Ciarán Murphy: Reading too much into Westport’s wipeout is a fool’s errand

Westport against Moycullen had all the ingredients of a club classic last Sunday. Two teams who had won their way out of extremely competitive club championships in Mayo and Galway, who had a smattering of intercounty players across the field, in a wide-open Connacht club championship.

But from the first minute, it was clear that Moycullen were playing all the football and making all the running. The Mayo club championship can’t be that far behind its Galway counterpart, can it?

The answer, of course, is that it’s not. And it’s a regularly-noted occurrence in the early weeks of the provincial championships – some teams are capable of maintaining their level of performance after their county final win (or improving immeasurably on it, as Moycullen did), and other teams’ performances fall off a cliff, as happened to Westport. Why?

The simple answers are timing and experience. There can be few towns in Ireland as enjoyable to spend some time in as Westport, so it’s hardly any surprise if the celebrations of their first ever senior title on October 30th spilled over into November.

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They had two weeks to prepare for last weekend, and it just seemed as if that was at least a week too soon. But Moycullen had beaten Salthill-Knocknacarra in the Galway final on the same day. So what’s the difference?

Moycullen won their first ever county title in 2020, but were denied the chance to compete in the Connacht championship because of Covid. When they won their second title in three years a couple of weeks ago, it was obvious they were going to target the provincial and All-Ireland series – they were making up for a lost opportunity from two years before.

Perhaps if Westport had been drawn against lesser opposition, they would have been able to acclimatise to the provincial championship in a more forgiving environment.

Westport were absolutely no match for Moycullen at all. They were monstered in every facet

As an illustration, Caltra had to rely on a brilliant last-minute save from their goalkeeper Kevin Kilroy to stay ahead of the Leitrim champions St Mary’s in the first round of the Connacht club championship in 2003. They got over that by the skin of their teeth, and ended up All-Ireland club champions. Either way, Westport were absolutely no match for Moycullen at all. They were monstered in every facet.

In their semi-final this Saturday, Moycullen are up against another club who had to wait a long time for a county title, Roscommon champions Strokestown. But Strokestown have had a month since their first county title win in 20 years, and judging by veteran forward Colin Compton’s words in this paper yesterday, it seems like they’ve had just enough time to decompress and get ready to go again. Westport would have loved an extra fortnight, for sure.

The game that immediately followed Moycullen’s win on TG4, the Ulster quarter-final between Errigal Ciarán of Tyrone and Watty Grahams, Glen of Derry was genuinely thrilling.

Errigal had been a while waiting for their county title, 10 years, but they have some pedigree in this competition, having won it twice before in 1993 and 2002. Errigal are, in fact, the only Tyrone team to have ever won the Ulster club championship, unbelievably, so there was no doubt that they were intent on putting their best foot forward.

Only clubs from Cavan and Antrim have won fewer games in the Ulster club championship than Tyrone in the last 10 years, according to the Ulster-based journalist Cahair O’Kane on Twitter this week. There have also been eight different winners of the Tyrone championship in the last eight years – and given there are only 16 teams in the entire competition, that’s an extraordinarily broad spread of winners. Maybe it’s no surprise that the winners are often too exhausted to raise much of a gallop in Ulster.

For Glen, it appears as everything that happens this season is a prologue until they get a shot at reigning All-Ireland champions Kilcoo, who beat them in last year’s Ulster semi-final. They are on a collision course to meet in the Ulster final, and only the Fermanagh and Antrim champions stand in their way. For all that Erin’s Own and Enniskillen Gaels will have celebrated their wins on penalties last week, no one will give either of them much of a chance.

Glen’s experience is far from unique. They were in Westport’s position last year, celebrating their first county title, and they were able to grind out a fairly dour one-point win over St Eunan’s two weeks after their county final win. After that, they seemed to get a taste for it. They hammered Scotstown, then ran Kilcoo to a one-score game in the semi-final.

So it doesn’t take long for a club’s priorities to switch from domestic affairs to the wider scope of the provincial championships. Portarlington spent the guts of two decades waiting for one win over Portlaoise, and now they could be forgiven for having an eye on a Leinster title from halfway through the Laois championship.

But drawing clear lines between the standard of football in different county championships, based on the results of the provincial championship, can be a fool’s errand. Teams’ priorities are sometimes a lot farther apart than we’d think.