For Dublin, Galway and Derry, this is the weekend when the chickens come home to roost. One of them will be gone out of the championship on Saturday night.
They’ll only have themselves to blame, as well. You can cry all you like about the tough draw and being in the Group of Death but that’s only looking for excuses. For one thing, it doesn’t seem to have caused Armagh a lot of bother. They started out with the same fixture list as the other three but they’re going into the last weekend in total control of what they want to do.
That’s your main job when you’re navigating leagues and group stages and all the rest of it. Whatever it takes, you make sure you’re not going into the last day depending on someone else to do you a favour. Get your business done early and get out the gap.
Armagh can do what they like this weekend. If I was Kieran McGeeney, I’d be resting fellas and getting a serious test into the panel players. I keep going back to the fact that the All-Ireland is going to be decided by three games in four weeks and there’s bound to be extra-time somewhere along the way. Everyone is going to be needed.
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The flipside of that coin, though, is that Armagh can take out a contender here. McGeeney knows that whatever happens, his team are going to be in the last eight. He’d be happier if Galway weren’t one of the other seven. This is like the bit in Saving Private Ryan where they let the Nazi go and send him off into the wild. You don’t want him coming back to pick you off in the final battle.
Whatever way Armagh go about it, they will have the luxury of suiting themselves. They have earned that right and more power to them. The other three have created their own mess.
Let’s take Galway first. They shouldn’t be in this predicament. They have been in position to win against both Dublin and Derry and haven’t seen it out. I thought after the Dublin game that it wasn’t the worst thing in the world for them to get caught because at least they had their warning now. But that’s not much use if you go out and get caught again the next day.
Once is a warning. Twice is a pattern. Three times and you’re in the pub on the Monday bitching about another year gone down the drain.
Galway are an established team. They’ve been to two All-Ireland finals in three years. Pádraic Joyce is an established winner and they look like they have a very professional set-up there. So why are they going into the last game fighting for their lives?
To my mind, it comes down to leaders. I get the sense that sometimes they’re looking around at the end of games and not being reassured by the leaders they have around them. When Damien Comer is on the pitch, they know they have a leader who will do anything to get on the ball and force a score. But who had he with him the last day?
Shane Walsh, Paul Conroy and Cillian McDaid were all on the bench by then. John Maher was still giving it everything, to be fair to him. But otherwise, they’re lacking those leaders who make everyone else go, ‘we’re okay here’ when the game is at boiling point down the stretch.
I don’t know if they can do much about it at this point either. It’s very late to be trying to find leaders. That’s what the league is for. Or the Connacht championship. Or the last four or five years. Now Galway are like a fella I knew once, standing at the bar in the airport trying to get the barmaid to hurry up. “We’re running to catch a plane,” he said. “So is everybody else!” she replied.
Galway only need to look at the team they played the last day to know the truth of that. Derry hit rock bottom a good while ago and they look like a team that’s on the rise again. A good few of the injuries have cleared up. They’ve stopped the freefall. In their last two games, they finished strong against Armagh and Galway.
Look at who was driving them on. Conor Glass and Brendan Rodgers have been showing Derry the leadership that Galway have lacked. Against Armagh, Glass scored their first goal and Rogers set up the second. Glass scored 1-3 against Galway, Rogers chipped in with 0-3. In the very last play of the game, it was Glass who put Conor Doherty in the clear for the equaliser.
Now you look at Derry coming in to play the Dubs and they’re nearly in bonus territory. After everything that has gone wrong for them over the last year, they’re in with a shot of putting Dublin out. They’re still living. They’re looking forward to the next game as an opportunity.
Can you say the same about Dublin? For the first time in a long, long time, I wouldn’t bet on it. They’re not putting performances back-to-back. They were good against Galway in the league and the championship, but they struggled to beat Wicklow, lost to Meath and were well beaten by Armagh the last day. They have enough quality to still be favourites going up to Newry on Saturday, but a lot will depend on whether or not Con O’Callaghan can play.
Dessie Farrell will probably get it in the neck if it all goes wrong but at this stage, it’s down to players. That’s how I always saw it anyway. When the skin and hair were flying in the last 10 minutes, it wasn’t Jack O’Connor or Páidí Ó Sé or Pat O’Shea who was in charge – it was down to us, on the pitch, to go and solve the problem.
My feeling is Dublin still has the players and leaders to see it out, even if O’Callaghan isn’t playing. But Derry are dangerous and if the Dubs lose, they need Galway to lose as well. One way or the other, one of them is done for the year on Saturday night.
Whoever it is will have no excuses.
