All-Ireland SFC Quarter-finalSo, with one bound Ryan McMenamin was free. Even he must be a little bit surprised. The DRA (Disputes Resolution Authority), one of those wheezes which seemed like such a good idea at the time, continues to sow chaos where mere confusion reigned before.
The Dublin county football championship lurches towards disaster over the Mark Vaughan affair. Now the All-Ireland quarter-finals are polluted with the sort of controversy which the DRA was supposed to eliminate. Another fine mess.
Still, what’s done is done and the reprieve puts a fair spring into the step of a tired Tyrone team as they return to Croke Park yet again. Last weekend against Monaghan they won by reflex and by rote, with even the peerless Stephen O’Neill carelessly gilding his legend by scoring 2-6 without playing particularly well.
Without McMenamin, Tyrone seemed to have more question marks about them than a side of their eminence should have.
Undoubtedly their claim that whacky refereeing cost them the Ulster final holds water in so far as anyone can divine such things as what might have happened but their football this summer hasn’t had the verve or crispness it had in 2003.
Since then tragedy, form, emigration – any number of things really – have altered the composition and balance of the side. Last Sunday, Pascal McConnell, Joe McMahon, Chris Lawn, Shane Sweeney, Davey Harte and Ryan Mellon all started in Croke Park.
Lawn was the only one who even made an appearance as a sub in the All-Ireland final.
Not all the changes have been for the better and the more established faces have travelled a long and tiring road together. Against Monaghan it might have been interesting to see what would have happened had the underdogs played brighter football for the 70 minutes instead of handing their brains to the hat-check girl on the way in for their half-time vittles.
As it was, O’Neill, not even on fire himself, was the only Tyrone forward with any spark. Eoin Mulligan and Brian Dooher were unhappy shadows of their recent selves and one wonders in hindsight how the benefits of inserting Brian "G’day" McGuigan into the line-up so soon after his Antipodean adventure weighed up against the impact on morale of those forwards who had trained all winter for the promise of a place.
The Peter Canavan injury business raises a curious question too. Is the most famous damaged rib in the game any less likely to get a serious dunt in the second half of a match than it is in the first? Or is Canavan’s role now one of endlessly reprising the 2003 final: Batman swooping in to save Gotham City as the populace cheers deliriously.
Tyrone could do with 70 minutes of the old Canavan this afternoon but won’t get it.
Yet it was curious last weekend to contrast the understandable enthusiasm that erupted on the stands when Canavan got ready to be launched into the game with the rather resigned looks on the faces of those forwards out there slogging away.
Anyway, Dublin will play the odds and calculate that putting a man-marker (Stephen O’Shaughnessy, perhaps) on O’Neill will limit his damage to about the five- or six-point mark.
After that Tyrone look surprisingly blunt.
Allowing, as Dublin must, for Ciarán Whelan’s tendency to enter a fugue state during games, Shane Ryan will surely be delegated to follow Seán Cavanagh, sacrificing his own game in a process of damage limitation.
Ryan will run himself into the ground in the cause at which point the Dublin management may decide that Darren Magee has spent enough time in quarantine to shove him back into the action without ruffling any feathers among other players. After that it gets interesting.
When Dublin are done containing, they still have to score. McMenamin’s return tilts things somewhat unfortunately in that respect. Dublin would perhaps like their full-forward line to be a little bit stronger physically when it comes to driving into the ball. The option is to let Jason Sherlock wander.
His runs and his distribution are what makes the difference between Dublin being workaday and being a little inventive. If they are to breach the Tyrone full-back line they need to be bright about playing the ball into space.
The jury is still out, too, on whether Alan Brogan is seen to best effect at centre forward instead or coming out on to the ball from the full-forward line. The option exists to make a straight swap with Sherlock.
Dublin will be happy with the form of Bryan Cullen since his posting to the front lines and Cullen is one of those rare young players with the football brain to work his way through almost any situation.
Collie Moran will be under pressure to produce this afternoon, however, and given that Senan O’Connell failed to scorch the earth with any of his trademark runs when introduced against Laois, the Dublin management may go against their own conservative instincts and introduce either Vaughan or David O’Callaghan at some stage.
Dublin’s style of football is evolving and in the capital confidence is worth a four-point lead.
Tyrone have better in them than they have shown over the last month and even when they can’t access that seam of excellence they have the cussedness to stay with a game and inflict themselves on it.
The last three All-Irelands have gone to managers in their first year of business, though. Men harvesting the benefits of fresh thoughts falling on eager ears have certain small advantages.
Dublin are more raw, more of a work in progress but if they can get a goal or two to keep them from looking down they are taken to close the deal narrowly.DUBLIN: S Cluxton; P Griffin, P Christie, S
O’Shaughnessy; P Casey, B Cahill, C Goggins; S
Ryan, C Whelan; C Moran, A Brogan, B Cullen; J Sherlock,
C Keaney, T Quinn.TYRONE: P McConnell; R McMenamin, C Lawn, S
Sweeney; D Harte, G Devlin, P Jordan; C Gormley, S
Cavanagh; B Dooher, B McGuigan, S O’Neill; R Mellon, O Mulligan, E McGinley.
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