Can Kerry stop the 5-in-a-row Dublin Juggernaut?

By Ciaran Deely

* An edited version of this article first appeared  in the Irish Examiner Newspaper on Friday 30.08.2019

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines juggernaut as ‘a huge, powerful, and overwhelming force’ and by way of explanation uses ‘the juggernaut thundered through the countryside’ as a descriptor. It goes on to say that it is often a large, heavy vehicle or lorry. Now this Dublin team are certainly not a large, heavy entity that a team on the wane such as the great Armagh team of the mid-noughties became, but they are certainly a powerful force that has overwhelmed all opposition and everything that has been thrown at them.

The point about Dublin in this mesmeric race for 5 in a row is they can (and have done) beat you every which way they need to. I am personally highly critical of Dublin’s unfair home advantage of Croke Park, but when you look at the stats- like that juggernaut- Dublin have thundered through the countryside, winning in all the tricky provincial away venues that were supposed to pose an insurmountable challenge to a team of city slickers who struggle outside the Pale. Obviously, this Dublin team is different.

They have also continually beaten all the top teams out there. They’ve beaten the 15-man behind the defensive set up of Donegal and Tyrone; the full man on man press and push up of the great Mayo team, continually; the Damian Comer inspired battering ram of Galway; and eventually, the failing dynasty of a once great team of Kerry. They now have this last epic challenge of confronting a team of young up and coming, outrageously talented group of young Kerry. The original masters of the game have once again reinvented themselves, something they always manage to do. The Kingdom have thrown up a new challenge to the Dublin hegemony. This will be Dublin’s great achievement, or great failing. It seems apt to me that they must overcome the new, old challenge of Kerry to be deemed potentially the greatest Gaelic football team of all time. You suspect they’d want it no other way!

Last week I was lucky enough to be away on honeymoon sipping cocktails on a beach in Zanzibar and going swimming with dolphins, when I started to get All Ireland Final fever again! Between playing football on the beach with the young local Tanzanian chaps and going sea kayaking, I managed to grab a bit of time by the pool to read pre-All Ireland Final reviews, but also a book where the concept of entropy came up. In its simplest form, entropy can be explained by the universe’s tendency to move a system from order to disorder. The sandcastle you make on a beach will eventually be consumed by the waves coming in off the sea. The random waves will never ‘make’ a sandcastle for you. A broken egg will not remake itself by the laws of physics. It will remain broken until you make something else from it, or something else takes its place. Order becomes disorder! You can imagine this type of talk is not in Jim Gavin’s vocabulary. But if you look closer, he has already broken up the great Pat Gilroy Dublin team of the Brogans, Paul Flynn and Diarmuid Connelly, and replaced it with something younger, more methodical and dare I say better!

The question is- can this young Kerry team supersede this all conquering Dublin team? In the early years of this decade, Jim McGuinness’s Donegal machine not only adapted their tactics to suit their own strengths, they seemed to rip up the rulebook on how to set out a Gaelic football team up completely! They were wholly successful, and in response, many club and county teams took inspiration from the All Ireland champions and copied their system. Unfortunately for the spectators (and players), bar the odd exception, they were unsuccessful. But exceptions often prove the rule!

Donegal were eventually undone by the Kerry team of 2014 and later, by Dublin who came with a new and improved plan to beat massed defences. I wrote last year on my blog on www.DeelySportScience.com regarding Jim McGuinness’ article on a plan for Tyrone to negate the Dublin threat by positioning all 15 players inside their own 45m line was doomed to failure. It showed one way of approaching the ominous challenge of playing the Dubs. I don’t think anything has changed this year. It is a game plan coming from a position of pragmatism and conservatism. Of seeking to limit your opponent’s superiority and hide your own inadequacies. It can work, maybe, potentially, in a one-off game. If every single little thing falls into place; if Dublin have a serious off day; Kerry perform greater than they have ever done before; if the referee is very lenient on their hard tackling; and if they get a good dash of good luck also. Lots of ifs there. It can work. But unlikely.

In soccer, it is a typical game plan to set up your team in a compact, tight defensive formation. Especially when a minnow comes up against a mighty. Sit back, stay compact, throw yourself at every ball, frustrate the opposition, and then hope to snatch a 0-0 draw or even catch them on the hop with a lightning fast breakaway, or a corner kick.

The ultimate expression of this tactic was on show for arch-pragmatist Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan in the Champions League Semi Final 2^nd leg versus Barcelona in 2010 where Inter played with 11 men behind the ball for the duration of the game and in the second half even preferred to kick the ball up the field and away from their own goal time and time again- believing that they were defensively sounder and ‘in-balance’ without the ball, than with. Inter ultimately won the tie 3-2, but lost that one-off game 1-0. It was only possible due to Inter gaining a highly impressive 3-1 win at the San Siro in the 1^st Leg of the Semi-Final; a game where Mourinho looked to exploit Barca out wide where they were vulnerable and Samuel Eto’o probed that channel time and time again until Barca folded. Inter attacked with intent and at speed in a controlled manner and took the game to a much more talented Barcelona team. Something Peter Keane, perhaps, could keep in mind. The above game plan has now largely been debunked. Dublin have cracked it. Packed defence will not catch Dublin out. They are too used to dealing with that type of defensive set up and they would do what they always do when faced with that opposition. They will patiently hold possession of the ball, switch it from side to side, probing the defence at all stages, keeping the ball out of the tackle at all costs and wait for that little opening to appear when one defender falls asleep or gets lazy. With the quality Dublin possess, they have numerous avenues where they can then pick the opposition team off. The game has moved on, order progressed to disorder, and something else developed in its place- this all-conquering methodical Dublin outfit!

In fairness to Tyrone last year, they initially took the game to Dublin. They even did something a little left field in positioning Colm Cavanagh on the edge of the opposition square for a period- which yielding a goal but was ultimately too little too late. Harte allowed his Tyrone to play within themselves, straightjacketed by fear. I hope Peter Keane doesn’t make the same mistake this year.

Kerry have already tried something different. They’ve placed their faith in youth! Notwithstanding, some of these players are some of the most outrageously talented young players operating in the country currently. In David Clifford and Sean O Shea, they possession generational talents- players good enough to etch their names on the history of the game! Clifford and O Shea remind me of when the Gooch hit our consciousness in 2002 and was promptly followed up the following year with Declan O Sullivan coming onto the county scene also. We all knew these were special talents who would go onto achieve special things in the game. An honour to have played at the same time as them.

Kerry need to be so tactically flexible. In my previous position as London Senior manager, we had our players going zonally on opposition team’s kick outs at times; marking man for man other times; dropping off and allowing them to have it after a fast break away; pushing up and squeezing with 7 players pressing rarely; and playing cat and mouse and setting traps for the corner back to receive and then pounce on him when the moment arises also. Kick outs need to be a range of overload, compact, short, zonal, long over the top of the press and playing out from the back with the keeper. The point being- in the modern game- you need to follow through on a range of tactics, for different teams and at different points in a game. No longer can you get away with being a team that goes zonally or sits back or is defensive or is all out attacking. You are all that! And more. You need many things to achieve this- quality intelligent players, top class coaching, insightful analysis, bullet proof tactics, supreme conditioning, but also player ownership and maturity on the day.

The only team that has come close to Dublin consistently over the last number of years has been Mayo. The reason being that they took the game to Dublin- man for man, but with a defensive structure also. Now the question of whether has a defence capable of hitting the heights of that excellent Mayo set of backs will be answered for all to see by late Sunday afternoon; but Kerry certainly have greater firepower in their forward line than Mayo ever had. And that must give them hope! That and tradition!

Kerry need to give the Dublin full back line something to think about also. After seeing what Tommy Walsh is still capable of, I would agree with some of the commentary out there and play him from the beginning. It simply does not make sense against this Dublin team to hold any trump cards back. The game will be over before you know it! It is the kind of left-field tactic that can perhaps throw Dublin off kilter slightly. In soccer this is the simple tactic of the no. 9 centre-forward ‘stretching the opposition defence’ by playing high up the pitch. I understand the counter attacking game and it’s a good tactic, but you also need a target up there and someone to occupy the defence and make that Dublin full-back line defend.

When out of possession, Kerry need to at times drop back a roving sweeper from their half back line, rather than simply stationing someone back there all the time- it is too predictable and ineffective. Man-markers are needed for the awesome duo of Con and Paul Mannion; which are likely to be matched by the terrible duo of Clifford and Geaney. It may become a shoot-out between opposing sets of outrageously talented sets of forwards. If they match each other- which is certainly possible- it may come down to the albeit seriously impressive supporting acts of Sean O Shea and Stephen O Brien for Kerry and Ciaran Kilkenny, Dean Rock and Brian Howard for Dublin. With this in mind, it would seem that Dublin have the greater set of defenders to negate or at least limit the damage of the opposing set of forwards. David Moran needs a game for the ages in the centre of the park for Kerry, with the potential support of Jack Barry, if they are to come out on top of Fenton and MDMc.

Kerry are Kerry…the Kings of Gaelic football! It is so strange to be going into a game with these two big traditional rivals, with the odds so going against a Kerry win. But as we all know, if there is any team to make a fool out of predictions and to find a way, it is Kerry! They have the tradition and they have the know-how. And crucially, they have that innate confidence that you can only see in a good Kerry man or woman! That is why I give them a chance.

If I am to call it, I still think Dublin are simply too good. They have too many match winners around the field and too many options to go to if anyone is having an off day or things go awry. They have goals in their team through Paul Mannion and Con- watch out also for livewire Niall Scully ghosting in behind early in the game and just after half time, a usual Dublin tactic- and with the indefatigable Jack McCaffrey and James McCarthy attacking from deep, not to even mention having the best player in Ireland in Brian Fenton orchestrating things from midfield, I can’t see them letting things slip now at the ultimate stage in this 5 in a row quest. I am going to go with a 4-point winning score line in a relatively high scoring game of Dublin 2-16 Kerry 1-15. Ill add one qualification- if the day is wet or Clifford bags an early goal or two, then Kerry have got a real chance!

For the day that’s in it, unfortunately I won’t get to be in Croke Park myself to see the game in person. After my recent adventures abroad, I’ll be caught with the day job in QPR for the weekend. I’ll be signed up to GAA-Go to watch it at home in London, with pen and paper in my hand, ready to take note of any new tactical innovations on show to learn and develop my own tactical nous, ready for the next big challenge coming my way later in the year. We need something unpredictable and unexpected from Kerry on Sunday- and especially its star men Clifford, Geaney and O Shea. Without it, 5 in a row history will be made and the Dublin juggernaut will keep rolling on…