After a mouth-watering All-Ireland draw, the drab summer of football is over

Seamus Moynihan has various different ways of describing the All-Ireland football championship so far, particularly the group stage where three teams progress from each group of four.

‘Handbags stuff’ is one phrase he uses. ‘Shadow-boxing,’ another.

He’s certainly not alone in thinking that the lack of jeopardy has left supporters short-changed.

‘Drab’ is how he puts the whole thing, especially from a Kerry viewpoint, as Jack O’Connor’s side have almost been sleepwalking to this point, coasting to a Munster title and topping their group without ever playing a team that can be deemed to hold Division 1 status.

But you really get the sense now that Kerry juices are beginning to flow. The live draw on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland pitted them against Derry, the reigning Division 1 National League champions, who beat All-Ireland holders Dublin at Croke Park after penalties, and who really should have beaten Kerry at the All-Ireland semi-final stage last year.

As Moynihan puts it, ‘we played for three or more minutes’.

‘All week they’ll be saying, “This is it now, the gloves are off and the shadow boxing is over.”

‘The real football is coming now and from a Kerry point of view, you want to play your football in Croke Park and they’ll be looking forward to getting stuck into it because it’s been drab until now.

‘Now it’s Championship stuff going forward.’

In a way, he thinks Derry could be just the draw Kerry wanted to see where they are really at, after Mickey Harte’s side proved the rumours of their demise have been greatly exaggerated by beating Mayo in Castlebar in another thriller, like the league final that went to extra time and penalties.

‘This is going to be a really, really good test. Derry, you know, have fumbled through the group stage but you could see in extra-time – they actually got the break to get the draw against Mayo – they were the better team.

‘They seemed to be getting that little bit of confidence back in again. If they look back 12 months ago at that game [semi-final versus Kerry], Derry left that game after them. Kerry played for three minutes, albeit at the latter stages of that game, and finished very strong.

‘So Derry will be very confident going back in saying, “Look, if we can improve on that performance, we are in with a great shot.”

A modern luminary of Kerry football, Moynihan remains one of the most talented and versatile players the county has produced.

The teenage prodigy who came out of St Brendan’s College in Killarney to make his senior debut at 18 at midfield in a Munster final. Who captained Kerry to the 2000 All-Ireland and was a leader and baller and who took on the number three jersey that summer to help get Kerry up the steps and bring ‘the canister’ that is the Sam Maguire Cup home.

He’s on a Zoom to not just talk football but help promote the Circet All-Ireland GAA Golf Challenge. Run on an entirely voluntary basis, in which all proceeds go to charitable causes, the Dillon Quirke Foundation was last year’s beneficiary. This year, it’s Moynihan’s friend and fellow Glenflesk clubman Jerry O’Leary. When he’s asked about Derry’s reinvention last Saturday after crashing out of Ulster and limping through the All-Ireland group stage, he thinks back to his own playing days in how a team can rediscover their mojo mid-season.

‘In ’06 with Kerry I can remember we were flying, we won the league and then we went into Munster and we just completely hit the wall. Cork beat us in the Munster final and that kick in the backside, we needed it to get back going again. It’s just very, very difficult and I think it’s way more difficult at the minute, trying to just get that team ready for the right time of the year.

‘Ultimately, you want to be hitting the ground running from here on in. Up to now, it’s been handbags stuff.

‘From Derry’s point of view, they hit the wall. I think they are after getting over that wall now and they are really going to be going to Croke Park in a very positive frame of mind, because they are after really getting a great result against Mayo.’

‘At the end of the day, all those players are competitive. They want to win the League. They want to win an Ulster. They want to win a Munster or whatever.

‘And then you have a group stage which I suppose ultimately at the end of the day it’s very hard to get the juices going for the group, because you know you should, with three teams coming out, you are going to get out of that group one way or another, and if you don’t, look, you don’t deserve to be going anywhere.

Then there’s the Mickey Harte factor. When he was in charge of Tyrone, he spooked both Kerry and Jack O’Connor. And Moynihan remembers when he shook football up with the swarm tactics of 2003 which was radical for its time. ‘Obviously, over the years Mickey had a great record with Tyrone and won two All-Irelands and beat us in a semi-final in 2003.

‘Mickey is a really astute manager. I suppose it’s a funny one up in Derry where you have a lot of former players and guys probably cribbing and giving out about the fact that he’s there and he wasn’t wanted and what not.

‘Mickey is long in the tooth and he has been there and done that. To be fair, he is a super manager and Derry will be very confident.’

To plenty, crossing county boundaries to bitter rivals Derry represents crossing a line. Moynihan can understand that sentiment. ‘Look, Mickey is his own man and he does his own thing. But, yeah, we were all kind of surprised because it would be akin to Jack O’Connor going to Kerry to train Cork.

‘There are certain lines in the sand that you don’t cross. I have spoken about it before and we are well aware that there’s a lot of people in Derry, their noses were put out.

‘There’s a huge rivalry there and obviously there was always going to be a few arrows thrown at him but to be fair to the man he is, I don’t think he takes too much notice of that. At the end of the day, the county board in Derry would have looked at last year. They would have felt they left an All-Ireland semi-final after them.

‘They should have been in the final. To be fair, you wouldn’t blame them in that. We all felt it with probably three or four minutes to go and Kerry, we were just hanging on and finished very strong.

‘Mickey is very astute, he has great experience and he will use all his strengths to pull one over Kerry again next Sunday. There’s no doubting that. From a Derry point of view, I think that’s a huge bonus for them.’

Moynihan shakes his head at the social media bonfire of rumour and innuendo that has surrounded the Derry camp and how united they are.

‘Mother of God, thank God I am not on any of the platforms and whatnot,’ he says. ‘There are plenty of guys on the couch that have plenty to say but you know, ultimately, any time you go up to Mayo, considering the fact that they drew with the All-Ireland champions the week before, probably should have won the game, this is always a difficult arena to go into.

‘They went up there. They looked really energetic. They were playing for one another and they got the result on penalties.

‘After the game they were a united bunch, and they will be going to Croke Park extremely united and confident that they have a massive chance to get back into the penultimate stages of the All-Ireland.’