Kingdom again show keen appetite when tested
Late in the first-half at Kingspan Breffni, Sean O’Shea seized possession for Kerry near the halfway line, spun away from his man and instinctively kicked the ball up the right wing.
It had barely left the Kenmare forward’s foot when he looked up and realised the nearest Kerry forward was located on the opposite wing, allowing Cavan to easily clear.
It summed up Kerry’s woes at that stage of a surprisingly one-sided contest as the Munster champions began with unlikely caution and struggled to commit men to attacks.
Trailing by four points at half-time, and with just a point scored from open play, the good money looked to be on Peter Keane slipping to his first defeat as Kerry manager.
An hour or so later, and at the end of the ultimate game of two halves, Keane reflected on a three-point Kerry win that has kept the Kingdom at the summit of Division 1.
“There was just a change of attitude and mindset, fellas started working that weren’t working before then,” said Keane, attempting to explain the turnaround.
Kerry certainly upped the ante and overwhelmed Cavan in the last 25 minutes in particular, though without O’Shea the win that keeps their title hopes intact probably wouldn’t have materialised.
In the absence of David Clifford and James O’Donoghue, and several more, the two-time All-Ireland minor winner shouldered the scoring burden and delivered for his team.
O’Shea struck 12 points and while 10 of those came from placed balls, it included some expert long-range free-taking in wet and windy conditions.
He scored all but four of Kerry’s points and was the one player that delivered a 70-minute performance far from home when the inclination might have been to accept a battling defeat.
“He did alright, didn’t he?” said Keane of a player he managed to All-Ireland minor titles in 2015 and 2016.
He kicked a point or two from play. What did he get overall? 10 or 12 points. It was great kicking.
The introductions of Tommy Walsh, Mark Griffin and David Moran brought to 22 the number of players Keane has used in his two games so far. All three of those players left the field with stories to tell.
For Walsh, the 2009 All-Ireland winner and former AFL player, it was his first taste of league action in three years.
He was stationed at full-forward, a clear move by Keane to provide a fulcrum for an attack that struggled through the first-half.
Walsh only went up for one high ball, and came off second best, but was a busy figure Griffin was the player who put Kerry ahead for the very first time in the 68th minute while Moran won the free that O’Shea converted to wrap up Kerry’s scoring in stoppage time of a game that ran to almost 80 minutes.
Yet to say at the end of it all that Keane came away with a strong idea of his best team would be stretching it.
They welcome Dublin to Tralee on Saturday evening and the home team is unlikely to be finalised until later in the week as he counts the cost of “knocks and niggles.”
Keane, in truth, couldn’t have asked for a better start than this; two battling wins over northern opposition. Kerry were in the trenches for long spells here and struggled to cope with Cavan’s clever variety of attacking play initially.
If it wasn’t Ciarán Brady or Niall Murray punting the ball over from distance, it was Cian Mackey playing clever kick passes in close to goals for Conor Madden to spin away from his man and kick over.
Cavan had eight first-half scorers and but for O’Shea’s excellence from placed balls, Kerry would have trailed by considerably more than 0-11 to 0-7.
Cavan lost Dara McVeety to an injury early in the second-half and missed his skill and industry. They were the ones playing into the stiffening breeze now and with Kerry displaying more urgency and appetite, the game began to turn.
That momentum swing wasn’t initially reflected in scoring terms as it wasn’t until the 55th minute that Kerry scored their second point from play in the game.
But an excellent O’Shea point at that stage did kick start their best form, despite Tom O’Sullivan’s sin-binning, and from there they outscored Cavan 0-7 to 0-1 to turn a tricky situation into two precious league points.
S O’Shea (0-12, 9 frees, 1 45); P Geaney (0-2); S O’Brien & M Griffin (0-1).
C Madden (0-4, 1 mark); C Brady & M Reilly (2 frees) (0-2); R Galligan (1 free), N Murray, D McVeety, C Rehill & J Brady (1 mark) (0-1).
S Ryan; P Crowley, J Sherwood, B O Beaglaoich; T Morley, P Murphy, T O’Sullivan; J Barry, A Spillane; D O’Connor, S O’Shea, J Lyne; K Spillane, P Geaney, S O’Brien.
D Moynihan for K Spillane (35+2); T Walsh for Lyne (h/t); G O’Brien for A Spillane (46); M Griffin for O’Connor (64); M Geaney for Crowley (67-69); D Moran for O’Brien (69).
R Galligan; P Faulkner, K Clarke, J McLoughlin; C Rehill, C Brady, N Murray; T Galligan, P Graham; M Reilly, P Smith, D McVeety; C Mackey, J Brady, C Madden.
L Fortune for McVeety (40); S Smith for J Brady (51); S Murray for C Brady (61); M Argue for Graham (67); K Tierney for Mackey (72).
F Kelly (Longford).
