute, only the second goal the holders have conceded in this year’s Championship.
Kerry wing-back Gavin White cancelled that major score out within a minute but Derry immediately equalised through Padraig McGrogan.
Over the next hour of play, Derry were, astonishingly, behind only once, for just a first half minute, until substitute Stephen O’Brien put Kerry back in front with the third of five consecutive scores in the 68th minute.
Unfortunately for Derry, that seventh minute score proved to be McGrogan’s last involvement, injuring his ankle in the act of scoring, and Meenagh insisted the loss of the Newbridge man was much greater than outsiders might have realised:
“It’s not just the quality of his defending and attacking. It’s the leadership. I would say pound-for-pound he is maybe our toughest player. He is a leader, so he was a huge loss. That dipped into our bench very, very early. So, yeah, that was a big loss to us.”
Even so, Derry continued to stay in front, producing a performance that reached the required levels for much of this match. Just not long enough, as Meenagh acknowledged:
“I think we got it for 65 minutes. We were very confident coming into the game, we felt we were going to win it, we thought we had the tools.
“When the draw was made and we were coming back up the road, I would say within 60 seconds we had our match-ups sorted, we felt we had the players to take out a lot of their key threats and to contain some of the others that are almost impossible to contain on the best of days.”
Former captain Chrissy McKaigue was handed the thankless task of trying to curtail Kerry skipper David Clifford, who finished with 0-9, including four points from play, although Meenagh only had praise for the Slaughtneil man given the one-on-one aspect of that challenge:
“I thought pound-for pound, Chrissy gave some account of himself today. I though it was an incredible battle. It wasn’t like we dropped three or four players to double or triple mark him.
“We couldn’t do both things today – try and win the game and try to stop them hammering us. We played with ambition and courage…”
He did point to some poor wides in the second half, but this was not a display to crib about from Derry.
“The overriding feeling is that they did themselves proud and Derry proud for so long - but ultimately we did not do enough to get across the line…
“Look we probably are in a state of shock because we expected to win the game. Not for once end did we envisage anything other than planning for an All-Ireland final. We were really confident coming into the game.
“So the reason we’re in a state of shock and such devastation was because we expected to win. And for much a large portion of the game, right up to until coming down the straight, it looked like we were going to win.”
Kerry’s quality and composure edged out a tiring Derry side in the end, sparked by the softest of frees awarded to O’Brien. The Kingdom’s crown was almost dislodged but they live to fight another day, breathing a huge sigh of relief.
