ALL-IRELAND SFC QUARTER-FINAL Donegal 1-12 Kildare 0-14:MAYBE NOT a football match that would make it into the Pat Spillane portrait gallery of Football As It Should Be Played. But in the end, the Saturday night clash of Donegal and Kildare brought the game and the crowd watching it to a place rarely explored in the championship.
It was 101 minutes of mad, adrenaline-fuelled escapism, with Kevin Cassidy – the man who had retired – ending it all with a winning point of such outrageous poise it transported the various clans from Donegal back to the untouchable heights of 1992.
It was a last, unexpected thrust in a match riddled with them. In a fairer world, Kildare would have at least walked out of Croke Park with a draw and there was a period, after Emmet Bolton’s killer point put them 0-14 to 1-9 ahead with 82 minutes gone, when the Lilywhites seemed to have finally tamed the Donegal men. But in a way the match had to end with a victory and a defeat because the absolute unblinking ferocity of both teams demanded it.
It was a tough, unforgettable match because it paired two teams who mirror one another in their absolute refusal to quit. Every player was dead on his feet but had David Coldrick thrown away the whistle, you got the impression they would still have been battering into one another long after midnight, lost in their own world.
And the night confirmed that Kildare are the unluckiest team of this championship. They had what was a legitimate goal disallowed when Tomás O’Connor was ruled to have been in the square after he claimed a ball that rebounded from John Doyle’s shot and hammered it home.
That would have made it 1-6 to 0-3 after 41 minutes: a huge gulf in such a cagey match.
Instead, the scare seemed to sharpen Donegal’s focus and they relaxed to play their best football, rattling over quality scores from Michael Murphy, Ryan Bradley and Dermot Molloy.
It was 0-7 to 0-7 when Christy Toye – the forgotten man of Donegal football – ambled into the bedlam and, receiving his first touch in a competitive match in over a year, calmly slid a goal past Shane Connolly. And after that, the match went off the radar.
The verdict on the first half was that it was grimmer than East Berlin. Donegal kicked three points – and just about at that: the tireless Mark McHugh chased a ball to nothing and chipped a huge point just before the teams went for tea. And, no, it was not pretty. But it was the stark, unflinching nature of the first half that made the second half and the 20 minutes of extra-time so absorbing.
The most flattering comparison of that opening half was to a chess match and on the sideline, it was probably that. Both Jim McGuinness and Kieran McGeeney coached brilliant games here.
Both managers were virtually meditative throughout the spiralling madness and their substitutions were sharp, strategic and important. They both confirmed their status as the ascendant stars of Gaelic football coaching.
But if it was all mind games on the sideline, the stuff between the lines was darker. In the first half, it was Liston versus Liston (Sonny, rather than “The Bomber”). The theatre started before the throw-in, with Michael Murphy hobbling around the parade only to be replaced by David Walsh at the last second; the whispers of his hamstring injury all true.
Then, as if McGeeney’s midweek comments about Johnny Doyle shipping rough treatment were a premonition, the Kildare talisman clattered into Michael Hegarty in the opening seconds. It was accidental and neither player fully recovered from it.
On an evening for bravery, every player was deserving of a medal but for Kildare, Daryl Flynn had a staggering game at midfield, Hugh McGrillen and Michael Foley were outstanding in the heart of the defence and Alan Smith kicked two huge points after coming in. But then, because of the give-nothing-away-ever first half, every score seemed to carry the power of a mortal wound.
If James Kavanagh kicked an unbelievable point at the end of normal time, so did Toye land a wonderful shot under intense pressure at the end of extra-time.
The floodlights had come on by then and that, too, seemed apt; sunshine had no place here. The pressure built as the seconds ticked and the players seemed to grow in stature and deed. The crowd of 39,612 were enthralled as the light fell. Neil McGee gave a lion-hearted, flawless display at fullback, while Karl Lacey gave one of the great individual displays ever witnessed in the old stadium.
By the end of the game, Murphy’s teatime injury was forgotten – he floated a huge free from distance to reduce the deficit to a point and combined the balance of a gymnast with a beautiful flick to rescue a ball from the sideline and set up Cassidy’s winning score.
Cassidy kicked that ball not far from where McGeeney stood. As an Armagh captain, McGeeney had broken Cassidy’s heart a dozen times. There was something of all those years of hurt in that final shot from Cassidy.
Neither side could quite believe it was over when the whistle went, Donegal lost in some kind of miracle and Kildare crushed and inconsolable. For the second year in a row, their valour was met with cruel luck. Where they go from here is a question for another day. Donegal march on – in a mood to take all comers now.
DONEGAL: P Durcan; F McGlynn, N McGee, P McGrath; A Thompson, K Lacey (0-1), K Cassidy (0-2); N Gallagher, R Kavanagh (0-1); M McHugh (0-1), M Hegarty, R Bradley (0-1); P McBrearty (0-1), D Walsh, C McFadden. Subs: M Murphy (0-3, 0-1 free) for McBrearty (27 mins), E McGee for McGrath (27), M McElhinney for Gallagher (half-time), D Molloy (0-1) for Hegarty (41 mins), C Toye (1-1) for McFadden (57 mins), McFadden for Molloy (70 mins), K Rafferty for McElhinney (70), Gallagher for Rafferty (80), Molloy for McFadden (80), McBrearty for Bradley (88 mins). Yellow card: R Kavanagh (71 mins).
KILDARE: S Connolly; A MacLochlainn, M Foley, H McGrillen; B Flanagan, M O'Flaherty, E Bolton (0-1); J Doyle, D Flynn; P O'Neill (0-1), E O'Flaherty (0-6, 0-4 frees), E Callaghan (0-1); R Kelly, T O'Connor, J Kavanagh (0-1). Subs: A Smith (0-2) for O'Connor (42 mins), O Lyons for MacLochlainn (62), R Sweeney (0-1) for Flanagan (62 mins), M Conway for O'Neill (65 mins), G White (0-1) for Doyle (70 mins), F Dowling for Kavanagh (76 mins), Doyle for E O'Flaherty (77 mins), Flanagan for Kelly (86 mins). Yellow cards: D Flynn (73 mins), J Doyle (84 mins), B Flanagan (87 mins)
Referee: D Coldrick(Meath).
