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17th Aug 2017

Marking Kieran Donaghy sounds like it is close to impossible

An absolute monster of a man

Darragh Culhane

Donaghy

One of a kind.

Kieran Donaghy is something else.

The Kerryman has eight Munster titles, four All-Irelands, three league titles, three All-Stars, a Player of the Year Award, a call up to the Ireland basketball team and a book.

When you say that he has done it all, well that’s no lie.

Standing at something close to 6ft 5in and built like a tonne of bricks you can imagine the difficulties when facing Donaghy.

One man that knows this is Sean Armstrong from Galway, his side had the task of dealing with the Austin Stacks’ man in this year’s All-Ireland Quarter Final.

Armstrong was speaking on the latest episode of SportsJOE Live and highlighted the uphill task his side faced when trying to deal with Kerry’s dangerman.

“Obviously in the lead up to the Kerry game, we changed our full back and stuck in David Walsh on top of him for the height,” Armstrong said.

“We were all happy with that decision, not to say that we had a say in it but we were delighted to see him coming in because of the height. It wasn’t because Cathal Sweeney, in fairness to him, was having a good year and he was man enough to step aside and go ‘Yeh, look they’re trying to mark Donaghy here’ and to be honest, we would have said with Donaghy put one in front of him and one behind him and break the ball.

“And you could even see Walshy going up a few times trying to break the ball and Donaghy’s hands are just fantastic and then we said that if he lands he’s just going to try lay it off so be careful of the runners coming in and next thing he spun two of the boys and buried it into the back of the net with his left foot.

“We said that isn’t going to happen and then goes and does that.

“He’s a former Player of the Year, he’s a phenomenal piece of stuff and he can take the ball in low, he can take the ball in high, his vision is savage, he’s got left and right like he’s a nightmare to mark, he really is.

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