When Kerry and Galway cross paths in Croke Park it rarely disappoints and it’s easy to believe they’ll produce another entertaining joust on Sunday.

Both teams boast some gifted forwards and play an attacking brand of football so this should be an enjoyable game to watch. 

Kerry have yet to be properly tested this year so they’ll be wary about the challenge that a Galway team buoyed by their impressive win over Donegal last weekend will pose.

That win should have flushed away the disappointment of their awful Connacht Final performance against Donegal, and they’ll be keen now to put on a show for their supporters in Croke Park.

If they are to be in with a chance of springing a shock then they need to do what they did last weekend – work their socks off.

It’s hardly rocket-science and it should be the foundation stone for every team, but in the Connacht Final Galway simply didn’t do it.

And it doesn’t matter how many skilful forward you have, if you don’t also apply yourself then you’re not going to win big matches.

You would have thought that lesson would have been learned after last year’s All-Ireland Quarter-Final defeat to Tipperary, but the fact that Galway still struggle with consistency suggests something amiss in their make-up.

You’re usually guaranteed a performance from Kerry every time they go out to play and they’ll be keen to test Galway’s mentality by putting them on the back-foot from the start.

If the Tribesmen are to pull off a shock they need to Tom Flynn and Paul Conroy to stand up and be counted in the middle third of the field and prevent Kerry from dominating there through me like David Moran, Anthony Maher, and Jack Barry.

If they can at least break even there and guarantee a supply of ball into forward like Damien Comer, Shane Walsh, Michael Daly and Sean Armstrong then we’ll have a game on our hands.

Even in a shoot-out though, it’s going to be a big ask for Galway to win this game because few teams come loaded with as many bullets as Kerry do.

Paul Geaney and James O’Donoghue are in sensational form at the moment and given enough ball can be match-winners again just like they have been all year thus for Kerry.