GAELIC GAMES:TYRONE WILL not yield easy. On a day of high contrast in Croke Park, it became clear that for all the skill and attitude that informs the Red Hand county, obduracy is at the core of their heartbeat.
Oh, the All-Ireland champions were pushed to the wire by a limitlessly brave Kildare team but after a fascinating contest, a gap of two points was enough to shepherd them through for what promises to be an unholy collision against the high-flying men of Cork.
In the curtain-raiser, the Munster champions handed Donegal a lesson in life as much as in football and chalked up a truly staggering score of 1-27. In their largesse, they could concede 2-10 and still run out as victors by 16 points.
But as they rushed their ablutions and took their seats to watch the showpiece match, it would not have taken the Corkmen long to realise not all Ulstermen will prove as agreeable in facilitating their high-powered running game as Donegal were. Tyrone, the All-Ireland champions, are made of different material.
Afterwards, Kieran McGeeney grinned ruefully when he considered his old nemesis. Kildare came close here, agonisingly close at 0-16 to 1-11. But they fell short, as so many teams have done.
“I’m not really one for moral victories,” McGeeney observed in a voice filled with the hangdog humour that people often miss about him.
“We have a good young team and I felt we were good enough to win something this year. But thinking and doing are two different things. There is no room for excuses. We have to go back to the board and pinpoint our weaknesses. You know, in the second half, we were walking into trouble.
“We had the lion’s share of possession and we walked into cul-de-sacs. You have to give credit to Tyrone too. They are great at pressing in on teams and you see games within the game on the football field, stuff that is happening off the ball. But in my book, Tyrone are the best team of the last 30 years, bar none.”
That generous appraisal is all the more significant when you consider McGeeney’s history with the Red Hand county. Moral victory notwithstanding, this match marked another feather in the GAA cap of the Mullaghbawn man.
It does not seem that long ago he was general-in-chief of the Armagh teams that engaged Tyrone in those titanic struggles that defined the decade of football. Here he was now standing down the line from Mickey Harte, both sculpted in serene concentration.
McGeeney has shaped a Kildare team capable of out-hustling, out-thinking and out-shooting the All-Ireland champions for long periods of the match. They led by 1-7 to 0-6 at half-time and as Brian Dooher remarked later, “it could have been more.”
And these were no familiar Lilywhites. For a start, they appeared in dark green tops and they looked big and they looked lean. They were respectfully disrespectful towards the All-Ireland champions all through. John Doyle kicked some sensational scores and when Ronan Sweeney breached the Tyrone defence for an early goal, the crowd of 49,761 settled in for a white-knuckle ride.
So it went. At half-time, the Tyrone men, not for the first time in their lives, were asked to look deep into themselves. They returned to the field late, officials and Kildare men jumpy to get restarted, and promptly reeled off six points without reply, each score born of patience and purpose and the unique understanding they have developed.
As so often, Owen Mulligan and Stephen O’Neill raised the white flags but it was that collective brain, that smartness and prickly knack for survival that saw them through. At one point, Brian McGuigan, so important when he wandered out on to the stage for the last 20 minutes, made a great high catch and set full back Justin McMahon on a run forward.
McMahon’s hand-pass to O’Neill was on the money. And O’Neill had his shooting boots on but elected to flip the ball back to McMahon; one of the most sensational forwards in the sport backed the number three to score it. And McMahon did. It is hard to beat that kind of unity of belief and purpose.
“Kildare jolted us into a place that maybe we did not expect to be,” admitted Mickey Harte. “Relief is high on the agenda and many more emotions as well. It was a great reflection of what these players are about. It would have been easy to roll over, to decide that this wasn’t our year. Kildare asked us some serious questions.”
In his own quiet way, Harte will have admired the way in which McGeeney has shaped Kildare. Big Dermot Earley gave a lion-hearted account, Doyle put on another kicking exhibition and in guys like James Kavanagh and Alan Smith, the future looks promising.
“Ahh, we are young,” agreed McGeeney. But his heart wasn’t in the bright talk of tomorrows.
“That doesn’t mean anything. We made too many mistakes, did foolish things and it was disappointing, especially when we had been working so hard in defence.”
So Kildare bow out, with honour. Donegal’s adieu requires a more complicated assessment. They were blown away by the irrepressible Corkmen in a non-event of a quarter-final. It was hard to take anything from the match besides the Rebel jerseys that were exchanged afterwards.
Cork will ride into a meeting with Tyrone full of confidence and strangely carefree. Cork have not yet come under Tyrone’s spell so the champions will hold no fear.
It remains to be seen if Cork’s old ghosts can resurface today. By 6pm last night, Croke Park had cleared and the sky overhead was filled with the sound of departing airplanes and groundsmen tended to the battered turf. And under the Cusack Stand, a familiar group of men circled. They wore green and gold and they looked like they were happy to be back in the old place.
