GAELIC GAMES:SEEMS LIKE we get to this stage just about every year looking for a game to explode the championship. Even if it takes a little creative licence and some wilful ignoring of the good games that have already been played, consensus is as consensus does. Thus it fell to Dublin and Kildare yesterday to bring the crackle while we watched and waited for the pop. In the end, all we were missing was a scoreboard that said snap.
Dublin came through in the end by a single point, 1-12 to 1-11. From the checklist of what’s needed on these occasions, just about every item was ticked. A game in Croke Park. A bumper crowd. Sun to blister the noses. The Dubs in full cry. A goal or two. A sending-off. A comeback. A refereeing ballyhoo. Opposing managers with diametrically opposite views of the key incident. Enough grey area for arguments into the night. Yeah, that’ll all do for starters.
In front of 58,723 paying guests, Dublin nicked a game they just about deserved. Kildare were dead and then they were saved and then they were dead again. With 68 minutes on the clock and four points between the sides, the Dublin defence inexplicably found itself splayed open right down the centre.
When nobody disabused Eamonn Callaghan of the notion that it might be worth his while shooting for goal, he scuttled a low skidder into the bottom right-hand corner of Stephen Cluxton’s net. A minute into injury-time, he drew the sides level and we all shrugged and agreed another day was a reasonable outcome after a dinger of a game.
What happened next was neither as black nor as white as either side made out afterwards. Having won the kick-out, Dublin moved the ball diagonally into the space in front of Bernard Brogan down at the Canal End. Depending on how stringently you want to apply the rules, Aindriú Mac Lochlainn either fouled him or he didn’t as they raced out towards the ball.
Brogan had the jump on his marker and was definitely interfered with, that much is unarguable. Whether it was enough to warrant a free is strictly in the eye of the beholder. Or in this case, the bewhistler, Meath referee Cormac Reilly. If he hadn’t blown for it, he’d have stood indicted this morning as playing for the draw. But he did and Brogan iced the free to take the spoils.
Cue claim and counterclaim in the post-match pleasantries.
“I’m can’t go on about referees much longer,” said a crestfallen Kieran McGeeney. “I just can’t. He (Mac Lochlainn) didn’t do anything wrong. Even after probably seven replays, he still didn’t do anything wrong. He came out with his hands up in the air. I thought up front our two boys were getting bumped and pushed about the place but they’re good strong lads and they stayed on their feet.
“You just have to try and get on with it. I can’t control that side of things. Even as a manager, you can get agitated on the sideline but it probably won’t do you any good. You can’t change it. But it is a pity that over the last number of years, bigger and bigger decisions have been what has been costing teams games. You still have the same fellas sitting up there who won’t admit there’s something wrong. It’s hard to take and it’s even harder for me not to say anything.”
Pat Gilroy took a different view. Of the incident, if not the consistency of the refereeing. You sensed he and McGeeney would be able to find common ground on the latter issue.
“I think Bernard was probably due a free at that stage,” he said. “He probably had a few calls go against him. I think there were seven or eight that he could have had before that. But yer man was pulling him. We either want to have good forwards pulled and have that as part of the game or else it was a free. He was pulling him, there’s no question. But Bernard was pulled maybe eight other times as well and he didn’t get frees. We either have it as part of the game or we don’t.”
Free or no free, Dublin will have wrung their hands last night over allowing it to get to that point. On a day of stifling heat down on the pitch, they were in pretty comfortable control until Eoghan O’Gara walked for a second yellow card early in the second half.
Kildare nipped and tucked away against the 14 men and almost reeled them in, cutting a five-point deficit to two when Emmet Bolton lobbed a point in the 54th minute. But thanks to the clever probing of Paul Flynn and Alan Brogan, Dublin looked to have it settled 10 minutes later.
Allowing Callaghan in for the goal was careless. Allowing him room for the equalising point raised questions again about their nerve in tight matches.
But they survived and go on to another Leinster final where they’ll meet Wexford, whose game against Carlow was all sorts of interesting for 35 minutes.
Right on the stroke of half-time though, a second goal for Wexford wing-forward Paul Roche cracked the game open and provided the single bound that sent Wexford clear. In the end they won as they liked, amassing their third meaty total of the summer in a 4-12 to 0-10 win.
They’ll make potent underdogs in the final.
FOOTBALL QUALIFIERS SECOND ROUND
THE ability of the qualifier draw to cough up storylines continues. Formerly clubmates in the little Armagh village of Mullaghbawn, Kieran McGeeney and Justin McNulty will face each other on the sideline on Saturday week as Kildare take on Laois in the second round of the All-Ireland SFC qualifiers, reports Malachy Clerkin.
Elsewhere, Meath and Galway will meet in a repeat of the 2001 All-Ireland final, albeit with the splendour of that occasion badly faded at this point.
And London's reward for the first ever qualifier victory over Fermanagh on Saturday is a decent prospect of a second as they pulled a home draw against Waterford. The CCCC will confirm dates, times and venue this afternoon.
The Draw
Limerick v Offaly
Down v Leitrim
Laois v Kildare
Longford v Tyrone
Armagh v Wicklow
Meath v Galway
Antrim v Carlow
London v Waterford
Games to be played
on Saturday, July 9th
