The banality of excellence
Brian Cody once had a line about All Stars. He said outstanding players – of whom, of course, he had a few – could be discriminated against by the selectors simply because they were judged by different standards.
There won’t have been too many recriminations about the choice of Dylan Geaney as Saturday’s Man of the Match. His contribution of 0-8 from play with a couple of two-pointers and no wides was further confirmation that he has elevated his performance levels from being an undisputed first-choice for Jack O’Connor to being in conversations for Footballer of the Year.
At the same time, there could not have been many quibbles had David Clifford received the MOTM recognition instead. His 1-8 included 1-5 from play, the goal an important contribution to turn around Tyrone’s first-half lead.
His role in keeping the machine going in the second half was also notable. Twice in quick succession, and within a minute of Tyrone cutting the margin to one, Clifford got on the ball and cruised in to fist over steadying points that pushed out the lead as soon as it had narrowed.
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Then when the final kickout was coming in the last minute, with Kerry’s lead again down to the minimum, it was Clifford who read the break perfectly to get on the ball and direct that ultimate attack. He kicked back to Armin Heinrich, who kept it alive, and a couple of additional passes involving Diarmuid O’Connor and Seán O’Shea found Clifford again, this time in the corner and moving.
Heinrich had also moved inside, and Clifford’s precise hand pass enabled him to come on to the ball just ahead of Tyrone goalkeeper Niall Morgan, who bounced him, but the Kerry replacement got off the shot, steering it into the net past a despairing defender.
Clifford was officially designated MOTM in the Munster final against Cork and the third-round All-Ireland showdown with Armagh. The Donegal match in Killarney was an off day for the team, including Clifford, exacerbated by Micheál Burns’s red card. Against Clare, he hit 1-7 (1-3 from play) and in Round Two, despite some good early defence by Kildare’s Mark Dempsey, he bagged 1-4 from play.
Then there was the weekend.
Has there ever been a player who so consistently performs at such a high level? – Seán Moran
Mayo’s fresh blood
Midway through one of his answers in the post-match press conference on Saturday, Andy Moran had to correct his sums. He had momentarily forgotten that Diarmuid Duffy was not part of the dummy team he had named, so that took the number of Mayo’s Croke Park debutants up to an astonishing eight.
Since Mayo became Croke Park regulars again around the turn of the century, a number like that would have been unimaginable. But in the five years since they last contested an All-Ireland final the team has turned inside out. Of the starting team for Saturday’s quarter-final against Cork, only Ryan O’Donoghue lined up against Tyrone in the 2021 All-Ireland final. Mattie Ruane, Conor Loftus and Tommy Conroy started that game too, but only came off the bench on Saturday. For the second game in a row, Aidan O’Shea didn’t come on.
Even in the course of this season, the skin of the team has kept changing. Only seven starters from their first-round win over London were in the first 15 against Cork at the weekend and, in total, they have used 25 different starters. It reflected a team that was struggling for consistency, but it also captured Moran’s determination to start again.
“I was saying to people during the week, I always thought this team was suited to Croke Park and the way it plays, because it’s a completely different game,” he said. “But the answer I was giving to everyone, ‘We’ll know more at half six on Saturday evening.’”
The questions will keep coming. – Denis Walsh
New rules make regrets hit different
You can always tell a good championship by the amount of teams who will watch the All-Ireland final seething in the knowledge that they’d fancy a rattle at the participants. Even if this turns out to be a year when Kerry are cut above the rest, one or other of Louth and Mayo will be in the final. It’s no slight on either of them to say that’s going to sting in certain parts of the country.
Roscommon, Tyrone, Westmeath and Donegal have all beaten the eventual All-Ireland semi-finalists at some stage over the last nine weeks. Mayo were knocked over by two of them and are still standing after the Rossies and Tyrone have cried enough. Everyone will be tuning in for Dublin v Kerry in a fortnight. That game will hit different in Westmeath and Donegal respectively.
Was there a more consequential play all year than Sam Mulroy’s hit-and-hope on 69:58 against Armagh? Will Monaghan ever forgive themselves for not finding a way to win on Sunday with a one-man advantage for 65 minutes? How can Galway watch another minute of football all year, knowing they threw away a six-point lead down the stretch against Dublin.
This is a slightly unspoken aspect of the new game – it has an endless capacity for heartbreak. Everyone always thinks they have a chance. But all that means is that they get to spend a long winter annoyed about not taking it. – Malachy Clerkin
Pedantic draws
The draws during this year’s All-Ireland championship have generated plenty of excitement and debate – questions ranging from why one took place on GAA+ at 1pm on the May Bank Holiday Monday to why another was scheduled for 8.30am on RTÉ Radio 1 on the Tuesday after the June Bank Holiday?
Still, within it all, the new championship format allowed for some great fixtures to emerge. And most would agree that given the four teams remaining in the championship, Sunday evening’s draw produced probably the most agreeable semi-final pairings. Something for everybody.
But when it gets to the semi-final stage, is there really a need for the GAA to maintain the stipulation in relation to avoiding repeat pairings? It really is one of the great GAA-isms.
On Saturday morning, the GAA circulated a very informative press release carrying all the details of what pairings were possible depending on the outcome of Sunday afternoon’s matches. The information was very useful, but at the same time it all felt needlessly complicated and convoluted for a draw involving just four teams.
Rivalries thrive on a healthy dose of contempt. And nothing breeds contempt like familiarity. What would have been wrong with Dublin coming out against Louth in an open draw for an All-Ireland semi-final? Sure they’d be meeting for the third time in this championship, but does that not just increase the stakes?
Next week will mark the 35th anniversary of the fourth game in the 1991 Meath-Dublin saga. They remain an iconic set of fixtures in the GAA’s history and helped fuel the rivalry between the counties.
The GAA are not about to move away from the general regulation for repeat pairings, but is it necessary in the last four, when surely an open draw is fairest? – Gordon Manning
Magic 14 for Louth
The sense among us entirely neutrals in the Croke Park press box on Sunday was that once Louth lost midfielder Seán Callaghan to a straight red card after just six-and-a-half minutes of play there would not be a happy ending for the Wee County.
Louth had yet to score, Monaghan went four points up, and on a hot, sunny afternoon in Croke Park, playing with 14 men against 15 could be more than just a numerical disadvantage. It had to be a psychological disadvantage too.
Whatever about the exact reasoning for referee Seán Hurson deciding to show Callaghan red after catching Oisín McGorman with a high shoulder moments after the Monaghan midfielder released the ball, it seems Louth also got the sense they were definitely hard done by, but they weren’t going to allow it to define their season.
To score 27 points in the hour or so that remained, including four points in the last three minutes after trailing by a point, ranks as one of the greatest Croke Park performances of recent times, and deservedly sent Louth to an All-Ireland semi-final for the first time since 1957.
Afterwards both managers tried to make sense of the numerical disadvantage being anything but that, and Monaghan manager Gabriel Bannigan duly pointed to two disadvantages for his side: the losses of goalkeeper Rory Beggan and midfielder Karl Gallagher, both unable to start due to injury.
There’s little doubt that Beggan’s accuracy from kick-outs was missed over the course of the game, as was Gallagher’s presence around middle, although Bannigan admitted that hardly counts as much as being a man down.
“It makes it all the more devastating for us that we didn’t make good use of that extra man, that’s on us,” he said. “We never managed to find a period in the game where we were completely on top, apart from the first seven minutes before the red card. But after that, I don’t know if we were a little bit casual, or a little bit timid or what, but the energy levels just didn’t seem to be there.”
When set against Louth’s energy and desire, it seems that sometimes 15 is but a number. – Ian O’Riordan
