\u201cIt was a ferocious battle out there,\u201d<\/a> he said. \u201cIt was our third week in a row, and at times we looked leggy in the second half. And last week was a big emotional game for all of us, and we might have taken a bit more out of the legs.<\/p>\n\u201cCroke Park is an unforgiving place if you haven’t got legs. I thought at times Tyrone almost looked like they had a bit of extra freshness. But what a battle. Tyrone stayed with us right to the wire, as we talked about. So, all this foolish, loose talk that was going on for the last week or so has blown out of the water today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tyrone\u2019s ability to hang in impressed O\u2019Connor. \u201cWe were never able to get away from them. I thought there was times, maybe in the second half, we snatched it a couple of two-pointers. We had a great goal chance that we appeared to over-elaborate on. Any of those (two-pointers) going over, I think, would have settled us. But we were never far enough away to relax.<\/p>\n
\u201cTyrone just hung in there, and they were highly dangerous in the break. They’re very efficient with the ball. Well-coached, well-coached team. So, well done to Malachy O\u2019Rourke and Ryan Porter. They did a great job with that team. I think they’ve improved significantly from last year.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor credited Shane Murphy\u2019s restarts as the foundation of Kerry\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cI’m telling you, I think what saved us was our kick-out retention.<\/p>\n
\u201cShane Murphy put on some exhibition there. He was getting a bit of stick early in the year, and people were comparing him to Shane Ryan. But as the season has gone on, the boys have done some work on the kick-outs, himself and Brian Kelly (goalkeeping coach).<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s a lot of moving parts on kick-outs. But, lads, there were two kick-outs there in the D, and they were absolutely critical \u2013 both out to the Hogan (Stand) side, one to Armin Heinrich, and one to Jason Foley. Hands-on ball is like gold dust at that stage.\u201d<\/p>\n
The last play, which developed into Armin Heinrich\u2019s goal, was \u201ccrucial\u201d, O\u2019Connor said. \u201cIt looked like we’d lost the ball and then David (Clifford) got a hold of it. No better man knew the right thing to do. Worked it into the corner. Played it back out, back into the corner. That’s what a bit of experience does. They’ve been in these situations and they’ve learned from them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was some finish in the end. I wasn’t even sure at the time who got it (the goal). But it was some relief to see that one hit in the net.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For the second week in a row, O\u2019Connor found plenty of reason to applaud Dylan Geaney, who was the official man of the match after scoring eight points. \u201cHe had an incredible performance. In the end, he had cramped up so we had to take him off. But he kicked some great scores at times when we needed them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was one down in the second half, over towards the Cusack (Stand), a two-pointer. I felt at the time that was a massive score because we were struggling a bit. And it just kept our noses in front.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t know, was that a man of the match? He was in the conversation last week as well, along with David. David had to get it last week, but I’d say Dylan comfortably got it this week. Unbelievable, yeah.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
O\u2019Connor confirmed Brian \u00d3 Beaglaoich was ruled out with a back spasm. His replacement, Gavin White, also put in an eye-catching performance. \u201cHe just gave us great go-forward momentum. He didn’t know he was in the team until this morning, but what a replacement in Gavin.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twelve months ago, Jack O\u2019Connor was indignant in the wake of criticism from some quarters in the county.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1965,1128,42,43,850,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-522463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-hurling","tag-football","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-sport","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522463","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=522463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}