Rangers adapt and prosper to progress

In the end it was straightforward stuff. Crossmaglen Rangers took hold of this AIB All-Ireland club football semi-final and wrung the life out of Eire Og's challenge.

So again it was heartbreak for the Carlow champions after what was a fifth defeat in seven years at the All-Ireland stage of this championship. The deathly quiet in their dressing-room afterwards was more eloquent than all the encouraging words spoken about coming back stronger than ever.

Conditions is Navan were atrocious. A gale-force wind made play a lottery and as victorious manager Joe Kernan put it: "As soon as the wind stopped, the rain came". And it did in great, freezing squalls. Handling errors abounded, but in fairness to two footballing sides, there were passages of play which miraculously transcended the worst the weather could do.

As the result indicates Crossmaglen were authors of a greater number of such passages than were the Leinster champions. After a first half when attempts to harness the wind by pumping early ball into their imposing attack met with mixed results, the Armagh club acted decisively in the third quarter.

Having led by a meagre three points, 0-7 to 1-1, at half-time, Crossmaglen saw the margin slip back to two points before a 42nd minute goal effectively settled the match.

It came after an impressive shortball move which ran the length of the field and culminated in Tony McEntee delivering an inch-perfect pass to his twin brother John whose accomplished finish flew past John Kearns into the Eire Og net.

No one in the ground could have honestly have foreseen the Carlowmen regaining the initiative thereafter. It wasn't just that their attacking play had been a bit directionless and very inaccurate up to that point, but with a decent lead Crossmaglen were always going to close down the match, play a possession game and hit on the break.

The afternoon started ominously for Eire Og with a free conceded from the first possession. Oisin McConville, who had a fine match, pointed the free on 40 seconds. His total of 0-5 included four left-sided frees, while Anthony Cunningham on the other wing converted the same number of placed balls.

This statistic was at the heart of Crossmaglen's superiority.

After an impressive three Leinster finals, Eire Og were pressured into a lot of fouling and paid the penalty. Manager Pat Critchley lamented the indiscipline: "I thought we made untypical mistakes, giving away frees unnecessarily, giving away scores and getting caught in possession".

He wasn't inclined to blame the conditions too much, but unlike in the Leinster replay against Kilmacud, Eire Og did not do a better job than their opponents in coping with the weather. Possession was given away and shots for scores went all over the place.

If the immediate concession of a free was symbolic of one form of problem, Muckle Keating's inability to convert a 13-metre free in front of the posts gave an all too accurate indication of how things would go at the other end.

Crossmaglen also gave away possession but made a far better fist of winning it in the first place and getting it back. Even allowing for the towering presence of Cunningham and deep-lying corner forward/ centrefielder Colm O'Neill (whose wanderings caused much positional angst for his markers), Eire Og's impact on the middle was disappointing.

There weren't many clean catches either, but the Armagh men were also quicker to the break. Kernan said after the match that playing with the wind had proved more of a hindrance than a help and that judgement was borne out by the six wides that Eire Og racked up with the breeze at their backs.

Furthermore it should be pointed out that whereas the winners looked occasionally butter-fingered, they restricted this impression to the middle third of the pitch. On the full-back line they were calm, composed and completely dextrous in their handling.

Donal Murtagh at full back was particularly steady under the high ball that fell from the sky, whether from unproductive attempts at scoring or speculative deliveries.

The early stages of the match saw Crossmaglen reach a 0-5 to 0-1 lead by the 18th minute when Cunningham curled over via the upright a tricky free from the right-hand sideline.

Four minutes later, Eire Og regained a foothold in the match. Garvan Ware's well-judged pass sent Jody Morrissey winding in along the sideline. He then pulled it back for the incoming Leo Turley to finish to the net for a goal which cut the deficit back to a point.

Although Oisin McConville stretched the lead with two converted frees, the last 10 minutes before half-time saw Eire Og's best spell. It might have been as undermined by poor marksmanship as the rest of their afternoon but in terms of urgency and ambition, the period marked the team's most serious challenge to Crossmaglen.

Reaching the interval only three points adrift with the wind to come was, according to Critchley afterwards, satisfactory. "We were happy enough at half-time but when they got the goal, it gave them a cushion after we had closed the gap. The goal was the turning point."

Some of Critchley's substitutions helped. Peter Kingston lent some physique to the attack and Joe Hayden kicked a couple of points but Hughie Brennan, who had beefed up the middle to good effect in the matches against Kilmacud, was a bit too beefy and lasted two minutes before getting booked twice and being ordered off.

One of the reasons for the disappointing second half might have been that the short game which comes more naturally to Eire Og was actually a better tactic into the wind than against it and they never looked that comfortable after the break.

Crossmaglen, on the other hand, couriered the ball out of defence and up to their lively forwards. Once again they had proved consummately adaptable to the challenges of both man and nature.

CROSSMAGLEN: P Hearty; M Califf, D Murtagh, C Dooley; F Shields, F Bellew, J Fitzpatrick; J McEntee (1-1), A Cunningham (0-4, all frees); C Short, T McEntee, O McConville (0-5, one free); J McConville, G Cumiskey, C O'Neill. Subs: G McShane for Dooley (35 mins); M Moley for Cumiskey (42 mins).

EIRE OG: J Kearns; B Hayden, A Corcoran, J Dooley; J Murphy, P Doyle, A Callinan; G Ware, J Morrissey; B Carbery (0-1, a free), T Nolan (0-1), K Haughney; W Quinlan (0-1), L Turley (1-0), A Keating. Subs: P Kingston for Hayden (half-time); J Hayden (0-2, one a free); H Brennan for Haughney (55 mins).

Referee: M Curley (Galway).