The 16th Man

A goal on the 51 seconds mark from Mark Poland for Down set the tone for the rain soaked Saturday afternoon in Croke Park. All day Down fans travelled in vain hope that they might put up a competitive performance to build on for next year. The goliath’s of Kerry travelled in anticipation that they would eventually wriggle off the challenge of Down in what seemed a run of the mill game for Kerry, but history had been and was on Down’s side amazingly enough.

The win on Saturday meant that the hold Down had over Kerry continued and it seemed to be in the mind of the Down players from the very start with inspirational performances from men like Down number 8, Ambrose Rodgers, who began the game like a man out to prove a point. The question of whether the Kerry midfield could cope with the loss of the astounding Darragh O’Se was laid to the midfield of Michael Quirke and Seamus Scanlon and it was answered by Jack O Connor who duly whipped them off when he saw the ship was sinking.

The match itself proved to be intriguing, surprisingly a little one-sided in favour of Down for most of it, but when Kerry played they put Down under huge pressure. A man who seemed to buy into the nerves that had set onto the Kerry players was their captain and their marksman number 15, Bryan Sheehan, who attained 5 wides by the 15th minute. In fact it took Kerry that length of time to register their first score but by then Down had racked up 1-3 and the Mourne men and women who had travelled in their thousands began to believe that a surprise result go could go in their favour.

Down designed their game plan right from the back by trying to eliminate the aerial threat of Kieran “Star” Donaghy by throwing Down’s shining star for so many years, big Dan Gordon, onto him. Unfortunately for the Kerry contingent packed into Croke Park yesterday, Donaghy never really got ahead of his marker so much so that in the 2nd half Jack O’Connor was forced to move Kieran out.

Down’s bright start came as a shock to many, but in the warm up manager James McCartan seemed to instill his players to work very hard from minute one by using the ball to their advantage. The main three behind this were centre half forward Mark Poland, left half forward Paul McComiskey and corner forward Martin Clarke. These three pulled the strings for Down and caused untold damage to what looked like a brittle Kerry back 6. The goal itself came from a long ball into the corner that was ultimately flicked on into the path of Poland who duly stuck into high above Kerry rookie goalkeeper Brendan Kealy’s head.

That was the dream start that Down had wanted and they had set the next quarter of an hour trying to do something that many teams do when they come up against Kerry, they tried not to relinquish the lead.  Kerry tried to put pressure on Down by enacting their blanket defence but the perplexed Kerry management were two steps behind the Down management at all times.

But on days like this teams who win will need the rub of the green and the first sight of that was the disallowed goal that Kerry were full sure was a legit goal. The referee, Cavan man Joe McQuillan, judged that Donnacha Walsh’s handpass just before the goal to the oncoming Killian Young was illegal and Kerry people began to feel that today was not their day.

The 34th minute substitute for Kerry was a sign of the day, big number 9 Quirke was called ashore and this gave Down confidence to push on, the Down fans urged their lads on because they knew that Kerry were on the rack, they knew that if they kept their heads that it was their day. They went into the break 1-7 to 0-4 up and were fully deserved of the lead.

The second half was almost parallel to the first half. Kerry who were out on the field first after receiving the hairdryer treatment from O’Connor were determined to get scores on the board and they moved the “star” Donaghy out to the middle to get him into the game. Donaghy really nearly made an impact to save the day on the 51st minute when he was put through 1 on 1 with Down veteran goalkeeper Brendan McVeigh only for McVeigh to come out on top with a fantastic point blank save. Kerry who at this point had taken off their midfield and right half forward Darran O’Sullivan were running out of ideas and were at a loss at how to deal with former aussie rules star Martin Clarke who was running the show by sweeping up any loose ball in the down defence and getting up the field to get on the end of many moves that left with him a tally of 5 points, albeit 3 from frees.

James McCarten however had one trick left up his sleeve, the Down players were looking out on their feet and needed inspiration from the bench, the call was duly answered on the 56th minute with the introduction of the formidable Ronan Murtagh who took the place of Paul McComiskey. Murtagh gave Down another burst of pace in the forward line and was at hand to finish off a Kerry defence who were on life support.

The Kerry cause wasn’t helped though by the dubious sending off of Kerry wing forward Donnacha Walsh, the second yellow card for what looked like a harmless challenge for the cromane man all but sealed the win for Down who continued mercilessly to bombard Kerry to leave the score at a 1-16 to 1-10, Kerry getting a consolation goal in the last minute through a soft penalty on the 71st minute. Down who have recreated the spirit of previous great Down teams will be a tough task for Kildare but the county of Down will forever remember the team who kept the tradition going of beating Kerry.

Down: B McVeigh, D McCartan, D Gordon, D Rafferty, D Rooney, K McKernan, C Garvey, A Rodgers (0-2, 1 ‘45), K King, D Hughes, M Poland (1-2, 0-1f), P McComiskey (0-2), B Coulter (0-3), J Clarke, M Clarke (0-4, 2f, 1 ‘45).
Subs: C Maginn (0-1) for J Clarke, R Murtagh (0-1) for McComiskey, B McArdle for Rooney, P Fitzpatrick (0-1) for King, R Sexton for Poland

Kerry: B Kealy, M O Se, T Griffin, T O’Sullivan, A O’Mahony, M McCarthy, K Young, S Scanlon, M Quirke, Darran O’Sullivan, Declan O’Sullivan, D Walsh, C Cooper (0-7 (5f), K Donaghy, B Sheehan (0-3, 1f, 1 ‘45).
Subs: D Moran (1-0, pen) for Quirke, BJ Keane for Scanlon, K O’Leary for Darran O’Sullivan, A O’Connell for O’Mahony, D Bohan for Young, A Maher for Sheehan

Comments