Maybe the most interesting trend over the semi-final weekend was how both games were so absolutely nip-and-tuck, right until the point where they weren’t.
Both games were dead level in the 64th minute – Armagh and Kerry at 1-13 apiece, Galway and Donegal at 1-12 to 0-15. And yet, in both games, one side was visibly fading and the other was clearly about to surge for home.
Kerry only put up one more point in normal time and were outscored 0-4 to 0-2 in extra-time. Donegal didn’t score again, throwing up tired misses by Dara Ó Baoill, Peadar Mogan and the otherwise outstanding Michael Langan. Though both sides had been in terrific form at various points in their respective afternoons, now they looked threadbare, hassled and gasping at exactly the moment that mattered most.
Jim McGuinness admitted afterwards that he was a bit surprised his Donegal team had run out of steam.
“Probably, yeah,” he said. “We’ll have to go back and look at it. It’s a huge day. Galway were there two years ago. It’s a huge day and there’s a lot of emotion attached to the day. The stadium is nearly full and there’s 30,000, 40,000 Donegal people here.
“All of that ties into the players. They’re bringing all that to the table. So it’s probably natural that when you’re an hour into that, you feel the going getting tough. But they’re on the cusp of something big themselves and to keep that going was a wee bit challenging. And you have to give Galway credit as well – they kept going with those transitional moments.
“I don’t have the answer. That’s what the next few days will bring about. The answer will start to appear on the way home on the bus, in conversations with the coaches, having a chat and getting our heads around things to make sense of them. I don’t have it yet.”
One line of inquiry for both McGuinness and Jack O’Connor will be their road to Croke Park. They had no say in the matter, obviously, but it was notable that members of both the Galway and Armagh camps said afterwards that they found themselves to be more battle-hardened when it really came to the crunch.
Donegal’s last close game was on June 1st, when they lost by a point in Cork. Since then, they had 24 points to spare against Clare and eight in hand over Louth. If you go six weeks without being put to the pin of your collar, you can’t be certain you will have it when you need it. The last 10 minutes of an All-Ireland semi-final is a suboptimal place to be finding out.
Especially against a team like Galway, whose biggest margin of victory in their previous seven games had been five points. Pádraic Joyce’s side came in off the back of close wins against Dublin, Monaghan, Mayo, Westmeath and Sligo and a draw against Armagh. Their road to the semi-final had been chiselled out of marble. No wonder they felt so strong at the end.
Kerry at least had a game against Derry a fortnight ago that was level in the 61st minute but, otherwise, they’ve had a summer of completely drama-free football.
Cork ran them to three points back on April 20th but after that their average margin of victory before Saturday was a shade over 10 points a game. They arrived to play Armagh without ever having had to reach down deep and check what their reserves of fitness, stubbornness and stickability were like. That mattered.
“Cork only took them so far,” said Armagh forward Stefan Campbell about Kerry, late on Saturday night.
“Derry took them to 10 minutes to go, maybe. So look, we knew we had the legs. We knew we had the bench. I’m just glad we were able to use them. We did take the wrongs of the past few years and use them. We learned things from all those games, even going back to Galway in 2022. We went back that far during the week.
“The big thing we took away with us at full-time of normal-time was the amount of Kerry players that were obviously hurting and cramping. We’ve been there before, we knew what it took.
“It was about just taking extra care of the ball and knowing that every ball does matter. You can come in and try to make an impression but it’s better to try to fit in rather than going after every headline. I think four extra-times really stood to us – two Ulster finals, two quarter-finals.”
Every year informs the next. The big lesson from this edition of the All-Ireland semi-finals will be learned in time for 12 months hence. No team can help their road to the final four – you can only play what’s in front of you and there’s no percentage in getting too cute with it and looking for tough games for the sake of it.
But we can be reasonably sure that no team coached by Jack O’Connor or Jim McGuinness will be relying on the vagaries of the draw to have them battle-hardened in 2025. That will be taken care of in-house.
