Five things we learned this GAA weekend: McCarthy and McManus show Croke Park can still be a country for old men

There’s a huge difference between being old and being older

The intercounty game is largely seen as a young man’s domain these days, but some of Gaelic football’s most resilient exponents rolled back the years over the weekend – proving they are not old, just older.

In particular, Conor McManus (36) and James McCarthy (33) demonstrated the leadership qualities that have been a constant during their extraordinary intercounty careers. On Saturday evening McManus scored 0-4 for Monaghan after his pivotal introduction off the bench.

The first of those scores was a thing of absolute beauty while the last was the pressure free – won and subsequently scored by McManus – which sent the contest to penalties. He put his two penos in the top corner, one left, one right.

McManus made his debut with the Monaghan seniors way back in 2007. He has battled hip problems over the years but has continued to make himself available for his county, this season dutifully filling the role of coming in off the bench – not a sub, but a finisher.

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But he is not Monaghan’s only stalwart, Darren Hughes (36) started his Monaghan career playing in the Tommy Murphy Cup way back in 2006 while Karl O’Connell, who is having a superb season, will be 35 next month.

On Sunday, McCarthy’s second-half display for Dublin was a throwback. In the closing minutes of the game the Ballymun man was still storming through the Mayo defence, the Dublin captain scored 0-2 from midfield and created several more scores for his teammates.

McCarthy, one of the most decorated players in the history of the game, made his Dublin senior debut back in 2010. But it was not only McManus and McCarthy railing against the sand clock over the weekend.

Stephen Cluxton is 41 and made his debut with Dublin in 2001 while Michael Fitzsimons has been on the go with the Dubs since 2010. Dean Rock played O’Byrne Cup football with Dublin in 2009.

Chrissy McKaigue, who will turn 34 later this month, continues to be Derry’s defensive general and on Sunday at Croke Park was barking out the orders and organising the rearguard as Cork tried to stage a late comeback.

The weekend proved age is merely a number that changes every 12 months. But class is permanent. – Gordon Manning

Between Hawk-Eye and attendances, there is a lot of unavailable date at Croke Park lately

The message beamed out from Croke Park screens over the weekend that gathered most attention was Saturday’s “Hawk-Eye data unavailable” during the Monaghan-Armagh All-Ireland quarter-final.

Officials almost certainly breathed more easily that Monaghan didn’t lose by a point – or even on penalties – as it was a kick by Michael Bannigan into the Hill that was initially signalled wide by the umpires only to be cast into the “undecided” column on prompt from the score detection system.

After a delay, the above message appeared and the original decision stood – which to be fair, looked accurate on video review.

Hawk-Eye was suspended for the weekend, meaning it didn’t operate for Sunday’s matches, which will certainly infuriate Croke Park, as it is the second high-profile weekend in a year that has been disrupted in this manner after the All-Ireland semi-finals 12 months ago.

Less commented-on was the new practice of not disclosing precise attendances but flashing up a triumphant “Full House” when the fógra is announced on the stadium public address.

It’s not like this particular data is unavailable. Saturday’s attendance at Kerry-Tyrone and Monaghan-Armagh was detailed as 57,570 but Sunday’s Derry-Cork and Dublin-Mayo double header was declared as “Full House”.

This designation has to be recorded as 82,300, the official capacity of the stadium. Yet that was rarely or never the case and even All-Ireland final attendances when officially published in the following year’s annual report come in at totals such as 82,279 or 82,284, to take 2017 as an example.

That detail has been abandoned in recent years and a generic 82,300 set down for All-Ireland finals.

Clearly it would be nit-picking to regard this as misinformation and anything around 80,000 could be for practical purposes be regarded as a “Full House”. Stretching it further though is misleading and bequeaths to posterity inaccurate records.

For instance, that same year, 2017, we dutifully recorded the Dublin-Monaghan and Tyrone-Armagh All-Ireland quarter-final double bill as “Full House” or 82,300. A few months later, the 2018 annual report revealed the attendance that day to have been 74,909 – a fine turn-out but nowhere near a “Full House”.

Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as waiting until next January or February to get to the truth of the matter as since Covid removed attendances in 2020, for the first time in the experience of those covering GAA annual reports, there have been no figures given for the years since.

So Hawk-Eye won’t be the only “data unavailable”. – Seán Moran

Seán O’Shea picks the right time to get his groove back

Of the many contentments that will have shortened the road back to Kerry for Jack O’Connor on Saturday night, the display put on by Seán O’Shea had to be right up there. Diarmuid O’Connor fully deserved his Man of the Match award and David Clifford had the play of the game – maybe the play of the season. But if Kerry are going to carry off back-to-back Sam Maguires, O’Shea has to be more than just another jobbing forward.

It had been a curious sort of a year for the Kerry centre-forward. He missed the start of the league and when he did appear, he stuttered his way through his first few games. For once, he wasn’t Kerry’s top scorer at the end of the spring campaign. And even when Kerry were turkey shooting their way through Munster, he was one of the few players not to fill his boots. The day they put 5-14 on Clare in the Munster final, O’Shea only posted a couple of points.

But having found some measure of his form through the round-robin series, he was terrific against Tyrone on Saturday. All the hosannas for Clifford’s pass to Tony Brosnan overshadowed the fact that O’Shea finished his goal with aplomb. He whipped a couple of points from play as well.

Most crucial of all, his place-taking into the Hill 16 end was elite stuff. There was a crosswind down at those goals all day that flummoxed all four teams at different stages. But O’Shea nailed a couple of long-distance kicks from the ground that won’t be bettered all year. On a day when Clifford was fairly hapless in front of the posts, O’Shea couldn’t have picked a better time to find his groove. – Malachy Clerkin

Football is still at its best when the harness comes loose

In harness racing, the horses are tacked up in a way that they run with a specific gait, at less than full stride. To the uninitiated, it is hard to understand how the tack doesn’t compel them all to run at roughly the same pace, but even with those restrictions, some horses are still able to run faster than others.

That is what Gaelic football is like now. Every team takes to the field in some kind of defensive harness, and when it comes to the race, it makes some teams slow, and other teams slower. In the Cork-Derry and Armagh-Monaghan games at the weekend, it wasn’t unusual to have 30 players in the same half of the field, but in that scenario, all-out attack feels like all-out defence, everyone moving in short, choppy strides.

Eight of the best teams in the country gathered in Croke Park for a weekend exhibition, which made it an undeniable snapshot of how the game is played at elite level now. At what stages did it feel like a spectacle? When the ball was moved with pace, directly: the oldest impulse in Gaelic games.

Kerry counter-attacked with searing directness on Saturday, Dublin hit Mayo with head-on directness after half-time on Sunday. And Mayo’s best score? When Aidan O’Shea caught a Colm Reape kick-out at centrefield and hit Ryan O’Donoghue with a lightning pass; the inside forward gathered the ball on the bounce and kicked it over the bar on his second stride. Three kicks the length of the field, and a point.

We’re made to wait for those moments when the harness comes loose. – Denis Walsh

Vladimir: “Well? What do we do?” Estragon: “Don’t let’s do anything. It’s safer”

Three minutes into Sunday’s All-Ireland football quarter-final, after what might have been a world record for the number of passes within that period, Steven Sherlock eventually lined up Cork’s first shot on goal.

Cork had held possession from the throw-in, passing repeatedly through and across the lines, while Derry held all 15 men behind the ball and playing as if still in their warm-up. Sherlock sent his shot wide.

Brendan O’Brien of The Examiner, sitting to my left, looked down at his notes, and I looked down at mine: it was going to be one of those afternoons, wasn’t it? We already felt like a sort of Vladimir and Estragon waiting for a football Godot to arrive.

Derry hit their first score after 10 minutes: a free from Shane McGuigan. By the 30-minute mark, Cork had still scored only three points.

They say semi-finals are all about winning and the same goes for quarter-finals too: this however was a game Cork always looked like losing.

In the end, Derry won 1-12 to 1-8, consolation for Cork perhaps that it wasn’t a lot more (McGuigan had a penalty saved in injury time).

Save for a brief passage of exciting football which broke out in the form of a minor goal fest in the 48th minute – Cork striking first, Derry striking immediately back – the game played out as if on a silent film reel, Croke Park devoid of all atmosphere.

Afterwards Cork manager John Cleary pointed to their poor conversion rate: indeed Cork had engineered 33 attacks, creating 22 shots, and finished with nine scores in all.

“We said that at half-time and it didn’t improve anything in the second-half,” Cleary noted. “It was inevitable Derry were going to come up and get their scores and that’s what happened.”

Derry won’t be bothered as they know where they are going from here: into an All-Ireland semi-final against Kerry, a game they won’t be given much hope of winning, not unless they can keep things as slow as they did here.

The question of where Cork go from here is more troublesome: something isn’t right when their six starting forwards can only score a single point from play, and with or without a fit Brian Hurley, that won’t be an easy fix.

Getting to Croke Park for an All-Ireland quarter-final may be seen as some progress, particularly after being dumped out of the Munster championship by Clare, but the long wait for a big win in Croke Park continues. It could be some time yet. – Ian O’Riordan