{"id":561992,"date":"2026-07-22T05:41:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T05:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/561992\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T05:41:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T05:41:11","slug":"darragh-o-se-in-this-all-ireland-final-its-hard-to-see-anything-other-than-a-kerry-win-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/561992\/","title":{"rendered":"Darragh \u00d3 S\u00e9: In this All-Ireland final, it\u2019s hard to see anything other than a Kerry win \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The more I think about Sunday\u2019s All-Ireland final<\/a>, the more straightforward it looks. This wouldn\u2019t normally be the way of it. Most years, you spend the week talking away about how it\u2019s going to be a close one and how there\u2019s very little to choose between the two teams. But I think when you stand back from it this time around, it\u2019s very hard to come up with anything other than a Kerry<\/a> win.<\/p>\n

I might turn out to be wrong. If I am, it wouldn\u2019t be the first time or the last time. But you have to break these games down to known metrics and you can only go with what\u2019s in front of you before a game. To me, there\u2019s a very clear line of form here \u2013 Kerry have beaten Dublin<\/a>, Tyrone<\/a> and Armagh<\/a> in their last three games, Mayo<\/a> have beaten Louth<\/a> and Cork<\/a> and lost to Tyrone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying Mayo can\u2019t improve. All I\u2019m saying is that the evidence we have so far is that Kerry have been beating a higher level of opponent than Mayo have. So that has to be the starting point. What are these teams capable of? If we go by the results so far, Kerry are capable of beating All-Ireland contenders. We can\u2019t say the same about Mayo. Not yet anyway.<\/p>\n

The other thing Kerry have in their favour is the experience of winning finals. All these players have won an All-Ireland and a lot of them have won two. The likes of Paul Geaney and Paul Murphy have three. They know how these games go. The occasion won\u2019t affect them. Being favourites won\u2019t affect them. These are all things Kerry don\u2019t have to worry about.<\/p>\n

Jack O\u2019Connor<\/a> knows the road as well, obviously. In the build-up to a final, Jack always puts a high premium on freshness. That\u2019s his number one requirement going into any final \u2013 that every Kerry player heads to the stadium feeling fresh and ready to perform. He\u2019s been around for a few losing finals and that can help as well. He knows what has worked and what hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\"Kerry'sKerry’s Paul Murphy and Niall Devlin of Tyrone in the All-Ireland SFC quarter-final at Croke Park on June 27th. Photograph: Bryan Keane\/Inpho <\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor won\u2019t complicate things. The Kerry attitude to finals is fairly simple. The starting point is usually something along the lines of, \u201cWhere do the opposition think we\u2019re weak?\u201d And once they\u2019ve identified that, they go after it, double down on it and aim to turn it into a strength.<\/p>\n

So for this final, Mayo probably think that there\u2019s a bit of joy to be got targeting Dylan Casey and Paul Murphy in Kerry\u2019s full-back line. Tyrone and Dublin both had plenty of scoring chances, so if you\u2019re in the Mayo camp you\u2019re thinking that if those chances fall to Ryan O\u2019Donoghue, Darragh Beirne or Kobe McDonald, then you could be in business.<\/p>\n

My guess would be that O\u2019Connor and his management team will be challenging Murphy and Casey and putting the onus on them. Mayo think they\u2019re going to send a couple of young fellas in there to go to town on ye lads \u2013 what are you going to do about it? They can do that because they know that if it doesn\u2019t go to plan, Kerry have the personnel to change it up. Tom O\u2019Sullivan is waiting in the wings.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Mayo to wear white 1951-inspired jersey in All-Ireland final against KerryOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what it all comes down to, really. If you look through the squads available to the two managers, Kerry just have more good players than Mayo. They\u2019re able to field a starting team without Tom O\u2019Sullivan, Brian \u00d3 Beaglaoich, Paul Geaney and Shane Ryan. Add in Tadhg Morley and that\u2019s five All Stars that O\u2019Connor is able to leave on the bench. He won\u2019t be doing it out of loyalty \u2013 he\u2019ll be doing it because he thinks the players ahead of them are in better form.<\/p>\n

So the task for Mayo looks very difficult. If they are going to have any chance, I think they will need at least 13 players performing above the ability they have shown so far. All-Ireland finals are about executing the skills of the game at a speed you haven\u2019t had to do them at before. Speed is what separates teams at this level \u2013 speed of thought, speed of decision-making, speed of execution.<\/p>\n

\"Mayo'sMayo’s Darragh Beirne in the All-Ireland SFC semi-final between Mayo and Louth at Croke Park on July 11th. Photograph: Laszlo Geczo\/Inpho <\/p>\n

I would be confident that a lot of the Kerry players\u2019 skills will hold up at a higher speed, purely because we\u2019ve seen them do it before. But you can\u2019t be sure of that with enough of the Mayo players. They might find out very quickly that the things they were able to do against Cork and Louth in Croke Park don\u2019t get them the same results in an All-Ireland final. And by then, it\u2019ll be too late.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Mayo hammer Louth to make ninth All-Ireland final this centuryOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

So many unlikely things have to come together for Mayo to win this. They have to shut down both Cliffords and Se\u00e1nie O\u2019Shea. And by shutting them down, I mean it\u2019s not going to be good enough to say David only scored 1-5 and Paudie was held to 0-4 and Se\u00e1nie was kept to 0-5 from frees. Those would be respectable enough tallies from a Mayo point of view but that\u2019s 1-14 on the board before either of the Geaneys or the O\u2019Connors or Gavin White or any of the rest of them kick a score.<\/p>\n

There are just too many fires for Mayo to put out. The hurling final showed the template \u2013 Limerick had all the aces but they also worked like dogs until the game was killed stone dead either side of half-time. That\u2019s what Kerry will be aiming for on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Because the really ominous thing for Mayo is that Kerry haven\u2019t put in a complete performance yet. They haven\u2019t opened their shoulders or come off the pitch going, \u201cThat\u2019s it, lads \u2013 that was the performance we\u2019ve been looking for all year.\u201d No better place than a final for it to happen.<\/p>\n

If Kerry do that, it\u2019s going to be a huge ask for anyone to match them. I just don\u2019t see Mayo being up to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The more I think about Sunday\u2019s All-Ireland final, the more straightforward it looks. This wouldn\u2019t normally be the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":561993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6937,110979,61,60,180648,4185,43],"class_list":["post-561992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-kerry-gaa","tag-football-championship","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jack-o-connor","tag-mayo-gaa","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561992","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=561992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}