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CATHAL DERVAN

Drab Win puts Kerry in All-Ireland Football Final

By
Cathal Dervan

Published Wednesday, September 2, 2009, 3:47 PM
Updated Tuesday, September 8, 2009, 12:18 PM

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Drab Win puts Kerry in All-Ireland Football Final | Irish Sport | IrishCentral




Kerry's Darren O'Sullivan and Meath's Michael Burke in action during the All-Ireland semifinal at Croke Park.

SUPERSUB Tommy Walsh made his point and then some as Kerry made light work of the Meath resistance in a dire All-Ireland semifinal at Croke Park on Sunday. The final score was Kerry 2-8, Meath 1-7.

Controversially dropped by manager Jack O’Connor for the game, Walsh was introduced as a sub just before the break and subsequently turned the game in the Kingdom’s favor.

Walsh took just nine minutes to score a goal and two points at the start of the second half as Kerry booked a remarkable sixth straight All-Ireland final appearance.

The Young Footballer of the Year is now a sure thing to start the Sam Maguire decider against Cork in three weeks, and O’Connor was first to praise him after Sunday’s win.

“We had to change tack halfway through the first half and put in Tommy Walsh because we needed an aerial route,” O’Connor said.

‘That’s the way you want a fella to react when you leave him off. He made a good impact. We didn’t do it until we spoke about it properly at half-time and it changed the game basically.”

O’Connor was also quick to defend his players and their togetherness and continued, “There’s good spirit in our camp despite all the rumors of disunity!

“Fellas realize that if they have a bad day, they might be let off the next day, but he surely put down a marker for the next day.

“This team has been written off so many times, our last war-cry before leaving the dressing-room was that we’d been written off as far back as 2001.”

Munster rivals Cork now await Kerry in the All-Ireland final, and O’Connor acknowledges that his team will need to up the ante dramatically on this performance.

He added, “We’ll need to improve a lot, we know that. I don’t think the way we played today would frighten the daylights out of Cork or anything. But that’s fine. We are happy enough to get over this.

“This was always going to be an extremely difficult game. Those Meath fellas were never going to lie down. They have some good footballers, they really tested us. They went the direct route, but we possibly missed one or two goal chances.

“The objective of playing in a semi-final is to try and get over the line and get to a final. We had to battle for it and we knew we would get it. People were writing Meath off all the week; it was the perfect scenario for them.”

Meath tried valiantly to keep pace with the Kingdom but weren’t helped by an early penalty goal and the loss of captain Stephen Bray to a shoulder injury in the opening quarter.

Their manager Eamonn O’Brien had no complaints with the result after his side failed to vary their play enough against a Kerry team that barely needed to get out of second gear.

“Right through the game I thought we were too predictable,” said O’Brien. “We wanted direct ball but we said at halftime that Kerry were dropping their half-backs back so we needed to play it through hands a little bit more.

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Drab Win puts Kerry in All-Ireland Football Final | Irish Sport | IrishCentral


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