HE WAS LEFT pretty unimpressed last Saturday night in Castlebar by the efforts of his All-Ireland winning charges, the response in Tralee tonight heartened Kerry manager Jack O’Connor.
Kerry suffered a seven-point loss to Mayo, after a pretty insipid first-half showing, but in O’Connor’s eyes the attitude of his team was noticeably sharper for this meeting with Armagh.
“You’d have to say it our backs were to the wall. I mean we didn’t want to be going up to Tyrone with only two points. I’ve been saying it pretty consistently that we were behind the curve starting off training.
“But I think tonight outside of the fact we had another extra week’s training, I think the attitude was better tonight. We weren’t happy with the way we played up in Castlebar. It was an unacceptable performance and the players knew that.
“They didn’t have to be told that but just to make sure they knew it, we told them on Tuesday night. Look they reacted the right way, that’s all you can do after a bad performance is react the right way.
“We weren’t (talking) during the week too much about tactics, this was about attitude. We felt we were well off it above in Castlebar. We weren’t tackling, we weren’t tracking runners, we weren’t doing any of the fundamentals that you need to do first before you play football. And I thought we did that in spades tonight.”
O’Connor hailed the ‘real mettle’ of his players in digging out a one-point victory over Armagh.
“They’re a big physical side, they’re very fit. Sometimes those games are great to play in, those hard tough games where there’s nothing soft. I thought our boys showed real mettle tonight. Tony (Brosnan) kicked an important score from out near the touchline and Donal O’Sullivan obviously got the one that put us two up. They all contributed.
“They (Armagh) certainly weren’t allowing us to go down the middle so we had to constantly switch to the wings. Look that’s the way the modern game has gone. Any fella that’s up in the stand that was shouting to kick it in, I mean outside of the last one that Tom kicked in that we got the break off it, you wouldn’t get much change out of just bating ball in with that many men back.
“The important thing is not to take the ball into contact and not to turn over the ball. Above all else try and get a shot off. Kicking a wide isn’t the worst thing in the world in that situation, but the worst of all worlds is get turned over and get caught on the counter-attack, because they’re a well-organised defensive team, a dangerous counter-attacking team.”
Kerry travel to Omagh next Sunday with O’Connor revealing experienced duo Gavin White and Paul Geaney are back training but unlikely to be available to face Tyrone.
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