Unsung Kerry hero: Armagh win means 'absolutely nothing' unless we claim Sam

Irish Daily Mirror

6 hours ago

'High Wire' artist Shane Ryan says be won't be happy until the canister is in the Kerry dressing room.
The Kerry goalkeeper performed some amazing juggling acts yesterday between a fingertip save from Tieran Kelly and a series of nerve jangling short and mid range kickouts - and now he has his eyes on landing the Sam Maguire.
One or Ryan's short kickouts in the first half went slightly awry, but Dylan Casey was backing away from it, and this led to Kelly intercepting and Rory Grugan's goal.
But in the second half when Armagh and Ethan Rafferty were in the middle of a horror spell when they lost nine out of 10 kickouts and couldn't get their hands on the ball, Ryan completed a series of short restarts to his left.
They're not glamorous and anything but cool compared to the scoring of Sean O'Shea and David Clifford at the other end, but they were every bit as important.
The courage of his team mates to show for the ball, Ryan's ability and the work they'd done on the training ground not to rain kickouts down on Ben Crealey, Niall Grimley, Rian O'Neill and Andrew Murnin paid off in spades.
Gavin White was particularly important in this area but Dylan Casey, Jason Foley and Paul Murphy all took key short kickouts.
We saw this before against Dublin in another high wire act, the 2022 All-Ireland semi-final, when Sean O'Shea's fired a superb late winner from a long range free, but again the groundwork was laid in winning possession off short kickout under extreme pressure.
'It's the nature of position,' said Ryan. 'It's high-wire and any mistake I make is going to result in a score.
'So look at it as best as possible, you'll try and put them (errors) out of your head straight away and just focus on the next play.
'But I think with the new rules, the games are so chaotic, there's so much happening in the game. There's so many mistakes. Teams are getting purple patches.
'They're losing them. There's two-pointers and the game goes on for so long as well that you just saw don't have a chance to dwell on the previous play.
'I suppose we just got to grips with the game. We actually had a poor start to the second half and we just seemed to pin him (Rafferty) in for about a 15-minute period there. And more importantly, we took our chances when they came around.
'So we're delighted, but we're also very cognisant that it's a quarter-final and we won't be happy 'til the canister is sitting in the dressing room.'
Ryan once again reinforced his reputation as one of the top goalkeepers in the country, reminding people of what he can do.
He played outfield for Rathmore as they won the 2023 All-Ireland intermediate title, giving a man of the match display as a free scoring target man at full forward.
There's little doubt he could do a good impression of Rafferty, Rory Beggan or Niall Morgan if he went forward, but Kerry don't use him like that.
Ryan's basics though are top drawer, including shot stopping: 'I'm just trying to improve in all the basics of goalkeeping,' he said.
'I mean, goalkeeping is a simple enough game. Your kick-out. Your high ball. Your shot-stopping work.
'You try to take little bits from other keepers as well, but I suppose it helps that I face the best finishers in the country in training every night, so they're not long exposing any weakness that I have too.
'Even talking to them helps me as well. It's something I'm constantly trying to improve on.'
Kerry played like a team fuelled by hurt at the weekend, but Ryan says they also blocked the outside talk, the same as if they were being praised.
'We kind of know ourselves in the dressing room what we are capable of,' he said.
'Look, we were obviously disappointed a couple of weeks ago against Meath with our performance and we set about trying to rectify that and clean up a few areas and we've gone a long way to doing that. We've another few levels to go.'
In the lead-up to the weekend game it was said that Kerry weren't tested properly, having not faced Division 1 opposition, but Ryan never believed that.
'You're using an example there of Cork,' he said. 'This in my seventh year being involved, and I don't think we've beaten Cark by more than three or four points any year and they beat us in 2020.
'They've come very close every time, so I suppose when it's a local rivalry too like that teams lift their game. Look, it's always a tricky fixture for us.
'We try to be as professional as we can. We try to treat every team with respect. We do our due diligence in video and training and everything like that.
'But look, when you're playing every two weeks, you're going to have peaks and troughs in your form and it's just about trying to be peak at the right time.
'Look, we had a good performance today but it absolutely means nothing unless we have the Sam Maguire at the end of the year.'