GAELIC GAMES SENIOR FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP 2010:THE WEEKEND summer blew the door down. Surprising, confounding, thrilling summer. It's here. Its arrival on Saturday threw the All-Ireland football championship wide open.
How best to handle the narrative of this magical weekend of football? Chronologically? Working from first game to last? Starting with the most recent and working back? Choosing the most exciting or most surprising match? Or drawing some big-picture conclusions and using the four games to back them up?
This was the weekend Gaelic football needed. When the smoke had cleared we were guaranteed new All-Ireland champions after seven years of the Kerry/Tyrone duopoly.
Not one provincial winner was left standing. Indeed all the provincial finalists are gone. It was a heady couple of days of revolution. At the end, the new world order as constituted by the semi-final line up for this year’s championship is, Down, Dublin, Cork and Kildare.
Begin at the start then. Begin with Down, the true aristocrats of the north, whose painful fate it has been to watch Armagh and then Tyrone steal their ermine of late.
They came to Croke Park on Saturday and did what they have done four times in the past. They brushed Kerry aside. Won by six points, could have won by more.
More than that, they played effervescent, attacking football in the Down style. Pace and intelligence. They scored a goal in the first minute and never looked back. Only a penalty in injury-time took the humiliating look off the scoreboard for Kerry who were without half a dozen of last year’s All-Ireland team.
“Everybody is going to say we have taken advantage of Kerry teams when they are not at their best” said James McCartan afterwards. “The bottom line is we beat a Kerry team going for seven All-Ireland finals in row.”
Kerry shook hands graciously and departed the stadium they have graced so beautifully for a decade in which they had won 10 quarter-finals in a row.
And so the stage was cleared for what we assumed would be a bullfight with a game Dublin side charging at the swirling cape of Mickey Harte only to get stabbed and jabbed with each pass and to end up with their carcass being dragged off through the dust.
On Saturday Dublin put a stop to it. They are no longer the manufactured boy band of the All-Ireland championships. They harassed Tyrone and played them in their own style. They stuck to their plans, though, winning their own kick-outs consistently and letting Tyrone have the space to play short kick-outs close to their own goal. Between times their work rate was exemplary and in the argot of the modern game, their rate of turnovers in possession was huge.
There were mutterings afterward they had enjoyed a little bit of luck, particularly with Eoghan O’Gara being alert to catch a ball coming back off the Tyrone post and put it into the net. Many years ago the great Seán O’Neill scored a similar goal against Kerry. In answer to the accusations of luck, it was pointed out afterwards O’Neill had been chasing in after ball since he was a 10-year old on the basis that once in a while the ball would come back.
“We prepared for this as well as we have prepared for any game” said Mickey Harte afterwards. “We watched and studied Dublin forensically.”
“Maybe we are a year ahead” said Pat Gilroy who has supervised the overhaul of Dublin’s personality as a team. “We didn’t start the year expecting to beat a top-three team. Closing the gap was what we were aiming for.”
To yesterday then. The weather slightly less clement. The games just as interesting.
Roscommon’s primrose yellow back in Croke Park. At one stage, they surprised even themselves by taking an eight points to seven lead over Cork. At that point they seemed to panic slightly.
Leading by just a point at half-time, Cork quickly emptied their bench and their demonstration of strength in depth after that was impressive. All their subs made a difference.
It ended really with seven minutes left. David Casey lost possession and Cork were suddenly in with three players bearing down on Geoffrey Claffey in goal.
Pearse O’Neill buried the ball to give Cork a seven-point lead. Roscommon conceded a penalty minutes later which sub Donncha O’Connor placed over the bar, effectively ending one of this summer’s most unlikely adventures.
Roscommon will know, though, there are better days ahead for this attractive team. Cork move on burdened by favouritism to win this year’s All-Ireland.
And so to the final act, and perhaps the best performance of the weekend.
Meath still unforgiven for what was perceived unfairly as their larceny in the Leinster final against Louth, arrived on to the field to a chorus of boos. In the end they paid a bigger price than anybody for the refereeing error that gave them the provincial title.
They had started confidently enough. They were six points up after 12 minutes and disastrously, Kildare had lost their leader and chief, Dermot Earley, after just a minute. Young Hugh Lynch came in as a replacement.
From the time they got into the game to the finish (which was a procession) Kildare were hugely impressive.
In the end, the eight-point margin didn’t do them justice. John Doyle contributed five points from play. Eoghan O’Flaherty was superb and Earley’s absence from midfield became less and less a factor as Kildare came to control the sector.
“The boys showed true character today,” said manager Kieran McGeeney. “We lost Dermot today and in fairness, the boys stood up and showed great character. Definitely very proud of them today. I wasn’t too worried when we were six points down. If we can finish the games winning rather than start the games winning I’ll be a happy man.”
So Kildare took the final place on the dance floor for the semi-finals. Cork versus Dublin on August 22nd, Down v Kildare seven days later. As good as it gets.
In a weekend when the smell of cordite was thick in the air following the execution of so many provincial champions we are left with the odd echoes of calls of change to the system. The back-door system has been of huge benefit to the stronger counties in recent years because if you have a large panel it gives you the chance to making running repairs.
To that extent it has seen the death of romance. Yet on a weekend of longshots and upstarts it was sad to hear the stronger counties calling for the system to be revamped so provincial winners get a second chance or for the abolition of the provincial championships altogether. For some of us, seeing the superpowers upended on the banana skins made football interesting again.
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