Shadow boxing? What you see in Killarney will be real

All-Ireland SFC Round Robin: Kerry v Mayo (Saturday, 3pm, Fitzgerald Stadium, live on GAAGO)

THE great Chinese art of shadow-boxing has been around since the mid-17th century, when the Ming dynasty was being replaced by the Qing era.

Right up until after the Xinhai Revolution in the early 1900s it was essential in preparing for warfare. Now it's just for keeping fit.

Dynasties change and so do fighting styles.

In Gaelic football, we are in the middle of both.

Now that Dublin are back among the pack, the smart money would go on Kerry to win more All-Irelands in the next seven, eight years than anyone else.

The most likely rulers were fairly obvious. Aside from their history, nine of their starting line-up tomorrow and four more of the subs have All-Ireland minor medals from between 2014 and 2018. They weren't that far away to begin with.

Whatever the flaws of this round-robin series clearly are, there is no time for shadow-boxing.

We hear that a lot, that teams might hold this plan or that idea back for later on. For these two, there will be a later on. They’ll finish first and second in the group, with the only question being in which order.

But for Mayo, coming off the kidney punch delivered to them 41 days ago by Roscommon, they’ll have spent every evening since with their eyes on Killarney.

If nothing else, they’ll know all too well the psychological damage that Fitzgerald Stadium can do to a team.

Kerry came at them all guns blazing in the 2019 Super 8s game. They had seven points on the board inside ten minutes. By the end of it, they’d racked up 1-22 and pretty much knocked Mayo's season out cold.

Their subsequent All-Ireland semi-final defeat by Dublin was the flattest of all those they suffered at Jim Gavin's hand.

Kerry ploughed on and very nearly stopped the five-in-a-row.

Where you might find yourself half convinced that either team stare hard before deciding what is best protected from games like this, there are very few tactical secrets broken out of the box on summer Saturdays.

Secrecy plays second-fiddle to momentum.

Even in the back-door era, no team has lost a game and gone on to win an All-Ireland in football since Cork in 2010.

Limerick hurlers just lost their first championship match in four years. They’d been unbeaten en-route to three All-Irelands in-a-row. It will be interesting to see how that all pans out.

"Momentum is one of the most precious commodities in any sport, it is hard got and should never be diluted. It needs to be respected and minded. Winning is a habit, but so is losing," wrote Éamonn Fitzmaurice in his Irish Examiner column back in February.

Mayo are in no place to disrespect it.

Roscommon opened the windows and let all the warmth from their league success out.

Kevin McStay's reign had begun with a series of impressive displays culminating in a Croke Park final win over Galway.

But Colm Reape was man of the match for his shot-stopping exploits that day, which wasn't a particularly good sign.

Kerry will ask questions of their defence that nobody else will.

In last year's All-Ireland quarter-final meeting, Oisin Mullin started on David Clifford and Lee Keegan was on the brother Paudie. Both are now gone from the Mayo defence.

They’ve tried Padraig O’Hora, and you can sense they want to avoid asking Paddy Durcan to go full-back again, but they might have no choice.

With David McBrien and Sam Callinan in line for delayed championship debuts, it's a very fresh defence facing into the challenge of trying to blot out a Kerry attack that can at times be more frightening on paper than in reality.

We don't really know where Mayo are. Their defence has danced around the petri dish all year, avoiding the microscope. It will catch them and when it does, you’d have your doubts.

On the other hand, they stuck with it for 50 minutes in Croke Park last year. At that point, it was 0-13 to 0-12 and during what might have been a purple patch, they missed one shot after the next.

They were without Ryan O’Donoghue and Tommy Conroy, the two forwards most likely to hurt Jack O’Connor's team. In that context, 50 minutes was a long time to even remain standing.

You can only feel that everything in Kerry's 2023 has been building towards this day.

The team holiday, the sluggish league, the waltz through Munster that they knew they’d have, none of it has any material value.

For all that the debate on the provincial championships centres on the Kerry and Dublin cakewalks through Munster and Leinster, they might be the happiest sides in it right now.

The champions will be glad of a good test. Mayo will give them one but maybe no more than that.

Kerry's battle is to get back to their own level, not somebody else's.

Mayo haven't had a competitive game in almost six weeks but Kerry haven't had one in even longer. The Munster Championship doesn't fit that category for them. It only taught us that they’re able to keep delivering lashings to their neighbours.

The hosts are 27 years unbeaten in championship football in Fitzgerald Stadium.

Mayo can't afford to shadow-box. Kerry won't stand back to get hit.

If you’re lucky enough to get through a turnstile or up a ladder to peer over the paywall, what you’ll see will be real.