Five things we learned from the GAA weekend: Kerry talk of purists when it suits them

Kerry talk of purists when it suits them – everyone watching wants to be entertained

In a Laochra Gael clip that surfaced last week Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh said that every generation must play the game as they see fit. He said it in the context of unflattering comparisons with great players of the past, but it also reflected what his eyes had seen over many decades. Change is sometimes convulsive and sometimes subliminal, but it never stops.

The Kerry-Derry game on Sunday was the evolutionary outcome of 20 years of increasingly fearful football. Two of the most talented teams in the country equated risk with foolishness. Like many others, they conceded to Gaelic football’s strategic consensus. Kerry and Derry minded the ball like a pension.

In his post-match comments Jack O’Connor mentioned the offence caused “to the purists,” in a deliberate nod to the audience back home. Ambrose O’Donovan, who captained Kerry to win the 1984 All-Ireland, said last week that Kerry’s supporters were “maddened” by Kerry’s lateral passing. But they would have been even more maddened to lose a quarter-final to Derry.

O’Connor was quick to say that the game had been played on Derry’s terms. Kerry’s hands were tied, so to speak. Throughout their long history of success Kerry have perceived themselves as curators of the game’s most admired skills and behaviours but they have always balanced this with an arch-pragmatism. The unspoken inference in O’Connor’s remarks was that beating Derry at their own game was a necessary sacrifice for Kerry’s greater glory.

“Purists” are mythical creatures. People who watch sport, just like people who listen to music, want to be entertained. They are open to different sights and sounds but they want to feel excitement. Mick O’Dwyer’s team, the greatest in Kerry’s history, were scandalised in the beginning by the so-called “purists” for their running game, and “throwing” the ball to each other. The Kerry crowd soon got used to that too.

Jim Gavin’s rule-changing committee was name checked a few times over the weekend. Realistically, how much can they achieve? It is a certainty that they will arrive with imaginative proposals, but in the history of the game, every really significant change was driven by coaches and endorsed by players. Nothing is more powerful than organic change.

The Kerry and Derry players might have hated playing in that match as much as the rest of us hated watching it, but players want to win, above all else. Coaches that fail to deliver winning plans lose the dressing room quickly enough. There were no dressing room revolts in Derry or Kerry last week. Those players saw a plan for reaching the semi-final and embraced it.

Every generation will play the game as they see fit. — Denis Walsh

Timing is everything for Donegal

Donegal’s journey to the All-Ireland semi-finals could hardly have worked out better. There was a fear their titanic battles in Ulster would see them limp, battered and bruised, towards the All-Ireland series. They also faced Tyrone in the opening game of the round-robin.

So their championship started with showdowns against Derry, Tyrone, Armagh and Tyrone. That’s about as difficult an opening four games as you could get.

But Donegal’s last three games have been against Cork, Clare, Louth – all teams from outside Division One.

The defeat to Cork possibly even helped take the air out of the hype balloon in Donegal while at the same time refocusing minds in the dressing room. It was a mid championship reset, and since then Donegal have ripped apart both Clare and Louth – posting a combined tally of 3-44.

They appear both battle hardened and fresh.

In Peadar Mogan and Ryan McHugh they possess two of the deadliest ball carriers in the game right now. And as a team, at a point in the season when others have injury and fatigue concerns, Donegal look energised. — Gordon Manning

With every passing championship week, the air has come out of Derry’s season

Derry lost four games in the championship but at least they can say they lost to the best – the teams that beat them make up the semi-final line-up. However it all plays out, they’ll at least have lost to the eventual champions.

It will hardly be of much comfort to them. The spring feels like such a long time ago now. All that optimism, all the force of that wave that carried Glen to a club All-Ireland and Derry to a league title – it’s all in the wind, scattered to the hills. Derry played six games in the 2024 championship and their only win (penalties aside) was against Westmeath, the Division Three champions.

Mickey Harte was, in his way, fairly sanguine about the whole thing on Sunday. “I’d say it was reasonable,” he replied when asked how he assessed the year overall. “Obviously, if you win Division One of the league, that’s something to be happy about. Disappointing in Ulster in the Championship, disappointing in the round games. But the fact that we survived to reach a quarter-final here today, I suppose, makes it reasonable as well.

“But obviously, highly disappointing. We intended to be back for a few more games here, at least one, maybe two, and that’s not happening. And that’s very disappointing because it’s a long time to the beginning of the new season and it looks so far away now for everybody involved.”

That’s the thing. Derry’s season is done and what have they got out of it? After looking like one of the most exciting teams in football, they lost all momentum over the course of the summer and went back to playing a grinding, nihilistic game just to hang on until the closing stages against Kerry. This is a team that might have had an All-Ireland in it – and certainly a final appearance at worst.

What was it all for? — Malachy Clerkin

Out of their league

Twenty-two years ago, the GAA’s National Football League moved to a calendar year structure. Combined with the introduction of the All-Ireland qualifiers a year previously, this transformed the season for counties.

It now became necessary to organise the year on the basis of consistent competitiveness and not as before, simply hitting a predetermined few high points.

Mickey Harte talked about his preparation regime after Tyrone won their first All-Ireland in 2003 and how it had been diverted from grinding stamina-orientated work to maintaining sharpness over a season.

“Training has been about quality rather than quantity, something we’d preached a long time. I think it’s great to show that you can get to All-Ireland level training just two nights a week and one game at the weekend.

“The other interesting statistic is that yesterday was our 21st match, and we never played a single challenge in the entire year. I think it’s very valuable to be playing in the National League up to the concluding stages.”

This became an endorsement for the spring competition which had suffered from the perception that it was misleadingly different to the demands of championship, or even that success in it militated against a good championship.

In the years that followed, 23 up until now, the league and All-Ireland double has been won 10 times and on another two occasions, the defeated finalists have gone on to lift Sam.

The league finalists – with two exceptions, including the Covid season of 2020 – have also gone on to play major roles in the championship with at least one and frequently both reaching that year’s All-Ireland semi-finals.

Until now.

For the first time since 1996, we have had two successive years of league finalists not getting to the All-Ireland semi-finals.

Despite the evergreen Harte being in charge of Derry, who won an epic contest with Dublin in this year’s league final just three months ago, both he and Dessie Farrell find their teams out of the All-Ireland before it got to the last four, just as happened to Mayo and Galway 12 months ago.

Will time prove this a readjustment of priorities or a coincidence? — Seán Moran

Tipperary’s against-all-odds victory was a minor miracle

Was there ever a harder won minor All-Ireland? Even before last weekend, the Tipp hurlers had come through a snakepit Munster championship in which they had a single point to spare in their last group game over Limerick just to make the final. They had overcome Clare in that game, finding two goals in the closing 15 minutes to turn a level game their way.

And in the All-Ireland semi-final against Galway, they had to go to extra-time. Not only that, but they trailed by two with five minutes to play before a cloudburst of scores saw them over the line by a point. All of which meant that by the time they got to Saturday’s final against Kilkenny, they were ready for anything. And they had to be.

Losing their best forward Cillian Minogue to a red card would have been hard to take in any circumstances. But losing him in the seventh minute of an All-Ireland final to a red card that nobody could fathom the reason for? You’d have forgiven them for lying down and giving up.

But they didn’t. Even after they lost a second player before half-time – albeit Darragh O’Hora could have had few complaints about his red card – Tipperary kept on keeping on. They were heroic in pushing Kilkenny to extra-time and the way they went on to win it out will live forever. — Malachy Clerkin