I was exhausted just looking at the Ulster football final last Saturday. It was a sunny day, the game was deep into extra-time and it was all happening with the new rules in place. Fellas were dropping like flies everywhere you looked.
If you can deliver good football under those conditions, you are going to be right up there when the big business gets done over the coming months.
At one stage near the end of extra-time, Peadar Mogan was doing a half-limp-half-hop, like a man who’d been shot in the back of the leg. Mogan found himself at wing-forward and suddenly got a twinge in his hamstring. Worse, he got a pass from Shane O’Donnell. Mogan wouldn’t have been thankful to his teammate for that pass.
He dished the ball off like it was on fire and gave it the full Hopalong Cassidy back into his own half where he could stay out of trouble.
There is going to be more and more of that as the championship goes on. I expect fatigue to play a serious part in what happens between now and July. Games have gone to extra-time before, but the old rules allowed some room for resets and breathers to take the sting out of games.
That can’t happen to the same extent now. The solo-and-go has killed the reset free. Not being able to pass back to the goalie has kept the action moving forward. The 50-metre punishment for slowing down a free or a sideline ball has killed that option too. The bodies don’t get a break. You keep going until you have nothing left to give.
Donegal’s goal in extra-time was a prime example of that. Rory Grugan is one of Armagh’s big leaders and best decision-makers. But his body just couldn’t give any more. He saw Jason McGee cut in behind and knew he had to go with him, but he couldn’t get there. McGee gave it across to Ciarán Moore and Donegal had their goal.
We‘ve all been that soldier. Kerry played Tyrone in the All-Ireland 2005 final and towards the end of the game, I got forward to take a shot for a point. I don’t even remember if I scored or not. What I do remember is the ball being in the air and the only thought in my head being: “How the hell am I going to get back out in time for the kickout?”
When you’re reeling like that, the crisis is as much a mental one as a physical one. Your lungs are gone. Your legs are gone. But the biggest problem you have is making yourself believe that these things don’t matter.
You ask yourself questions in those moments. Am I able, physically, to get my body out into position here? And if I do get out there, how am I going to manage to win this kickout? Where am I going to find the fortitude for this?
Murphy is one of the best decision-makers in the history of the game
The one saving grace you have is that there is only one answer. You will do it because you must do it. Ask yourself all the questions you like but you’re only wasting valuable time. This thing is non-negotiable. It’s what all your training was for.
[ Jimmy’s not winning matches, it’s the boys, insists Donegal’s McGuinnessOpens in new window ]
Whenever I was exhausted in a game, I told myself that this is how I thought it would be. Think about any time you’re tired in real life – loads of different thoughts go through your head all at once and most of them are some version of a complaint about how tired you are. I basically decided to drown them out with one single message: you knew this would be hard so get on with it and find a way.
You could see Michael Murphy doing that against Armagh last Saturday. This is a man who made his debut for Donegal 18 years ago. He missed two full seasons of intercounty football. He had more excuses than anybody to put his hand up and get off the pitch, but Jim McGuinness kept him there until the 77th minute. And why wouldn’t he? When everything is hard, you need your best decision-makers on the field.
Jim can see the right decision from the sideline, but in a cauldron like that, there‘s very little he can say or do. So, to have Murphy in there guiding fellas on where to go and what to do is invaluable. He‘s no ordinary Joe Soap telling you to go and do something, either. If Michael Murphy says it, you’ll fairly hop to it.
Murphy is one of the best decision-makers in the history of the game. I rate him alongside Seamus Moynihan as somebody who never seems to take the wrong option and who always knows where to be and what to do. For him to keep going into extra-time was some shift.
McGuinness played it well too. He had brought Paddy McBrearty off in normal time and then put him back on for Murphy in extra-time. What does that tell you? It says that in a world where everybody is out on their feet, a good decision-maker is better than the freshest legs.
This is going to become more and more pertinent as the championship goes on. The last thing you need if you have to take a key player off with fatigue is to replace him with someone who is only 80 per cent as good. But in some cases, teams are not going to have a huge amount of choice in the matter.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think it spells good news for Kerry. I look around at some of the other squads and they seem to be a good bit deeper. It’s why I don’t think the Dubs are gone. It’s why Galway and Armagh are going to be right up there. It might catch Donegal, funny enough – McBrearty was one of three players they brought back on in extra-time. When the games come in a glut from the end of June, that could count against them.
The new game demands that players go deeper into the well than ever before. Not everyone will be able to climb their way out.
