GAA: THE MIDDLE THIRD:Their close call in London seems so long ago now as James Horan's men have pushed on in the championship to a point where they will pose Kerry a real challenge in the semi-final
YOU KNOW the attendance figure is Croke Park is going to be in trouble when you turn up looking to park your car and find that it’s an absolute doddle. I couldn’t believe how simple it was to get in and out of Drumcondra on Sunday. There was just nobody there. It was nearly surreal actually. I heard they got 22,000 in the end, but the place is that big you wouldn’t see 22,000 inside it. The atmosphere was non-existent, especially for the first game.
Even so, it was Mayo’s day. No doubt about it. Right from the throw-in, you could see that they were going to give Cork a game. Being very honest about it, I didn’t think they were going to win, especially with Cork six points up after 15 minutes. But you could still see they were going to throw everything at it.
Once they found their feet, they kicked on and got good scores any time Cork looked like making a shape.
The thing that stood out for me – and it’s something I’ve never seen from a Mayo side in my time – was that they were fairly physical. They’re big right across the pitch. Even the young corner forward Cillian O’Connor, who was playing in his first match at Croke Park, had serious size and definition in his thighs. He looked like anything but a typical corner forward playing his first year out of minor. He’s probably about 13 or 14 stone, a big garsún.
Mayo’s tactics were perfect. It was a classic case of attacking a team at its strongest point. Andy Moran gave Michael Shields a chasing and players like Kevin McLoughlin and Alan Dillon ran right at their half-back line.
I remember we did something similar with Kerry in the 2009 All-Ireland final. Cork’s midfield and half-back line was where they were perceived to be strongest so we sent Tadhg Kennelly to bring Graham Canty on a tour of Croke Park. It was purely to put them on the back foot. If they saw their strongest line struggling, they could lose heart.
Mayo did the same on Sunday. With Shields in trouble at full back and with Noel O’Leary and John Miskella under serious pressure, Cork struggled. Alan O’Connor was probably one of the top two or three midfielders in the country coming into Sunday’s game but the two young O’Sheas got in amongst him and put him off his stride. I know Aidan has taken a lot of the plaudits, but I actually would have said that Séamus had the bigger impact of the two. The overall effect was to disrupt Cork in the very areas they’d expect to dominate.
Take a bow, James Horan.
He and Jimmy McGuinness deserve huge praise for the way they’ve kicked on since winning their provincial titles. They haven’t rested on their laurels, they haven’t folded their tents and treated the rest of the year as a bonus, despite the fact that they had every reason to. If both Mayo and Donegal ended the year with provincial titles and quarter-final appearances, there wouldn’t be a man, woman or child who’d find fault with them.
But they knuckled down and went after it and knocked out two of the fancied teams for the All-Ireland. More than anything, it’s that attitude that was impressive.
Because it’s very easy when the whole country expects you to get beaten to just give into it and accept the consensus. They were written off by everybody, myself included on this page last week. I didn’t give them the credit they deserved. When a manager can take that and turn it around, get his players to use it as motivation, he’s done his job. That comes from knowing your players and getting them to trust you and each other.
Whether they can do it against Kerry is another matter. One thing they will have going for them is that they’ll be coming in on a high, as opposed to Kerry who will have to lift themselves for it after a nothing quarter-final.
The long and short of it is Kerry would have benefited more from an A versus B game in Killarney. The only real worth of it was to get game-time into the likes of Paul Galvin and Tomás Ó Sé.
I heard people being critical afterwards about Galvin’s performance, but I thought they were judging him on the wrong basis.
If you take the little bits and pieces of his game that are the most important – turning over possession, gathering up breaking ball, linking play – he did what he needed to. He didn’t score, but there were plenty of men around him who did.
You have to remember this was the first time he started a championship game since May, 2010. He hasn’t actually played a full 70 minutes for Kerry in the championship since the 2009 final. This was a game he badly needed so that he could get sharpened up again. The same goes for Tomás, who is also returning to fitness.
I’d be more concerned about Kieran Donaghy’s form than Paul Galvin’s, to be honest. After his excellent performance against Cork, he just didn’t look tuned in on Sunday. Whether it was through lack of interest or what, I don’t know. But they’ll need him firing on all cylinders to beat Mayo.
The game itself went according to everything that had been predicted for it. You’ve got to hand it to the bookies – it’s not often they’re very far out. The over/under bet for the score Kerry would run up was 22.5 before the game and they ended up scoring 1-20. The handicap was nine points and they won by 13. It was one-way traffic.
The highlight was Darran O’Sullivan’s goal, of course. I would give it goal of the season, although because it was a soccer-style goal, people will probably have a problem with it. I was sitting beside Mick Galwey at the game and when Darran scored it, Mick just laughed and said it was Jamaica all over again.
Mick had been out there on a Kerry team holiday with us in 2009 when Darran was captain of the team that won the All-Ireland. We were playing a soccer match one day and Darran was full of these little flicks and tricks.
I didn’t think we’d ever see him try it on Croke Park though.
But then, did we ever think we’d see Kevin Cassidy launch a 50-yard point to win an All-Ireland quarter-final with the last kick of extra-time? That was the moment of the weekend without question. It doesn’t matter a damn that the football from Donegal and Kildare in the first half was played between the two 45s and was very hard to watch.
This turned into a riveting occasion.
You couldn’t look away.
It was spectacular stuff, full of guts and bravery and even at times just some tough, honest flaking. Guys were leaving everything they had out there on the pitch. This is what football can be when you have two teams who are willing to empty themselves. You have to be delighted for a fella like Cassidy, a very manly player who has soldiered through some awful times with Donegal over the years.
He has had to store away a fair bit of hurt in his time and there were Kildare players lying on the pitch at the end who will have to do the same now. I’d say most people are sorry to see them go out of the championship. Their games tend to be dramatic because they’re so full of running and they tend to grind teams into submission. But they finally met a team that wasn’t going to go away and wasn’t going to lie down.
The game was a product of the team ethic. You can see that both managers seem to be hugely popular with their players. I’d say it’s partly because they’re close to them in age, but also because you get the impression from both men that they wouldn’t ask players to do anything they wouldn’t be prepared to do themselves. That reduces the distance between a manager and his players and makes for a great work ethic.
It all leaves the championship in a sort of confused state as far as I can make out.
It’s all perception at this stage. I can see Dublin beating Tyrone on Saturday and if Kerry get past Mayo, I can see them beating Dublin in the final. But if Tyrone beat Dublin, I can really see Kerry struggling against them. It’s like heavyweight boxing back in the ’70s. Foreman beat Frazier, Ali beat Foreman, Frazier beat Ali. Ali came back and beat Frazier, but needed maybe the greatest fight of all time to do it. Maybe that’s what Kerry would need to finally get over Tyrone in a final if the two teams make it there.
There’s plenty of road to travel before we get anywhere near that scenario.
We saw last weekend where writing off a team prematurely will get you. Neither Dublin nor Tyrone will be rubbing their hands at the thought of meeting Donegal now, just as Kerry know they’ll be facing a different type of Mayo team to what they’ve seen in the recent past.
I do think Dublin have a massive chance on Saturday. This looks like a last hurrah for a lot of Tyrone players and that makes them very dangerous. I haven’t seen Seán Cavanagh play this well since they won the All-Ireland in 2008. Add to that the fact that they have enough craft and skill to score in two or three attacks what it takes the likes of Kildare and Donegal seven or eight attacks to get and they’re a very tough proposition.
But Dublin can beat them.
I think they’ll put their Leinster final performance behind them and wear Tyrone down. Bernard Brogan won’t have an off-day as bad as that again and between him and his brother, I think Dublin will have enough firepower to do the job.
