“The lads couldn’t believe how defensive they were” – Why Kerry have to change the way they play this year

"There's no way those boys could be happy playing football like that."

The 2019 All-Ireland final between Dublin and Kerry gave a lot of people hope, as the young Kingdom side played attacking football and arguably should have beat the Dubs in the first game that ended in a draw. So going into the 2020 season, all eyes viewed the green and gold boys as the team that could finally get over the line against Dublin, but instead they changed their style of play to be much more defensive, and crashed out to Cork in the Munster semi-final. Speaking on the GAA Hour, Colm Parkinson explains why he was in disappointed with this change of tactics: "Kerry are an interesting one, they frustrated the life out of me last year when I saw them. I watched the Sunday League when they were playing Monaghan and Ciarán Whelan was saying that Kerry are going with a very defensive structure, and he showed a couple of clips.

"I refused to believe it, I refuse to believe that a team that should have beaten Dublin the year before, by playing to their strengths, which is their forwards, that they would rip up the script and go with a defensive system the following year. As it turns out, Ciarán Whelan was exactly right."

Also on the show was recently retired Cork star Paul Kerrigan, who was involved in the game that saw Kerry crash out of Munster to the hands of the rebels. "The lads couldn't believe how defensive they were," admitted the 2010 All-Ireland winner. "You had Clifford being your first tackler on the opposition 65, Sean O'Shea back in the half-back and then everyone would drop to the 45 and they would try to turn it over their D. It was just so far reserved from what you would usually see. "Traditionally, Kerry would been two hard-working wing forward;, a play-maker, a target-man, a couple of scorers, and they were just so far removed from that. It was unbelievable, considering the players they had." Former Dublin star, Alan Brogan weighed in on the discussion and was as equally perplexed as the rest of the GAA Hour panel. "There's no way those boys could be happy playing football like that," he said. "There's no way David Clifford and Sean O'Shea could be happy playing football like that. With all due respect to Cork, Kerry kind of spoiled the championship for me last year.

"We were expecting Kerry to come through and for Dublin and Kerry to meet each other, that was going to be the real test for Dublin."

Kerry kick off the National League against Cork today and Wooly is hopeful that they will go back to doing what they do best. "I can't see them continuing with what they did last year, you would imagine they would go back to the 2019 style of play."