Tenacious Tyrone tear up script in flooring hyped-up Kerry outfit
Inside Track with John McIntyre
ALL summer we were being primed for an All-Ireland football final between the sport’s dominant forces. The prospect of Kerry trying to halt Dublin’s quest for a record-breaking seventh consecutive championship triumph took on a life of its own over the past few months with the chances of every other title contender hardly meriting a second look.
Even though Dublin laboured through Leinster and Kerry were involved in a three turkey shoots in Munster, few digressed from the general assumption that Dessie Farrell and Peter Keane would be patrolling the sideline on All-Ireland Final Day in 2001. After all, Donegal’s progress had stalled in Ulster, while the nearly team of Mayo were in transition.
Furthermore, the odds of a bolter from the pack appeared remote. Monaghan, for all their resilience, continue to fall short in the key matches; Tyrone had been hit for six goals by Kerry in a Division One league semi-final in Killarney as recently as June; while Galway were struggling to build any momentum and, into the bargain, suffered league demotion to Division Two.
Against that background, the script for the latest anticipated showdown between Kerry and Dublin looked solid, but lo and behold we are instead facing into an All-Ireland final without either of the big two for the first time in nine years. The occasion will be all the better for it too as Mayo and Tyrone will take centre stage at Croke Park on Saturday week.
Ahead of the weekend’s second semi-final, Mayo had already brought Dublin’s six-year championship winning run to an end after extra-time. That result alone ought to have put Kerry on their guard but after Covid ripped through the Tyrone camp and forced a postponement of their semi-final battle for a fortnight, the assumption was that the Ulster champions would be drained of their normal reserves of energy.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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