Kerry boss Jack O’Connor hails bench impact in ‘a real tough battle’ with Derry

Kerry boss Jack O’Connor hailed the impact of his second half substitutions in helping seal victory in what he described as an ‘energy sapping’ contest with Derry.

The Kingdom, who ran out five-point winners over the Oak Leaf county in what was a fairly underwhelming spectacle in Croke Park, battled their way past an at times extremely dogged Derry combination.

Speaking post match, the Dromid man had an air of quiet satisfaction about him. More so with the result than the performance, we suspect, although even there he seemed pleased with how his men thought and fought their way around Mickey Harte’s men.

"A real tough battle,” is how he summed it up.

"More or less what we expected, probably wasn’t a game for the purists, because it was defensive, but we’re happy to play the game on whatever terms we come across and Derry set the terms early on.

"They got a rake of men back and made it hard for us to find space and I just thought we were playing around the periphery in the first half and in the second half we made an agreement at half-time that we’d go at the game a bit more aggressively and I thought we started to find pockets in the second half and find a bit more intensity and a bit more energy.

“Yeah, I’d agree with that [Kerry’s tempo was sluggish and slow in the first half]. We addressed that at half-time and felt that we were going to have to play with more energy and get more bodies ahead of the ball just to test Derry’s defence a bit.

"The first half it was a bit too easy for them and we weren’t just committing enough bodies. We were playing everything in front of them, I thought we got runners going through the lines and those pop passes inside with runners coming off we got that going a lot better in the second half.

"So I agree with you that game was being fairly played on Derry’s terms in the first half.

"Half-time is important. You’re up in the stand some of the time and you can see the shape of the game. I just thought we had two issues. First of all, we were allowing Derry come into our 45 without putting a finger on them.

"We needed to make contact higher up the pitch and stop leaving a good bit of space in front of McGuigan. “The second thing then was we weren’t testing their defence enough, getting runners in to occupy their defenders. That takes a lot of energy and it takes bravery as well because if you turn ofver the ball then, you have to get back 100 metres.”

Kerry really kicked on in the last fifteen to twenty minutes of the game with subs such as Killian Spillane, Cillian Burke and Dylan Geaney impacting significantly.

“Look, that’s a tough game to play in when you’re playing that kind of a game you have to run 100 yards back after turning over the ball that’s energy sapping, that’s a lot of running,” he explained.

"We were fairly sure that fellas were going to struggle after fifty minutes so it was important that we got energy off the bench and those boys you mentioned there certainly gave us that.

“The substitutions – Cillian Burke is a front foot player. I thought he made a big difference. He gave us a lot of energy. He asked big questions of the Derry defence. Him, Dylan Geaney, Killian Spillane – they in particular gave us good front foot energy in the second half."

As for the notion during the rounds that prior to today Kerry were untested, or at least in need of a test, O’Connor felt that after the clash with Derry this was no longer something that could be said of his side.

“Well today was a test. It felt like a real battle,” he said.

“It was physical, it was intense. There was a lot of running in it. For today, that’s a good test. We know we will face a bigger test in two weeks’ time. Remember Armagh beat Derry comprehensively a month or six weeks’ ago.

"We will be under no illusions about the magnitude of what we are facing in two week’s time.

“I’ll be honest with you, I haven’t been watching them [Armagh] overly closely. I obviously watched their game with Derry and that’s enough for me. To know that they are a serious team. They were to Derry and dismantled Derry’s defence. “And we found it tough to break their defence today. So they are a team on the crest of a wave with huge support and momentum behind them. That’s always a dangerous combination.”

Get ahead of the day with the morning headlines at 7.30am and Fionnán Sheahan's exclusive take on the day's news every afternoon, with our free daily newsletter.