Crowd rises to Sligo fightback

So this is what it must have felt like during that mad gold rush in the days of the Wild West. With tickets to these games like gold dust, those who made it to the GAA's very own gold mine yesterday were like the pioneers of yore who struck a rich vein in the Klondike. Philip Reid reports from Croke Park

Adventurous souls rewarded for daring and resourcefulness with a chest-thumping, lung-busting, mind-numbing tale to tell the grandkids; and more, of getting the real thing rather than fool's gold.

It was a crazy old day in the new stadium. It was the story of the curtain raiser on day one of the All-Ireland football championship quarter-finals double bill. Of how Sligo, against all the odds, lived to fight another day; salvaging a draw - 0-15 to 2-9 - in the opening match with Ulster champions Armagh. A yarn of how the little folk in the world of Gaelic Football refused to be trampled on any longer.

Then Galway, the Connacht champions, became victims of the back door route that served them so well a year ago. They relinquished the Sam Maguire, routed by a Kerry team who played like zealots on a mission to convert the masses with an open brand of football that bedazzled and enthralled, and left no room for argument about who were the masters.

Day two has still to come, and it has a hard act to follow.

Yesterday was a day when the temperatures soared into the mid 70s It was a day wholly untypical of the Irish summer in that the rain stayed away and the 59,252 people who soaked in the sunshine at Croke Park brought with them a giddy Mexican wave that reached to the sky as if to provide some kind of self-therapy in the face of the madness that unfolded before their very eyes.

Sligo and Armagh will have to do it all again, and it is a matter of conjecture as to which team was most relieved to hear referee Paddy Russell's final whistle. The call to finish combat told them their day's work was done and it would require a replay on Saturday week, August 17th, in Clones, to work out who would progress to the semi-finals.

In a game that was as tight as a miser's fist at a wedding reception, Sligo - out-powered and out-scored - were seemingly dead and buried when reduced to 14 men after David Durkin was sent off with just 12 minutes of normal time left. At that stage, they trailed the northerners by five points and it seemed a matter of merely writing the team's epitaph.

As we have seen so many times before, numerical superiority can sometimes prove to be a burden. So it proved for Armagh, who played with heavy legs and heavy hearts. Armagh conceded five unanswered points as the clock ticked down and abjectly failed to cope with the black-and-white waves that assaulted them in the do-or-die minutes that remained. It was they, perhaps, who most welcomed the referee's shrill whistle.

Benny Tierney, his psychedelic yellow jersey discarded, told it as it was afterwards. "They (Sligo) showed more heart and determination. If we're going to do anything in the All-Ireland, we'll have to show more fighting spirit," said Armagh's goalkeeper.

Once upon a time, Sligo would have lay down and surrendered meekly. Not any more. When the dust had settled, Peter Ford, talked of how his players had tried to do "silly things, like trying to run through four and five and six" Armagh players for much of the game. Ironically, that was when things were tight and his men were closely marked. When Durkin was dismissed, things opened up; and Sligo were the ones to benefit.

Ford showed he wasn't afraid to make the hard decisions. Tommy Brennan was not long on the field as a substitute when Durkin was sent off; and, in the tactical wargame that ensued, Brennan's attacking skills were surrendered so that the defence wouldn't leak.

In those trying final minutes, Sligo appeared like the team with the numerical advantage. The game opened up and they revelled in it; and the decibel level in the stadium reached new heights as the supposedly neutral Kerry and Galway supporters got behind their cause.

One by one, the points were picked off. "They'd men all over the place, and that suited us," said Eamonn O'Hara. "Armagh just lost their shape."

If the Sligo-Armagh match was tight until its dying moments, the Kerry-Galway quarter-final that followed was the opposite. This was a match more open than the African plains, played at speed and with little of the pulling and dragging that can ruin football. It was a game that featured stunning goals and more stunning points; and it was remarkable for the number of scores - the first 12, in fact - that came from open play.

Michael Donnellan's early goal for Galway encapsulated the free spirit that was evident in the play of both teams - but it was Kerry who skipped about the newly laid turf with the fresher legs and the keener finishing sense. In fact, Galway - exemplified by the cases of Matthew Clancy, Pádraig Joyce and Derek Savage, who sent over their side's final three scores of the first half - could easily have added more goals if the required finishing touches had been there. In truth, though, it was never going to be their day.

Just as Galway reached the quarter-finals a year ago by the back door route - and went on to win the All-Ireland - so too do Kerry owe their progress to the same path. Yesterday, the men from the Kingdom were sublime, if a little generous in offering routes to goal to their opponents. From the time that Sean O'Sullivan's first half goal gave them a five points lead, however, they had destiny very much in their own hands.

The stands which earlier had jumped to the spectacle of the Mexican wave were well-emptied by the time the final whistle sounded, with Kerry winners on a 2-17 to 1-12 scoreline. And the reason for the exodus was not entirely due to the announcement over the public address that some returned tickets for today's second double-bill of quarter-finals were going on sale post haste. It was just that the match - particularly after Aodán Mac Gearailt's second Kerry goal - had ceased to be a contest.