RT\u00c9 GAA analyst Dessie Dolan believes Kerry manager Jack O’Connor will “sharpen the knife” as his side travels to Croke Park on Saturday evening to face Dublin.<\/p>\n
When it comes to football\u2019s most storied rivalry, this weekend\u2019s league fixture doesn\u2019t match the anticipation that often surrounds the game.<\/p>\n
Kerry are slowly cranking through the gears on the back of last year\u2019s All-Ireland triumph while Dublin, under new manager Ger Brennan, are struggling at the wrong end of the Division 1 table.<\/p>\n
Still, it\u2019s a game that provides opportunity and for Dolan, he feels that might arrive in the form of a more formidable green and gold machine than we have seen in 2026 to date.<\/p>\n
“Jack O\u2019Connor, what\u2019s his mindset coming into this game?” asked the 2004 Westmeath All-Star on the RT\u00c9 GAA Podcast.<\/a><\/p>\n “Roughly you\u2019re talking five, six, seven of last July\u2019s All-Ireland starters have started all the games.<\/p>\n “Interestingly the David Clifford one when they were going up to (Ballyshannon v Donegal), they didn\u2019t bring him.<\/p>\n \n “Heading to Croke Park, I don\u2019t think Kerry teams ever like losing in Croke Park so I think he might sharpen the knife a little bit, bulk up with a little bit of quality.”<\/p>\n On Dublin, Dolan watched their hard-fought win over Monaghan<\/a> in Round 3 and while it was a first two points banked of the league season, it did little to convince him that the fear factor around the Leinster side is vanishing.<\/p>\n “I thought they were shaky out, Monaghan had an ocean of space back in the full-forward line.<\/p>\n “Dublin\u2019s defensive system, their set-up, looked like it was lost for large parts of the game.<\/p>\n “Monaghan could have easily gotten four or five goals, easily two or three certainly very strong goal opportunities when they were really in the ascendency in the second half.<\/p>\n “Ger\u2019s kind of retracted his statement a little bit in terms of what he said about the panel and cutting it and stuff like that. He did mention though that\u2019s he\u2019s trialled 164 players to be involved with the Dublin squad, which is absolutely phenomenal.<\/p>\n “I\u2019d love to get a list of those players and offer them around the country to some of the other teams and see could they get them because it seems like a phenomenal amount of players that Dublin have at their disposal.”<\/p>\n AUSTIN STACK PARK UPGRADE TO BE COMPLETED IN MAY<\/a><\/p>\n “There\u2019s a lot of questions; their better players – Ciar\u00e1n Kilkenny hasn\u2019t really got to the levels we expect him (to), Brian Howard similarly, Niall Scully similarly,” Dolan added.<\/p>\n “Se\u00e1n Bugler did decent enough but Con (O\u2019Callaghan) saved them, he got two rakers.<\/p>\n “Apart from the quality that he brought, you wouldn\u2019t fear Dublin like you’d use to.”<\/p>\n Listen to the RT\u00c9 GAA Podcast on the RT\u00c9 Radio Player<\/a>, Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n Watch Tipperary v Limerick in the Allianz Hurling League on Saturday from 5pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on the RT\u00c9 News App and on rte.ie\/sport. Listen to Saturday Sport on RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n Watch Allianz League Sunday from 9.35pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on all matches on the RT\u00c9 News App and on rte.ie\/sport. Listen to Sunday Sport on RT\u00c9 Radio 1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RT\u00c9 GAA analyst Dessie Dolan believes Kerry manager Jack O’Connor will “sharpen the knife” as his side travels…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-307416","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}