MOSTLY FOOTBALL: The lions will have learned much more than the cubs

Maybe I’ll totally end up with egg on my face here, but despite Kerry’s valiant efforts at overthrowing the Dubs the last day out, the more time that passes the more convinced I’m becoming that Dublin will get the job done second time round.
Here's the egg part: It won’t be all that close either. I’m thinking five points at least will be the margin, but as ever with the Dubs, maybe much more. There are of course by now loads of arguments to be made either way, for Kerry or Dublin, such was the battle they produced. First of all the obvious one for the Kingdom is that Kerry, with 18 members of their panel experiencing their first ever All Ireland final they will have taken loads from the experience. I suppose if you had never been in Croke Park on All Ireland final day, in a playing capacity, and had never got a taste for what the whole thing was like then I could buy into this line of thinking. But Kerry have won five minor All Ireland titles in a row.
It’s not the same thing of course, but it just means that the same sense of being overawed and amazed by the place and the ceremony wouldn’t have been there. Those minors have been on the pitch accepting the Tom Markham cup, or doing their lap of honour when Mayo and Dublin ran out in 2016 and 2017 for example. I think people pay too much credence to that anyway sometimes. If the sense of the occasion was going to get to them then we would’ve seen that over the course of the opening half, but it was Kerry who tore into Dublin with much higher aggression levels than Jim Gavin's men during the first ten minutes of the game, so there was no sense of the occasion getting the better of them.

Lion
The more pertinent aspect of having been in the lion's den is not the den itself, but rather having faced the lion. There is the argument that Kerry have danced with the great beast, have seen that they are its match and will now take confidence from this experience. In other words the benefits are psychological, and this might very well be true. However, if 15 men against 14 for over 40 minutes of action is a sign that you are indeed someone else’s equal, then when they retreated to the sanctuary of their respective counties to consider the game, who will really be gaining a psychological boost from Johnny Cooper's sending off? Of course both teams can spin this whatever way they want.
They will have sports psychologists, coaches and performance experts shaping the narrative inside their respective camps to the point that it doesn’t really matter what happened rather only their perception of what happened. If we accept that both camps will tick all these boxes adequately, and given the competency they have shown thus far this year it's fair to assume they won’t take their eye of the ball with this regard, neither giving up an advantage to the other, then it will come back down to football.

Learning
And when it all comes back to football I find myself asking the following question: who has more applicable learning points to take from the first day out? Without a shadow of a doubt, that team is Dublin. Kerry made loads of mistakes, but unless Dublin are once again reduced to 14 men, then a lot of what they can learn from the original fixture isn’t overly relevant.
From Dublin’s point of view, a lot of what they have learned is very relevant. First of all they will have seen that Michael Fitzsimons is a much better match up on David Clifford than Jonny Cooper was. James McCarthy is not suited to marking Tommy Walsh, and upon watching the second half I wondered had Kerry deliberately decided to run the legs off McCarthy before introducing Walsh.
Kerry stopped zonally pressing Dublin, going man to man in that second half but it nearly always seemed like it was the Ballymun player who was the one to escape and make himself available to Cluxton. It was taxing and tiring just to watch the effort he put in to secure uncontested kickouts and then start the process of working the ball up the field. If I had been second guessing Gavin I’d have anticipated McCarthy being moved over onto Walsh once he entered proceedings. A clearly fading McCarthy struggled with Walsh who moved between full forward and half forward dragging his marker all round the place.
Who picks him up then, becomes the conundrum for Gavin. If Walsh is once again sprung from the bench then Philly McMahon and Cian O’Sullivan can expect that one or the other of them will see some sort of action in a reshuffle that will keep Jonny Cooper away from Clifford.

Press
Next up Dublin will have seen the way Kerry intend to press and can practice using the full forward line attacking late behind the midfield in much the way Dean Rock and Brian Howard did at stages of that first half. I’d expect Ciaran Kilkenny and Con O’Callaghan, both of whom were well renowned during their underage careers for attacking high balls, to play a more pivotal role in this regard if Kerry once again try to press.
Jack McCaffrey once again will be expected to attack from those situations. As fast as Stephen O’Brien and Gavin White might be, I don’t think they’re going to be able to stop McCaffrey if a Kerry press is hijacked the way Howard hijacked them the last day.
Jim Gavin looked light up front when it came to his bench. He may have to reconsider his midfield pairing and that could have a knock on impact on who make his bench. I wouldn’t be surprised if Michael Dara Maculey, who struggled with the pace set by the Kerry midfield, is held in reserve the next day, and that someone like Bernard Brogan is brought back onto the match day 26. This isn’t a sentimental thing, a swansong for Berno, after much of the Dublin media lamented his exclusion the last day. Gavin doesn’t do sentiment.
With Dublin trying desperately to get their hands on possession in the final moments of the game the last day, every time they did they had no one ahead of the ball, they had completely lost their shape, and someone like Brogan would’ve given them a focal point once again in that full forward line. That’s why so much of that possession in the final ten minutes produced so few quality shots. Of course if they once again find themselves a man down then you may forget about Brogan, as at his age he wouldn’t be able to contribute to the defensive effort that the team produced, or certainly to the same level that his teammates did. That’s the risk with elevating him to the bench, so I’m sure discipline will have been spoken about over the past fortnight to the panel by Gavin and his coaches.

Outlet
Dublin have more areas to improve than Kerry. Outside of Tommy Walsh they match up pretty well with Kerry so I’m sure Peter Keane will be debating the merits with his back room team on whether to start the former Australian rules veteran. It's got to be very tempting. Standing at six foot six inches he could be very useful as an outlet if Dublin try to press Kerry, and also very useful in making sure the Kerry press on Cluxton is never hijacked again in the manner that Howard and Rock did.
I still maintain that Dublin played the best 10 minutes of football they’ve ever played under Jim Gavin, without the ball at the close of first game between these sides. They didn’t look like a team who were afraid to go and win the five in a row. They looked like a side determined to hold onto their shot at history. I’m still backing them to win and achieve this. Kerry’s day is coming. If they continue to develop at their current pace I can see them stopping six on the trot, but just coming up short on Saturday.