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Preview: All-Ireland SFC S-F replay - Kerry v Mayo

​Saturday August 26

All-Ireland SFC semi-final replay

Kerry v Mayo, Croke Park, 3pm - RTE/Sky

It’s a testament to how dramatic last Sunday’s drawn match was that discussion of tomorrow’s replay between Kerry and Mayo has significantly overshadowed Sunday’s semi-final between Dublin and Tyrone.

Much of it has centred on Mayo’s bold tactic of man-marking Kieran Donaghy with Aidan O’Shea, and the likelihood of Stephen Rochford persisting with that ploy or ripping it up and devising a new one.

The consensus seems to be that Rochford mugged Peter to pay Paul by moving one of his best forwards into a defensive position he had little experience of.

Kieran Donaghy was arguably Kerry’s most influential player on the day, ergo the Aidan O’Shea experiment failed miserably.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Rochford will abandon it though, because he doesn’t have any obvious candidate more equipped than O’Shea to stifle Donaghy.

Ger Cafferkey has certainly struggled with that job in the past, and the next most obvious candidate, Donie Vaughan, wouldn’t strike you as much more of a natural full-back than O’Shea.

Donaghy set up a lot of scores for others, but Rochford might well decide that O’Shea’s role in negating his effectiveness in the air and limiting him to a point from play is a lesser evil than the possibility of the big Kerry full-forward really cutting loose and bagging a goal or two himself.

Limiting the supply into Donaghy will surely be Mayo’s biggest priority, and at the other end of the field Kerry will be doing their best to ensure Andy Moran gets nothing like the same sort of quality ball he did last weekend when he scored 1-5 from play in a Man of the Match performance.

The middle third of the field will be the key battleground, and expect Kerry to be more aggressive there on Saturday than they were last weekend when they looked a little passive and vulnerable to Mayo’s runners from deep.

Jack Barry improved things significantly when he came on as a sub, and it’s reasonable to presume that he’ll start there for Saturday’s replay.

Other changes Kerry could possibly make to shore up a defence that leaked alarmingly at times last weekend would be the introduction of players like Fionn Fitzgerald and Brian O’Beaglaoich.

Mayo have less strength in depth than Kerry and are less likely to make changes and instead hope that the formation and personnel that worked well last weekend can go one better on Saturday.

This will be Mayo’s ninth match of a marathon summer so you’d imagine if either team is to have any issues replenishing their batteries in time for this replay then it’s the Connacht side.

Also, Kerry will hope that a hard match like last weekend’s will have brought them on considerably having not had the benefit of being pushed to the limit in any of their previous championship outings.

Chances are it’s going to be another contest of very fine margins, but perhaps Kerry have slightly more room for improvement than Mayo.

KERRY: Brian Kelly; Shane Enright, Mark Griffin, Killian Young; Peter Crowley, Tadhg Morley, Paul Murphy; David Moran, Anthony Maher; Stephen O’Brien, Johnny Buckley, Donnchadh Walsh; Paul Geaney, Kieran Donaghy, James O’Donoghue.

MAYO: David Clarke; Brendan Harrison, Donal Vaughan, Keith Higgins; Lee Keegan, Chris Barrett, Colm Boyle; Seamus O'Shea, Tom Parsons; Kevin McLoughlin, Aidan O'Shea, Diarmuid O'Connor; Jason Doherty, Cillian O'Connor, Andy Moran.