Mickey Harte repositions Derry as contenders and raises questions about Dublin

With the symmetry that Gaelic games have an uncanny knack of delivering, Sunday’s league final echoed through the last 10 years.

It crossed everyone’s mind that nine years to the month after Jarlath Burns had declared “the death of football” after a Dublin v Derry divisional match had ended 0-8 to 0-4, there he was as president delivering a rhapsodic tribute to the final between the same counties. This Friday, the chair of Burns’s Football Review Committee, Jim Gavin, will brief media on his plans.

Gavin’s previous football review came 10 years ago after a rather less complicated final between the counties, won 3-19 to 1-10 by a rampant Dublin.

It marked a watershed for both teams – the aggressive, attacking blueprint of Dublin was sensationally stress-tested by Donegal later that year and found wanting, whereas Derry would plunge through the divisions in the years that followed.

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Gavin’s right-hand man, Declan Darcy, would go around with 3-14 printed on his laptop cover – Donegal’s total from the 2014 All-Ireland semi-final a footballing memento mori. It would directly inspire the Dublin response to defensive systems as prototyped in the Derry league encounter nine years ago.

It might be stretching things to say that Sunday brought Dublin a similar epiphany but Dessie Farrell sounded almost enthused by the final defeat.

“There’s loads to work on and we knew that, to be fair – that that was the case and it’s great to actually see it front and centre there today.”

It was as if his familiar downbeat equilibrium had been disturbed by the quality of Dublin’s performances against opponents, compromised by injuries and other absenteeism and the hype triggered by it all.

As Spike Milligan ordained for his epitaph: “Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite.” [I told you I was sick.]

He may also feel his players are slow learners. Four weeks previously, in Celtic Park, against a Derry team resting a number of frontliners, a controlled display by Dublin should have had them farther ahead at half-time, but a goal by the home side kept things tighter on the scoreboard than was strictly reflective.

It came about because Cormac Murphy picked out both space and the run of Conor McCluskey, from corner back, who advanced through a gap the size of a barn door and showed all the finishing quality that has become a hallmark of Derry’s backs, suppliers of half of the team’s goals in the campaign just gone.

On Sunday, Murphy similarly opened the Dublin defence with a fisted pass that left a bit to do for Eoin McEvoy, but guaranteed an open goal if he could win the ball. That was the final Derry score in extra-time and effectively won them the title.

A month ago, Farrell made his feelings clear.

“There was an awful lot of space. Somebody will be on the chopping block there.” For it to happen once may be regarded as a misfortune but twice looks like carelessness.

Brian Fenton, Con O’Callaghan and Ciarán Kilkenny had all showed well in Celtic Park and during Dublin’s run to the final but all were subdued at the weekend.

The problem for Fenton is that he was up against what was by consensus the strongest centrefield in the country. Whereas he had got the better of Brendan Rogers in Celtic Park, once captain, Conor Glass was back, Derry had their first-choice pairing.

Targeting Fenton can be productive, as Kerry with Jack Barry at times indicated. In the winter All-Ireland final of 2020, Mayo did the same and it wasn’t until Brian Howard was sent in for the second half that the battle evened out and Fenton was able to assert himself. Farrell still has a number of players to return and is unlikely to be despondent, but in these circumstances there is always the possibility that a genie has been let out of the bottle.

Sunday was Mickey Harte’s first sudden-death win against Dublin since Tyrone’s 2008 All-Ireland quarter-final. The veteran manager was in excellent form, as might be expected given the firmness with which he has restated Derry’s credentials.

Peak Dublin in terms of unpicking the blanket defence was probably the All-Ireland semi-final of 2017 when Tyrone were dismantled. O’Callaghan had got in on turnover ball for a fourth-minute goal that Harte afterwards described as “critical”.

A couple of months later, his attitude to the goal had evolved into irritation, at the Dublin prodigy’s failure to track his marker, Pádraig Hampsey, and instead hold his ground.

“And if the number six goes forward and the 11 watches him go, well, I don’t think that’s good practice. So, he should have been after Hampsey. Now, he got it in a way I wouldn’t like – by not being an honest broker and going after the man he should have done.”

That old cantankerousness was not in evidence on Sunday. He even sympathised with O’Callaghan’s missed first penalty, which hit the bar, pointing out plausibly but generously that such a miss can be crucial as it changes the momentum of the shoot-out.

Just as he did 21 years ago with Tyrone, Harte has laid down a marker in his first season in charge.

He has used nearly 40 panellists, drafting in young players who have deepened the panel – Cormac Murphy, Diarmuid Baker and Donncha Gilmore – and developed others like Niall Loughlin and Lachlan Murray to take the strain off All Star full forward Shane McGuigan, whose form has remained supreme.

The redeployment of 21-year-old McEvoy from full back to centre back, partly necessitated by injury to Gareth McKinless, has had a huge impact, as emphasised at the weekend.

Derry’s season started and ended with wins over both of last year’s All-Ireland finalists, Kerry and Dublin. What inhibitions are left if – but more realistically, when – the top three meet again next July?

sean.moran@irishtimes.com