Signs of regeneration abound at this time of year, and often in the unlikeliest of places.
As Kerry fans struggled with what to think of events in Croke Park last Sunday, some good news emerged, like a bright bud on a bare branch.
Barry Dan O’Sullivan played for Dingle in a club league fixture against Gneeveguilla on Saturday. It was his first game back since rupturing a cruciate ligament injury against Cork at the start of June last year.
He was just establishing himself in the Kerry team after almost a decade of trying when that disaster struck. For the rest of the summer, Jack O’Connor found a way of compensating for his loss and the absence of Diarmuid O’Connor, too, with Sean O’Brien and Mark O’Shea the unlikely engines of arguably Kerry’s greatest ever All-Ireland title.
Barry Dan O’Sullivan
The return of O’Sullivan was a timely reminder of sport’s tidal impulse. Nothing stays fixed.
That should be one of the messages Jack O’Connor imparts on his team’s arrival in the Algarve for a training camp next Monday.
Because ignore the excitable reactions to the battering they took from Donegal in the Allianz Division One final: Kerry are not in crisis.
We’re not even sure how much they care about what happened in Croke Park.
Jack O’Connor spoke about the defeat and the terribly flat performance that preceded it with a detachment that seemed to betray his feelings.
Managers who have overseen a 13-point defeat in a game that matters don’t usually speak with the clarity O’Connor did. It rather suggested his emotional investment in the match wasn’t all in.
‘The writing was on the wall,’ he said. ‘The lads hadn’t regained their energy by Thursday night and Croke Park is a bad place to be if you haven’t energy.’
O’Connor could be accused here of making a virtue of necessity, revealing the fatigue caused by his team’s see-sawing clash in Armagh, and the long travelling time involved in that fixture.
But the tiredness excuse stacks up. The league final was the third match in a fortnight – and for both teams, yes, but Donegal had the much shorter hop to Clones for their round-seven fixture.
Jim McGuinness had a rigorous plan for Kerry that destroyed their kick-out but that also created space for runners in attack.
His exceptional team duly ran amok.
A rested Kingdom might not have been able to live with the ferocity of what Donegal brought, especially in the first half, but fatigue played its part.
So did the vacuum left by some crucial absentees. Donegal lined up without Finbarr Roarty, Ciarán Moore and Oisín Gallen, all of whom can be considered starters.
But Kerry had more and bigger holes to plug. Shane Ryan, Brian Ó Beaglaoich, Gavin White, Sean O’Brien and Paudie Clifford didn’t feature, and at least four of the five get into O’Connor’s best starting side.
A rested Kerry might not have been able to live with the ferocity of what Donegal brought, especially in the first half, but fatigue played its part
Ryan, in particular, is vital, not only in the traditional fundamentals, but in getting his kick-out away, even under the type of pressure Donegal applied.
Ó Beaglaoich and White destroyed Donegal with their aggression and precision in winning second balls in the All-Ireland final. This was another area where Donegal wiped Kerry out in the league decider.
Clifford is the man that not only sets Kerry’s tempo but directs much of their attacking strategy. With him in the side, they are a much more formidable side.
And O’Brien, no less than the returning O’Sullivan, provides much more choice in the middle third.
O’Connor won’t lack for mitigation when he and his coaching team pick this defeat apart.
They will certainly do that, because losing a match of that magnitude has the potential to shake confidence in some players, while also exposing others who will drop down the reckoning once the Kerry sickbay starts to empty.
It’s also a defeat that, whatever qualifiers can be applied, took place on a big stage in the national stadium.
History shows that it’s a fixture O’Connor likes to win, and it would have been no harm from his perspective to check Donegal’s building momentum.
But once the final pairing became known it was obvious that Donegal’s need was greater.
Revenge is a meaningless concept given the league decider, for all of the merits of the terrific competition that precedes it, is not comparable to the biggest game of the year.
Donegal were well beaten in that eight months ago, and McGuinness might be inclined to tell his team, departing for their own Algarve camp tomorrow that their account with Kerry isn’t settled yet.
Had they lost last Sunday, it could have threatened to undermine all of their progress of the past two months.
That explains their determination to take the battle to Kerry early on Sunday.
They did it so effectively that the match was done by half-time, Donegal leading by eight but also dominating every part of the game that mattered.
There was no way Kerry were wresting back control from there, and one wonders if minds were already turning towards an intensive week of training in Portugal.
Kieran Donaghy and Jack O’Connor
O’Connor’s phlegmatic take on the loss is also informed, of course, by his vast experience.
Not much happens under the football sun that he hasn’t had to deal with already.
He has brought Kerry teams to glory from darker places than this.
The obvious example is the 2006 triumph. There were three months between the day that his club-mate and captain Declan O’Sullivan was booed by his own fans in the Munster final loss to Cork, and the September Sunday on which O’Sullivan lifted the Sam Maguire on the steps of the Hogan Stand.
The masterstroke then was moving Kieran Donaghy to full forward.
Donaghy is now a part of O’Connor’s coaching team, and his appointment was universally recognised as strengthening a set-up that had plotted a route through three Ulster teams in Croke Park to win last year’s All-Ireland.
Kerry don’t lack for innovation on the sidelines, and when their key men return, they will also boast the strongest squad in the game.
If this is a crisis, it’s one that every single one of their rivals would be happy to have.
Sunday was a sobering reminder that even this robust group isn’t immune to the physical effects of a gruelling league, or the risks of complacency, either.
Whether his players under-estimated Donegal or not, a canny coach will tell them that they did anyway.
Walk easy when the jug is full, is one of the many pieces of wisdom they are fond of in Kerry.
It’s one that will have been on the minds of many, inside the squad and far beyond it, in recent days.
But there seems little danger of the Donegal loss leaving scars that linger.
Championship is the only arbiter of success and failure. And that is understood better in Kerry than anywhere else in Ireland.
