Returning O'Sullivan now a 'mature' option in midfield for Kerry

Diarmuid Murphy believes Kerry will need to evolve their game if they are to retain the All-Ireland football title.

With their early-season preparations delayed by a team holiday and disrupted by injuries, Kerry have used the break leading into Saturday's Munster semi-final against Tipperary to build improvements onto the work done in a mixed league campaign.

The nature of the league meant experimentation was mandatory and the form of Murphy’s Dingle clubmate Barry 'Dan' O’Sullivan was a major positive after David Moran’s retirement and long-term injuries to Joe O’Connor and, more recently, Stefan Okunbor.

The Dingle dynamo, now 27, hadn’t played for Kerry since the 2018 league and has yet to make his championship debut, but scored 1-03 in six starts this spring.

It was the strength and conditioning work done at club level that enabled him to make the step back into the All-Ireland-winning camp.

"Barry wasn’t even involved with us at all last year," says Kerry selector Murphy.

"Barry has been working hard with Dingle for the last couple of years. Having been involved with Dingle myself, Shane O’Rourke and a couple more of the boys back there have been doing massive S&C work with Dingle over the last few years so the shortfall wasn’t huge for him to make up coming into the county scene."

It’s not just retirements and injuries that make O’Sullivan’s emergence as a fresh option more important but also the new-look round-robin championship format which will test squad depth more than ever before.

"Coming in contributing as well as he did will be important with the nature of the round-robin this year," agrees Murphy.

"Having a strong squad and lads who are able to flit in and flit out of the team will be very important.

"That's