Down to their fingertips in thriller

ALL-IRELAND SFC SEMI-FINAL:IN DOWN they live within different dimensions. They don't know distance or time. With a confidence which has to be a small scientific leap away from being retailable they just do the here and now.

They don’t talk for instance about the 18 months since they were in a Division Three play-off or 16 years since an All-Ireland.They don’t wax lyrical about the journey they have shared. They ask who is next and what is next and get on with it.

The answer for now is Cork, in an All-Ireland final, a game already freighted with intrigue. Cork, burdened all year by expectation, must face a Down side who are unfamiliar with self doubt. In prospect it looks like Liston versus Ali. Go back enough time and distance and you know how that turned out.

Yesterday, Down beat Kildare to return themselves to the All-Ireland football final, a place where no Down team has ever lost. Kildare left Croke Park mired in the land of what might have been, mulling controversial refereeing decisions and the things which ran against them in the ultimate game of inches.

“My head is still spinning with relief,” said Down manager James McCartan, who played on the last two Down teams to win All-Irelands in 1991 and 1994. “There was a couple of things we felt even up the decisions that went against Kildare. Not trying to downplay it though. The last free-kick could have gone in. If you guys decide it was a bit of luck I’m okay to go with that. I couldn’t see the goal whether it was a square ball or not.”

“Yes it was,” said Benny Coulter frankly from the chair beside him.

Whirring controversies, elemental passions and some passages of sublime football from both sides. This was a great and theatrical semi-final, 70 minutes of helter-skelter and another welcome chapter in what has been a grand footballing year.

It ended with the breathtaking spectacle of Kildare, two points behind, feeling first that they had won a penalty, then seconds later being awarded a last-kick-of-the-game free which sub Rob Kelly crashed thunderously against the Down crossbar, having removed the top of Kalum King’s fingertips.

And then it was over. Kildare were measuring distance and time. Down were Down. Five All-Ireland finals they have played in and won them all. So what’s next?

And Kildare? Could you blame them for looking over their shoulder and measuring the time and distance and the misfortune since 1928 or since Larry Stanley was roughed out of football, since the promise of the great under-21 sides of the mid sixties or the hope which burned at the latter part of the last century.

This was a game which Down deserved to win by virtue of their more lyrical football and the genius of Marty Clarke and Coulter but it was a game which Kildare might have won. A game of ifs and buts. They were denied their totem, Dermot Earley. They were robbed of a first-half point which appeared to have gone over the bar. Coulter’s first-half goal was, even according to Benny himself, a square-ball affair. Then there was the closing drama.

And yet when it comes to totting up the things which Kildare had absolute control of, their devastated manager, Kieran McGeeney, will know they fell short. Kildare shot 12 wides, some excusable, a few unforgivable. They didn’t get their big guys into the game enough. They had nobody of the influence of Marty Clarke, who augmented Down’s excellent half-forward line by being available for the get-out pass all the time.

Yesterday Marty Clarke showed any remaining doubters what all the fuss is about and he can safely say that he was the only person in the entire stadium (62,182 customers) who saw the possibility of a sublime pass which he made to Peter Fitzpatrick in the 57th minute. Had Fitzpatrick put the ball into the net it would have been a cast iron goal of the year. As it happened he put it over the bar, putting Down some seven points ahead of Kildare.

In that context Kildare’s grief is understandable. At that point they seemed hopelessly adrift but they never lacked courage. They worked the ball up the field almost straight away and Eamon Callaghan took the ball past two defenders and the goalkeeper to score a goal which ignited the game again. It would be ungallant to count the number of steps which he took along the way. So we won’t. Better to remember Hugh Lynch’s two wonderful points soon afterwards and the glory of the endgame.

“We weren’t going to give it away in the last 10 seconds,” said Coulter afterwards. “Big Kalum got a fingertip on it. We weren’t letting anything through into that net. It got put onto the crossbar and that was it. We sort of knew it was over then.”

For Kildare the long march goes on. McGeeney trod a fine line afterwards between the business of losing out to bad decisions and an instinctive graciousness towards his side’s conquerors.

“You get used to starting press conferences this way but it will be interesting to see how many of youse tell the referee what he did wrong rather than me. What can you do? We had to spend the last two weeks being told that Aidan O’Rourke crossed the line 22 or 23 times the last day. They have a fella who watches that like, but they can’t tell when the ball goes over the bar or when there is a square ball. Idiots! That’s administration at its best. It’s a shame because you are taking away from people like Benny Coulter, the work rate of Danny Hughes and Kalum King, they were outstanding today, they were fantastic today.”

Football is all about time and history for the flourbag football folk at times like this.

McGeeney said afterwards it was too early to think about his future as manager.

His term is up and he spoke with heartfelt passion about the players he had worked with, men who had thrown their heart and soul into it from beginning to end.

An entire county will hope that the McGeeney era doesn’t become another addition to the past tense. And Down just keep living in the happy here and now.