IAN O'RIORDANgets a rare word with the Down manager who is not a big fan of reading the sports pages

IF JAMES McCartan is true to his word then he won’t be reading this. The Down manager has adopted a strange way of dealing with any hype or pressure that might surround their appearance in Sunday’s All-Ireland football semi-final; make himself and a couple of players available for one day only, read none of it anyway, and hope instead all the publicity falls on their opponents, Kildare.

“It’s hard to get into the heads of your own players,” figured McCartan. “The worst thing a player can do is read about himself on the week of a game. I’m looking forward to you having the pin-ups of all the Kildare guys on Sunday morning, and don’t go near our guys. That’ll suit me grand. Nobody wants to see massive features on their own players, because it’s just manna to the opposition managers.”

It’s a somewhat selfish approach, and might have worked had Kildare not been even more selfish; their way of dealing with any hype or pressure is to make no one available, not even manager Kieran McGeeney.

It’s not entirely clear what McGeeney is afraid of, but in any case, all we’re left with are McCartan’s views on all things even halfway related to Sunday’s game, including, ironically, McGeeney himself.

So on that note, did McCartan ever think he’d be on the sidelines in Croke Park on All-Ireland semi-final day, opposite his old colleague and team-mate from Queen’s University? “Nothing surprises me about Geezer,” he says. “He’s probably the most focused man I’ve ever met, to a fault. His dedication and single-mindedness are unreal at times. Geezer is such an individual that most of you find it hard to break him down, but because we go back a bit, I’m able to get behind that facade and I actually enjoy the man’s company.

“You know of their (Kildare’s) fitness and conditioning, and I know it’ll be a certain area of pride for Mr McGeeney, that they’ll be the best in Ireland in that area. But obviously we’re hoping to match them in that area too. Their physique, strength and fitness, and the fact that they gave everybody a head start – which I hope they continue to do! – and overcame them relatively easy, pulling up at the end.”

Down’s progress to Sunday’s semi-final has proven to be about equally unexpected as Kildare, particularly based on the early season form – although now that they are there, McCartan can afford to be a little less surprised: “Every game we went into this year we felt we could win it, and certainly felt we could beat Kerry too.

“But then I kept having to nip myself, to tell myself to catch myself on. But whenever we put the match-ups man-for-man, in every game this year, we felt we’d a really good chance of winning it, and nothing changes against Kildare.

“But we learnt a lot from the defeat to Tyrone, that period of time in the first half whenever things were going swimmingly and then when things were going poorly and the confidence ebbed out of the team. We talked about that and made a pledge that wouldn’t happen again. Where I saw it most was when Kerry got their run of four points and that period of domination.

“In the Tyrone game we weren’t able to respond to that. Marty Clarke got the ball and stuck over a 50 and then the point directly after that which kick-started us again. We scored another two before the half so it was the fact of just being able to respond.”

Yet McCartan is brutally honest in saying that their season won’t amount to anything unless they beat Kildare on Sunday: “At the minute we’ve won nothing, nothing to show for it. Maybe what’s seen as a morale-boosting win over Kerry, but hopefully we’ve more to do.

“We’ve been improving slightly with every game, improved from the league final, not that we learned anything specific from that game but we had a determination to get back, felt we didn’t do ourselves justice and just felt we wanted to get back to the scene of the crime and prove to all the doubters that there was a bit of bottle about this Down team.

“From our point of view the victory over Kerry will be a very hollow one because it’ll only be ridiculed if we don’t push on. The fact that we beat the Kerry team missing all the players that they were missing, we’ll get no credit for that in the future if we lose to Kildare. And we’re going to have to improve again to beat them, absolutely. Everyone knows that to win an All-Ireland you have to improve game-on-game.

“Kildare have done that, we’ve done it the last two, stuttered a bit before that but ach aye, we’re going to have to pull a big one out to try and turn them over.”

It’s worth noting that Down have beaten Kildare this year, early in the league, and beat them well, in Newbridge: “My memory was in a press conference after, telling the hordes that I hope I don’t meet that team again, because McGeeney will use that game as all the motivation they need to put one over us again.”

Not that McGeeney will be reading this either.