Fire still burns in Mayo, and they’ll bring the heat to Dublin
It would have been so easy for Mayo to hit the eject button at some stage last week. Having floundered in the closing stages against Cork, the only path left open for them to an All-Ireland final had become a treacherous one, lined with old ghosts.
From the moment they were drawn against Galway in a preliminary quarter-final, it was clear Mayo’s penance would again be raw and brutal. To win an All-Ireland from there Kevin McStay’s men could conceivably have to beat Galway, Dublin, Kerry and take your pick from one of the other remaining big hitters.
So, when they went in at the break five points down at half-time against Galway on Sunday, even though they would have the wind at their backs in the second half, it was an opportunity for Mayo to down tools and consider whether they might be best to spend their summer playing ball Stateside. But that is not their way.
What Mayo fans will find hugely encouraging is the fact both the new and old breed came to the fore against Galway. David McBrien’s goal and Sam Callinan’s man-marking job on Shane Walsh were huge factors in the comeback win, but it was the resilience, desire, leadership and mental strength of players like Diarmuid O’Connor, Paddy Durcan, Aidan O’Shea, Cillian O’Connor and Kevin McLoughlin that drove them over the line.
There has been a cloud of doubt hanging over Dublin all season, questions over whether the necessary spark and hunger and energy is still there. Does the fire still burn? As they left Salthill on Sunday evening, no such questions hung over this group of Mayo players. Whatever happens next weekend at Croke Park, they’ll bring the heat. – Gordon Manning
Dead-ball striking will be vital, but Clare still have questions hanging over them
The games between the top teams in this year’s hurling championship have been so close that the outcomes could spin on anything. How about free-taking? In the modern game the standards of dead-ball striking are so high that we don’t expect anybody to miss from centrefield in. The days when a team’s best ball-striker from the back-line would stride forward to meet the daunting task of a 65 are long gone.
Of the teams left in the hurling championship Clare are the only ones with a query in this department. In the All-Ireland quarter-final on Saturday, and in the absence of the injured Aidan McCarthy, Mark Rodgers became Clare’s fourth championship free-taker in the last 12 months. In a one-sided game, and in the context of an outstanding individual performance, Rodgers missed just one from six.
In last year’s championship the responsibility was shared between Tony Kelly and Peter Duggan, but for all of Kelly’s outrageous talents, free-taking has never been his strongest suit. When Clare had a brilliant season in 2018 Duggan’s free-taking and overall form were central to their success, but his performances this summer have been consistently low-key, and having been their first choice free-taker at one stage, he is probably fourth choice now.
Aidan McCarthy missed all of last season after a serious workplace injury, and this summer he has drifted in and out of full fitness. Kelly took over on Clare’s frees in the Munster final when McCarthy went off and the wing-forward hadn’t recovered in time to take his place in the squad at the weekend. Rodgers may end up being a viable alternative on the dead-balls, but an All-Ireland semi-final against Kilkenny would be a hard proving ground for somebody with so little big game experience in that role.
Every other team left standing has a free-taker with no major questions hanging over them. Clare will need McCarthy. – Denis Walsh
Monaghan land on the right man for the job - eventually
The people in the Monaghan county board who took such a long time to appoint Vinny Corey over the winter ought to be counting their lucky stars today. They spent a couple of months chasing the likes of Ger Brennan and Jason Sherlock before coming back around to the man who should have been their priority from the start. Corey eventually did it out of duty as much as anything else but his first season in charge has proved that nobody would have had a better feel for what the job entails.
Keeping Monaghan in Division One and making an All-Ireland quarter-final marks the year out as a successful one, whatever happens now. Corey has shown an ability and a willingness to make big calls all year, too. His friend and clubmate Conor McManus hadn’t missed a start for Monaghan in 16 years – Corey dropped him after losing to Derry in the Ulster semi-final and he hasn’t found a way back in yet. An unthinkable move for a decade and a half and yet Corey did it and there’s not even much fuss about it within the county.
Just as interesting was the move to drop Ryan Wylie for Saturday’s game against Kildare. Wylie has been a fixture in the side for the best part of a decade and was the team captain for the past couple of seasons. When Dessie Ward was announced as coming in for him in a late change to the programme, we assumed he was carrying a knock of some sort. Not so.
“Not hurt, no,” said Corey afterwards. “We just felt it was horses for courses today. Kildare showed last week they have a lot of physicality in their forward line. They played for a lot of marks. They have a lot of height. We decided to shuffle things around. Ryan had been playing really well for us but we just had to make calls and that was one of them.”
Kildare had four marks in the win over Roscommon. Monaghan kept them to one on Saturday. Wylie came off the bench for the last 15 minutes and provided experience to see the game out. Job done all round. – Malachy Clerkin
Omens are good for Galway after win over Tipperary
The unfailing ability of Galway and Tipperary to deliver tense championship finales was again demonstrated on Saturday in Limerick. Anyone interested will know that this wasn’t necessarily a logical conclusion to a match largely dominated by Galway.
It was strange however to watch a knockout championship match between the two being played on the Ennis Road, previously more of a location for league finals contested by them – most recently the first leg of Galway’s 2017 double.
Three years ago, they did play a previous All-Ireland quarter-final at the venue but in the weird Covid-ordained conditions of a) November and b) no spectators being present.
A lively match back then was overwhelmed by the publicity that weekend surrounding the Bloody Sunday centenary and the eerie emergence of the same four All-Ireland football semi-finalists as in the 1920 championship.
The modern story of Galway and Tipp starting in 1987 has generally been located in Croke Park and the argument could be made that the rise of Galway that decade turned the stadium into more of venue for hurling than it had been – outside of All-Ireland finals – by resurrecting the semi-final.
This round in many years simply hadn’t been played at all. The winners of Leinster and Munster played each other in the final.
Galway’s back-to-back All-Irelands in 1987 and ‘88 became part of Tipp’s ‘learnings’ on the way to a first MacCarthy Cup in 18 years in 1989, a year that included one of the more controversial Galway-Tipp semi-final encounters as well as a rare hurling league final on Jones’s Road.
Even the introduction of quarter-finals in 1997 saw the rivalry confined to Croke Park as it was in 2000, 2005 and 2010.
Only twice in 16 encounters were there thrashings: Tipp wining the 1991 semi-final and 2014 qualifier, played in Thurles, by nine points.
Of more interest to Henry Shefflin is that the winners have either won the next match or taken the All-Ireland (there are two finals included) 11 times out of 15. Eight times, the winner of the fixture have gone on to be crowned All-Ireland champions – a 50-50 strike rate. – Sean Moran
Down’s Eugene Branagan backs up his fighting talk
Tucked away in the details of Down’s ritual disemboweling of Laois in the Tailteann Cup semi-final was the interesting case of Eugene Branagan. You might remember the Kilcoo man from such minor kerfuffles as having him having a pop at last year’s Down squad when he was named All-Ireland Club Player of the Year.
“I think there’s a core of players who don’t know how to win,” Branagan said back in May 2022. “They haven’t the winning mentality. I think that’s why a lot of Kilcoo boys don’t want to be involved – they’re just there but I don’t think they’re there to win. That’s the difference between Kilcoo and the county.”
Branagan took a fair bit of flak at the time – not least from these pages. But you have to hand it to him, in his first season of intercounty football, he has quietly slotted into Conor Laverty’s side and become a near ever-present in a season that has reinvigorated football in the county. As Down went medieval on Laois on Sunday, Branagan slotted in with another excellent three-point contribution.
Hard not to like a lad who walks the walk after talking the talk. – Malachy Clerkin
