I went down to Cavan for Saturday’s match against Dublin and a lot of people were talking about it being “another turkey shoot” and “structures of the championship”, etc.
Passing through Enniskillen, I said to myself, this is a Saturday evening, bank holiday weekend and I’m going to see some of the best players ever to play the game. They’re multiple All-Ireland winners and I’m going to enjoy watching them.
As the match progressed and the score went up and up and up, I was still enjoying the spectacle. It’s not that I expected Cavan to feel grateful they were getting hammered but we won’t be seeing these Dublin players forever. Stephen Cluxton, Brian Fenton and even Con O’Callaghan aren’t going to be around indefinitely.
The other ingredient for Dublin is the strength of the bench. We’re nearing the knockout phase and all players are conscious that Dessie Farrell will be thinking about a first 15. So, when the likes of Colm Basquel comes on, he’s not thinking about keeping it steady; he wants to make an impact and nail down a starting place.
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Paddy Small started and made his claim with 1-2, Killian McGinnis got a goal, so did Seán Bugler, Cormac Costello got two and O’Callaghan left early but had provided assists for three of the goals.
They had no interest in laboriously moving the ball around in attack. The tactic was to move it up as quickly as possible even though Cavan were getting back in big numbers. They were hungry and had threats all over the park and their conditioning at pitch level was ridiculously good.
Fenton is my favourite player to watch at the moment. He’s been at another level this season. Tactically, they are clever, for instance Bugler’s deployment as a wing back. When modern half forwards are sitting back so deep, it makes sense to have a practised shooter to exploit the additional freedom.
Dublin have used the league final defeat by Derry to reset their season. For me Saturday was a declaration and I think they are now strong front runners for the All-Ireland as opposed to being in the top two contenders with Kerry.
The difference a few weeks can make. We had known Derry for the past 18 months. There was energy, focus and a togetherness in their play, defenders attacking and attackers defending.
Over the three matches since winning the league, they look in a daze: Against Armagh on Sunday and previously Galway and Donegal, they’ve shipped 9-42, including 8-34 from play! The trend of Sunday’s scores was a little different, apart from Rian O’Neill’s goal when the ball was caught in the middle from a kick out.
Just like against Donegal, Derry got what they wanted, the ball kicked out on top of Conor Glass and Brendan Rogers but again, they didn’t compete hard enough in the middle of the field and Ross McQuillan freed up O’Neill for the goal.
The other two goals were a different type and we saw a few of them over the weekend: balls played squarely across the attacking 45-metre line and then intercepted, like Seán Powter for Matty Taylor’s goal against Donegal; Shane Walsh’s for Galway; Rogers getting intercepted and Armagh scoring a goal.
Derry manager Mickey Harte and his assistant Gavin Devlin are really smart people. Conor Glass and Shane McGuigan are big leadership figures but at the moment, they look stunned and incapable of making correct decisions. They are playing like a team of individuals, lethargic, and their reactions when they make mistakes aren’t good enough.
I looked at Armagh when they were bearing down on goal with three and four players while Derry were just jogging back. Their previous belief looks shattered and now discipline is slipping – red cards in the last two matches. They have the air of a team waiting for the season to end.
Armagh have been frustrating their own supporters as well as neutrals by an inability to get matches over the line but they have been competing all the time. These three defeats for Derry have been almost over by half-time and actually over with 20 minutes left.
It’s a long way from being in the All-Ireland conversation – a challenging status recently conferred on Donegal.
It’s not a barrier that you have to overcome. It’s a tag you have to live with – the scrutiny, the expectation levels week in and week out. You are meant not just to win games but to win with a degree of intent and swagger.
I don’t think it was a factor In Donegal’s defeat on Saturday because there were already logical reasons why Cork would pose problems. They are such a good running side and that part of their game caused real problems for Donegal – direct runners who are relentless in probing for gaps.
If there is anything Donegal can take from the match, it is that they managed to hang in there and come back from five points down to only lose by two, which was a good sign.
Past defeats for Jim McGuinness’s teams have tended to come on the back of poor form and matches lost without any argument and after very tame performances.
Their All-Ireland rating might have dropped a bit but I think there’s still plenty in this team. In the last couple of moments on Saturday Donegal were in possession of the ball. They got blown up for overcarrying on one and turned over on another so to me they had still put themselves in a position to win despite conceding three preventable goals.
There are three foundation stones for any team: keep key opponents out of the game, winning both kick out battles and then not conceding goals. I’d imagine they were what Donegal were looking to build on at the weekend. They did okay on restricting opponents – nobody ran riot – but they lost out on two of the three, conceding three goals and getting beaten on the Cork kick out although they improved in the final quarter.
The timing of the goals was perfect. Those two at the start of the second half rocked Donegal because they had done so well to recover from the first.
This is still a challenge for Jim McGuinness and the team. We’ll know what they’ve learned the next time one of those three foundation stones goes missing. Can they find a way around the difficulty? Or will they end up like Derry, continually unable to solve the same problems?
I think Donegal will reset and recover but the vital matter of finishing on top of the group is no longer in their hands.
