When Seán O’Shea’s superb free-kick salvaged victory for Kerry over Dublin in the All-Ireland semi-final, it was the first time in a decade that they’d won a Championship game by a single point.
The previous occasion was a qualifier against Westmeath in Mullingar in 2012, what proved to be the last season of Jack O’Connor’s second stint as Kerry manager.
Struggling for form and trailing by six points at one stage in the second half, Kerry found a way to win, as they invariably did in tight games back then.
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They had lost the previous year’s All-Ireland final to Dublin to a last-gasp Stephen Cluxton free, but their previous one-point loss in Championship football was to Armagh in 2002 and, before that, to Cork in 1988.
Before losing to Dublin in 2011, they had come out the right side in each of the previous seven Championship games they had been involved in that were decided by three points or less, with the 2005 All-Ireland final defeat to Tyrone (by three points) the last time they’d lost a game by a kick of a ball.
You’d wonder what impact losing to Dublin had on the Kerry psyche, however, as narrow victories tended to become less the rule and more the exception in tight finishes in the subsequent decade.
Indeed, prior to the recent win over Dublin, Kerry had lost five of their last seven Championship games that were decided by a single score, the wins over Cork and Tyrone in 2019, both by three points, the exceptions.
And that’s not including the subsequent All-Ireland final, in which they led 14-man Dublin by a point and failed to score in the last 13 minutes including injury time before losing the replay by six points.
The reasons as to why they emerged with a victory against Dublin are myriad, but prominent among them may be some shrewd recruitment by O’Connor after he took on the job for a third time last autumn.
In his first stint as Kerry manager, O’Connor added sports psychologist Declan Coyle to his backroom team when such appointments weren’t particularly fashionable and, indeed, even frowned upon, especially in the more traditional strongholds.
Earlier this year, it emerged that former Clare hurler Tony Griffin would be the team’s performance coach.
"Look, I had Tony involved in Kildare last year, he did great work and I was really, you know, determined to bring him on board,” O’Connor explains.
“Now, it's not easy. He lives up in Ballymore Eustace in Kildare, he has a young family and he’s a busy man, he’s an author and he does other work but the lads have really benefited from him.
“He’s a unique way of doing his work, he gets fellas bonding as a group and opening up to each other and really getting tight as a group and I think he’s done great work particularly the last day when we got a few body blows.
“It would have been easy enough for us to capitulate but there was just a grim determination to hang in there even though things were going against us. I think a lot of that is down to the work Tony has done with the boys.”
Drafting in people from outside the county is clearly something that O’Connor is not averse to, with Tyrone native Paddy Tally an eyebrow-raising appointment to his coaching team.
“I don’t mind where a fella comes from once he’s good enough at his job. My first stint, I brought in Pat Flanagan who’s from Waterford. I don’t attach any labels to fellas.
“When I was looking for a backroom team, I was looking for the best people that I could possibly get. I’ve two good Kerrymen involved in Diarmuid and Mike Quirke.
“Particularly in Tony’s area, that’s a specialist area. There aren’t that many people in the country doing that kind of work. He’s an added advantage in that he was an inter-county hurler, an All-Star.
“He knows what it’s like to be in a dressing room and the subtlety of saying the right thing. Another fella who could be good in his field could go into a dressing room and say the wrong thing because he wouldn’t be used to that kind of pressure.
“Just to give you an example, we were delayed an hour before the Mayo game (Galway-Armagh went to extra time and penalties) and that was a tough hour because players are wired up, they’re starting to warm up and then they’re told it’s going to extra-time and they start another warm up and then it’s going to penalties.
“Having the likes of Tony, getting the players together, calming them down, reassuring them that everything will be fine, that’s really important and I think it’s an advantage him having been an inter-county player himself, to find the right words there.”
No doubt Griffin will have been measuring his words carefully to ensure that the sense among some in Kerry that the heavy lifting has been done by beating Dublin doesn’t invade the players’ thinking in any way.
“Of course, there is that danger,” O’Connor acknowledged. “I mean, look, that’s why you have to insulate the players as much as possible from the public.
“Of course, they all want a piece of the lads but I’ve been in this situation a good few times. I think this is my eighth or ninth final and I know the pitfalls that are there where players are in a completely different bubble to supporters.
“Supporters see All-Ireland finals as occasions with razzmatazz and atmosphere whereas players have to divorce themselves most of the time from that.
“They have to enjoy the build-up, of course, they can’t go into a cave for two weeks, but they have to understand that this is about performing on the big day and not getting carried away with any sideshows or tickets and looking after their partners the night before and all this.
“There are a lot of sideshows, getting measured for suits, tickets and accommodation for their partners and all that, you have to absolutely park all of that stuff and concentrate on the performance because, like I said, the Dublin performance will be well forgotten about if we can’t get over the line now.”
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