Championship 2015: To Have and Have Not

Pundit and expert GAA tipster Kevin Egan noted some years ago that teams don’t come from nowhere to win football All-Irelands anymore. Campaigns like those of the three successive Ulster winners of the early nineties don’t happen in modern football.

The last team to come from nowhere to win Sam was Galway in 1998, three years before the Qualifiers were introduced. Since then, nobody has won an All-Ireland without serving their apprenticeship first, and many apprentices have come and gone in those years with less to show for it than they might have had in earlier, more innocent times.

Paddy Power’s odds on this year’s Championship show a clear striation between haves and have nots. Kerry and Dublin, winners of four of the last five titles, sit looking down on the rest like Olympian gods. Past performance gives (slim) hope for the next three counties – Mayo, Donegal and Cork – while everybody else just seems to be making up the numbers.

Of the longshots, it’s interesting to see Galway are more favoured than Monaghan or Roscommon – something that will have them hopping from one foot to the other with fury from Boyle to Ballymoe – but that’s the enduring power of a Brand, as the morketing people like to say.

The quarter-finals are the killing fields of the minnows’ dreams. The breakthrough team either meets its Waterloo at the quarter-final, like Monaghan in 2013, or has nothing left in the tank by the semi-final, like Mayo in 2011. The most a team in those circumstances can hope for is a scalp, as Mayo claimed Cork’s in 2011. If the team doesn’t then improve in the following year or two, back to the pack it sinks, while someone else takes a turn.

There is nobody in Leinster who can keep it kicked out to Dublin, sadly. It’s been said that Dublin should not be blamed for being so far ahead of the provincial pack, and so they shouldn’t. But counties with football traditions like Kildare, Meath and Offaly should burn with shame at the shambles they find themselves currently in.

In the other three provinces, there are teams on the rise. Roscommon, obviously. Tipperary, maybe. Armagh, maybe. Monaghan are teetering on that point where they must advance or slide back. Of those four, three have a shout of travelling through the front door while Tipperary claiming Munster would not only a be a shock but it might be the end of them. The Qualifiers are not a fair system.

Nobody will care much for playing Tipperary in the Qualifiers, but whom Tipp meet in the quarters – if they get that far – will determine how much longer they can play football. Tipperary v Roscommon would be a perfect tie for both counties’ supporters, but not, perhaps, so good for either team’s development. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves – best for them to take it one match at a time.

Of the five contenders, Cork get the easiest ride for disappointing so often. This is a mixed blessing. It’s nice for the footballers not to get abused on the street as can happen in other counties, but it’s also sad because the footballers know in their hearts that they’re not getting abused out of politeness, but out of indifference. That’s a disgrace for so fine a football county.

Donegal and Mayo are both in periods of transition management, where someone has had to take over from an iconic leader. Donegal choose continuity. Mayo did not. How their seasons will pan out may end up being reflections of those choices. There are those who see Donegal as being on the wrong side of the hill but at least they’ve been to the top – not something Mayo can say, sadly. More about Mayo’s perennial dilemma anon.

As for the Olympians, it’s a 50/50 matchup. If I were to pick one, I’d pick Kerry. They have the richer tradition, which counts, and I’m not sure if this stuff about an un-ending stream of talent on a Dublin conveyor belt is quite true. Dublin have always had a rich pick of players, through good times and bad. What’s happening right now is that Dublin are blessed to have players who are exceptionally talented in the modern game, most notably Stephen Cluxton and Michael Darragh MacAuley, and a player who’d stroll onto any team in any era, Diarmuid Connolly. It’ll be some conveyor belt that will replace those boys.

Football Championship 2014 Preview

How good are Dublin right now? They’re so good that it’s actually frightening to list their advantages. Send the children out to play, pull the curtains, maybe take a strong drink for your nerves. Here we go.

Firstly, Dublin are in the extraordinary position of being both greater than the sum of their parts, and of having parts that are pretty dang good in the first place. Diarmuid Connolly can win games on his own. Michael Darragh MacAuley, the ultimate twenty-first century footballer, can win games on his own. No inter-county player has ever improved as much as Eoghan O’Gara has between now and when he first burst onto the scene. And so on, and so on.

Secondly, Dublin have home advantage in every game they play. If anything, it’s a double advantage in that their home (and don’t talk about Parnell Park – when was the last time Dublin played a Championship game in Parnell Park?) is the most sacred turf in the entire Gaelic Athletic Association.

Thirdly, the Leinster Championship is currently the worst it’s ever been. It’s 9/1 the field for someone other than Dublin to win the Delaney Cup this summer. If you took the pick of the other ten counties competing, could they keep it kicked out to Dublin? Probably not.

Fourthly, Dublin’s evisceration of Roscommon in this year’s Under-21 football final suggested that Dublin don’t so much have a pipeline of talent coming through as a torrential flood that will wash away all before it. Pat Spillane said on the TV last year that Dublin could dominate football for the next 25 years.

And at that, suddenly, a chink of light. For Dublin to dominate for the next 25 years means that Pat Spillane must be correct in his analysis, and such a thing simply cannot be.

Every dominant team looks unbeatable in its dominance. Until they are beaten, and then suddenly people say well, I was never sure about this, or they were never tested in terms of that, or one hundred and one other things. Barcelona in the soccer this year. The mighty cats of Kilkenny in the hurling last year. There are no unbeatable teams.

In his book Hurling: The Revolution Years, Denis Walsh recounts how Liam Griffin prepared his Wexford hurlers to play Offaly in the 1996 Leinster Final. Offaly were the Leinster kingpins at that time, having played in the last two All-Ireland Finals, winning one, while Wexford had lost sixteen finals in a row, between Leinster and the National League.

Liam Griffin, the Wexford manager, knew that you can’t just pretend those beatings didn’t happen. He hired a psychologist, Niamh Fitzpatrick, to see what she could do to fight the negativity that hung in the air. And it was her idea to ask every member of the Wexford panel to name a reason why Wexford could beat Offaly on Sunday in the team meeting after Wednesday training.

For the first five minutes, there was absolute silence in the room. It was a very long five minutes for Fitzpatrick, who worried that if her idea backfired, it would ruin the team and they’d be butchered.

And then, someone spoke. Fitzpatrick wrote the idea down on a flipchart. Someone else spoke. That idea went down too. By the end of the night, the flipchart had thirty ideas on it, thirty ways by which Wexford could beat Offaly. Liam Dunne went home and told his mother that night that Sunday would be dressed in purple and gold. And so it came to pass.

Are Dublin unbeatable? No, they’re not. It’s just a question of pinpointing what Dublin’s key strengths are, and neutralising them. Easier said than done, of course, but very far from impossible.

Dublin’s empire is built Stephen Cluxton’s precision kickouts, as they guarantee Dublin a constant flow of position. That flow of possession has to be stopped, by whatever means necessary within the rules and the spirit of the game.

Next, a team has to think about MacAuley, Dublin’s fulcrum. MacAuley is central processing unit of Dublin’s imperium. He is Mr Everywhere. Everything goes through him. He’s got to be stopped. And stopping him will hurt, so teams have to be ready to pay that price. Because once MacAuley starts to struggle, the entire team will start to struggle with him.

And then there’s Diarmuid Connolly, the best of a genuinely superb set of forwards. If Connolly gets warmed up he is the best footballer in Ireland, and therefore he cannot be allowed to warm up in the first place.

If your correspondent were to choose any Mayoman of past or present to mark Connolly, I would choose Anthony “Larry” Finnerty. This seems odd, as Finnerty spent his whole career as a corner forward. But when taking on a super-power you have do as Wexford did, and think outside the box.

Finnerty was never a back and probably couldn’t mark a bingo board, but he is one of the wittiest men ever to play Gaelic football. Finnerty’s job would be to keep Connolly apprised of how he’s doing in this particular game, and of other matters pertaining to the city and the world in a constant flow of repartee. This will bring extra pressure on the other five defenders of course, but shutting Connolly down will be worth it.

And as well as all this, of course, your own players have to play like gods – all the above does is reduce Dublin from the Olympian to the merely excellent. But events can build their own momentum, and once the camel gets his nose into the tent, you’d be surprised how quickly the rest of him arrives in afterwards.

So, if not Dublin, who? Is the team that beats Dublin the automatic All-Ireland winner? Yes, of course, if it happens in the final. Not necessarily, if it happens earlier. A team could be spent having beaten Dublin, while all the others up their game, seeing daylight where there was once only the jeering of the Hill. Which means that we can divide up the contenders into those who could beat Dublin and take advantage, those who could beat Dublin only to get beat themselves, and those who could inside track it, and seize a chance left by Dublin’s exit.

There has never been a better team at picking up All-Irelands than Kerry, but whether the current Kerry could beat Dublin – and they want to beat Dublin very, very much – is open to question. Kerry are in a better position to replace the Gooch than any other team and they have an excellent midfield, but the backs are raw and that could cost them. Kerry are never to be ruled out, however.

Cork or Donegal could beat Dublin in theory, but it’s not that likely. Cork need a little seasoning while Donegal are on the slide – it was an impossible dream that the McGuinness lustre would last.

Monaghan could beat Dublin but might not win the All-Ireland. Derry can’t beat Dublin but could win the All-Ireland. Tyrone are the best value bet, having the confidence recent All-Irelands brings, the youth coming onstream and the best manager of his generation, if not the best ever. A lot depends on their up-and-coming players, of course, but if it’s in them, Mickey Harte will find it.

And Mayo? Well. Tune in tomorrow, friends.

What We Can Learn from the Clare Hurlers

First published in the Western People on Monday.

And then, after the heartache of the All-Ireland Football Final, the sweet and soothing balm of the hurling. It’s normally the football that brings the curtain down on summer and announces the dread return of winter. For the past two years the hurling replays have allowed us that extra half-hour of playtime before it’s time for bath and bed. Having been left empty-handed at the end of the Big Show, a lot of people in the County Mayo were grateful for one last game that could be enjoyed, rather than endured.

Cormac MacConnell, that great Fermanagh writer from a great Fermanagh family, once wrote that he knew just enough about hurling to know that he knew exactly nothing about hurling. And so it goes for most Mayo people, if not the majority of the country. Hurling is a mysterious priesthood, a game for initiates for whom it is the one true belief, while those outside the cast can only peer through the window at the great and ancient game.

The nation’s attitude to hurling, lik the nation’s attitude to a lot of things, is a strange one. If all the people who like to remark that hurling is the greatest game in the world actually played it or promoted it, a camán would be as commonplace to every child in the country as his or her Xbox. But talk is cheap and hurling remains where it has always remained, among its strongholds.

And in the light of that domination, what a thing it was last Sunday week to see Clare rise roaring once more from the bottom of the table, to overturn doubters, dissenters and all to bring the Liam McCarthy Cup home to the Banner for only the fourth time ever. Clare, that most marvellous of counties. God help you there in County Clare, stuck between Kerry and Kiltimagh, as the old people used to say.

While Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary hurl on the beautiful, rich land of the golden vale, the land in Clare is a lot like the land in the County Mayo – no less beautiful, but not at all as rich or fertile. And not only that, a feature of the Clare landscape is also the world famous Burren, about which a Cromwellian planter once remarked to his bitter disappointment that “there isn't tree to hang a man, water to drown a man nor soil to bury a man.”

But maybe there’s more to life than hanging, drowning and burying men. Music and hurling are far more worthwhile pursuits, as a typically impassioned Anthony Daly told an enthralled nation twenty years ago, when Clare last burst on the scene to carry the big pot away.

What a team those men were. What men that team was. The manager Ger Loughnane, who had drank enough bitter gall during his own playing days in the 1970s to know that any pain was worth not knowing defeat again. The imperious Lohans guarding Davy Fitzgerald’s goal. Daly and Seánie McMahon at half-back. If you imagine our own O’Sheas armed with sticks you get an idea of the Clare midfield of Ollie Baker and Colin Lynch. And upfront, the veteran Sparrow O’Loughlin and the firefly skills of Jamesie O’Connor on the wing.

There was no-one whom Clare feared in those days and, on the days when they were defeated, they died with their boots on.

Now, nearly twenty years later, under the management of Ger Loughnane’s own goalkeeper, Clare have done it again. Davy Fitzgerald isn’t the media’s idea of a polished performer. Not only is his heart on his sleeve, but his very guts are there, heaving for all to see. But behind that raw passion is a brain that is the hurling equivalent of the Rolls Royce motor car. There was a lot of debate about Clare’s tactics this year but, after all the talk, there is one thing that is sure. Clare won.

Clare of 2013 are an echo of Loughnane’s great teams of the 1990s, in that they are built from the back up. David McInerney, Brendan Bugler and Tony Kelly are worthy successors to Brian Lohan, Seánie Mac and Jamesie. The big difference between the teams of the nineties and the team of 2013 is the performance of young Shane O’Donnell in the final.

Only told he was starting an hour before the game began, O’Donnell scored three goals and three points to lead Clare past a valiant Cork, a Cork who would have reeled any other team in Ireland back. But not Clare, who were very much destiny’s children in 2013.

In a post-game interview with Shane O’Donnell broadcast on last Monday’s Morning Ireland, Clare’s latter-day Cúchulainn put it all in a nutshell. “Sure this is my first year on both panels, 21s and senior,” said O’Donnell. “I don't even have the all the baggage that the lads have from years gone by where they should have won things but they didn't. And it's a lot easier going out and playing when you don't have things in the back of your head like that.”

It’s a lot easier going out and playing when you don’t have things in the back of your head like that. In Mayo, we have more things in the back of our heads than that young man could dream of. He thinks the baggage of twenty years a lot. He should try sixty.

But this isn’t to have a pop at O’Donnell. The man is the toast of the nation in these hard times and if he’s not, he should be. This is just to say that, reader, someday that will be us.

Someday that will be a Mayoman talking about how the only thing that matters is the here and now. That days come one by one and you either seize them or let them go forever. That piseogs and curses aren’t worth a bale of wet straw compared to the courage, talent and the eternal optimism of youth. God speed the day and, while we await it, up the Banner and may they enjoy a warm and short winter.

Football Championship Preview 2013

As the counties stand like greyhounds in the slips on the eve of another All-Ireland Championship, the 2011 Champions find themselves in an unusual position. It’s not that their being favourites to lift Sam is all that unusual, of course, but it is odd that this time there is no inflation in Dublin’s price. And what is positively eerie isn’t the absence of inflation but that it would be impossible for anyone but the most ardent of anti-metropolitans to begrudge them.

We have seen hyped Dublin teams in the past but for whatever reason – and it’s almost certain a combination of reasons, some planned, some happy happenstance – the current Dublin team are on the verge of forging a dynasty. They have quality in every line, radiating from captain Cluxton in goal all the way up to the full-forward line where Dublin have as many options as a Kardashian has shoes.

Opponents of Dublin’s chances talk of peaking too soon or being spoilt for choice or complacency or hype but it’s all clutching at straws. It’s hard to see anyone keeping the ball kicked out to Dublin in Leinster and after that it’s the luck of the draw whether they have sacrificial lamb for dinner on the August Bank Holiday weekend or they meet someone who can give them a game of it.

Who that someone might be is hard to pin down. The odds for the Championship make the past four All-Ireland Champions the favourites for this year, but it’s 10/1 on Mayo or Tyrone after that and then it’s an astonishing 20/1 the field.

If those prices are reflective of the counties’ relative standings, this could be one of the most unequal Championships in over a generation. What’s more, there are big question marks hanging over the other three top contenders, starting with the Champions.

Clare’s genius, Jamesie O’Connor is quoted in Denis Walsh’s excellent Hurling: The Revolution Years as saying that things fell apart from Clare because what it takes for a particular team to win its first All-Ireland is not at all like what it takes to win their second. Donegal are discovering that now. Like Loughnane’s Clare, Donegal were not so much men as a force of nature last year – will they be able to harness that again? The Bitegate business is a distraction that they didn’t need, and the other thing they didn’t need was to start their Championship against Tyrone. There are no easy games in Ulster, but some games are harder than others. If Donegal win, the adventure begins again, but it’s unlikely the Qualifiers would suit them.

There are many easy games in Munster, of course, and the same two teams will be present in the last eight, irrespective of which of them wins the Munster Championship. After that though, it gets a bit murky.

Neither county will ever suffer from a talent shortfall, but both Cork and Kerry have old panels, nearing the end of their days. Cork must be aware that their talent level of the past five or seven years deserved more than the one title they won, while Kerry are Kerry. The Kingdom are never satisfied, never to be written off, and always in the mix. Kerry are disregarded at your absolute peril and, if there is such a thing as a “soft” All-Ireland, it’s generally Kerry that wins it. It’s what they do.

Tyrone, Kerry’s bêtes noirs of the 21st Century, are looking good in Ulster. Seán Boylan is the only manager of the modern era to have won All-Irelands with two different teams. It would be fitting, and a feat begrudged by nobody, were that good man Mickey Harte to equal Boylan’s achievement. That said, anybody with a scintilla of romance or a feel for the history of the game will have noted Cavan’s stirrings at the Under-21 level and dreams of the day when Breifne rises again. Cavan take their bow this weekend against Armagh; best of luck to them.

In the lonesome west, Roscommon are ideally positioned. All westerners dream of relaxing in the long grass, the better to mount an ambush as the hay ripens into June and July. That’s where Roscommon are now, silently waiting on the winners of this weekend’s game in Salthill.

The penny is dropping for the nation that it’s been a long time since Galway were good. A man who studies football closely remarked to your correspondent a few weeks ago that Mayo would stroll Connacht, on the basis that Galway haven’t brought their Under-21s through. “But bejabbers,” says I, “what if this is the year?”

The danger is always lurking. If Galway do beat Mayo it means that Galway are back, and there is suddenly another contender to keep the ball kicked out to Dublin. Whether that will be enough to stop what looks like a skyblue and navy procession through the summer of 2013 is something we’ll have to wait and see.

As for Mayo – we’ll take a closer look at their chances later this week.

By the Numbers - the Hurling All-Stars

Three hundred and fifty of the six hundred and thirty All-Stars awarded over the forty-two years of the institution have gone to the Big Three counties. Kilkenny have 163, Cork 103 and Tipperary have 82. Galway’s six for this year sees them bring their total to 79 all-time, three short of Tipperary but well clear of the rest of the field.

Offaly and Limerick, joined forever in the memory by the incredible 1994 final, are joined on the All-Star roll of honour too. The Faithful and the Shannonsiders have 44 each. Clare have 42, Wexford 30, Waterford – the only county in double digits on the list who haven’t won an All-Ireland since the All-Stars began – have 29 and then list falls away to Antrim and Dublin with five each and Down and Westmeath with one each.

Down’s sole winner was Gerard McGrattan, who lined out at right half-forward on the 1992 team, the year he made his inter-county debut. Down won Ulster that year and gave a good account of themselves against Cork in semi-final. Westmeath’s sole All-Star was David Kilcoyne, who lined out at right corner-forward on the 1986 All-Star team. David was one of five Kilcoynes to wear the maroon and white in the 1980s.

Looking at the graph of All-Stars over the years for Kilkenny, Cork, Tipperary and Galway, we can see that All-Stars come in spurts. Kilkenny have led always but it’s only in the Cody era that they’ve really torn away from the chasing pack.

Part of the reason behind that the separation can be put down to Cork’s decline. Cork have won two All-Stars since their most recent strike. There may be something in that. There may not.

It’s interesting also to note that Tipperary were not forgotten during the famine that lasted from 1971 to 1987 – the kept winning the odd All-Star here and there. Bobby Ryan and Tommy Butler won one each during the famine, Francis Loughnane, Pat McLoughney and Tadhg O’Connor won two and Nicky English won three in a row before Richie Stakelum made his famous declaration of Premiership über alles in Killarney in the magical summer of 1987.

The All-Star era also saw the rise of Galway after they were released from Munster. They are now neck and neck with Tipperary in the All-Star Roll of Honour, twinned around each other like some sort of perpetual Keady Affair.

Comparing hurling with football, it’s interesting to note that spread of awards around the counties is much the same in hurling as in football – a ratio of 6:3:6 between the All-Ireland winners, the All-Ireland runners-up and the rest. This is despite the fact that that only thirteen counties have won hurling All-Stars, while 27 football counties have been so honoured. So, even though Kerry dominate the football All-Stars just as Kilkenny dominate the Kerry, it’s easier to win an odd award in football than in hurling.

Of the 630 football All-Stars, 236 have won just one All-Star. There are just 151 once-off hurling All-Star winners – all the others are multiple winners. In hurling, once you’re in, you’re in.

As regards the years themselves, the worst years for the winners were 1971 and 1979, when Tipperary and Kilkenny got only four each. 1983, 2000 and 2008 were the best years, when Kilkenny scooped nine each time. 2000 and 2008 were also the worst years for the runners-up, with only one gong to bring home after getting stomped in the final.

The best years for the runners-up were 1973 and this year, when the runners-up seven and six All-Stars outstripped the winners’ tally of five. Limerick got six All-Stars as runners-up in 1994 too, but it’s highly unlikely that made them feel any better. All Mayo wept in silent empathy and brotherhood with the Shannonsiders in 1994 and 1996, having known what it was to fall short ourselves. Still though; there’s always next year.

By the Numbers - the Gaelic Football All-Stars

Donegal’s haul of eight All-Stars puts Donegal 2012 joint second on the list for the most dominating performance of All-Ireland football champions at the All-Stars. Of course, the All-Stars aren’t quite the most accurately calibrated metric in a country that is generally adverse to precision, but come on. The winter is almost here and we need to make the most of what’s left of the summer’s fun before the frost covers the green isle once more.

Besides; questionable though the process behind the All-Stars might be, they are very much part of what we are. Or at least, the poster is.

They don’t seem to make them any more, but once the All-Star poster was an essential feature of any self-respecting Irish bar, and it is a reasonable rule of thumb to posit that the older the poster, the sweeter the poster. There’s a fine selection the GAA museum, with those distinctive black borders and the mugshots of men’s men. Reader, treat yourself sometime.

Looking at the 630 awards over 42 years, we discover that the typical All-Star team breaks down at an average of six All-Ireland winners, three runners-up and six of the rest. The football of the year, which began 1995, is generally from the champions too – Peter Canavan in 1995, Steven McDonnell in 2003 and Bernard Brogan in 2010 are the exceptions.

The biggest haul of All-Stars for All-Ireland champions is nine, which happened twice. Those years were 1977 and 1981, the bookend years of Kerry’s four-in-a-row. This year’s Donegal join Tyrone in 2005 with their eight awards – 2005 saw only three counties, Tyrone, Kerry and Armagh, honoured at the All-Stars, the lowest number ever. So much for the back door shining a light on the little guy.

The lowest haul of All-Stars for the champions is four, which has happened four times. Offaly won four in 1971, the first year of the All-Stars, when a highest-ever ten counties were honoured. Dublin got only 4 All-Stars in 1983, when they boxed their way past Galway in a notoriously ill-tempered game.

Down, astonishingly, got only four All-Stars in 1991 while Meath, whom Down defeated in the final, got six. This is the only time the losers have got more All-Stars than the champions.

There have been three years when the All-Stars divided equally between the champions and the losing finalists – 1971, that great year when all men stood equal saw the champions, Offaly, and the runners-up, Galway, got four each. 1996 and 2010 saw five each to the winners and losers of those years.

The most honoured of the runners-up were Meath in 1991, which was also the year of their famous marathon encounter against Dublin in the Leinster Championship. Three Dubs from that remarkable series had to decide between beef or salmon in the Burlington that year – Keith Barr, Tommy “Tom” Carr and Mick “Michael” Deegan.

Mayo have four All-Stars this year, which is above the average for All-Ireland runners-up. There has never been a year when no runner-up was nominated but there have been two years when just one runner-up got an All-Star and nine years when they got just two. There is nothing like getting tonked on the fourth Sunday in September to make footballers look bad before the gentlemen of the press.

There have been seven years when the All-Stars who didn’t play in the All-Ireland made up more than half the All-Star team. The biggest assembly of these was in 1983, of course. Ten players from seven different counties were awarded that year. Down and Offaly got two each, even though neither won their provinces. Jack O’Shea, who was captain of Kerry in 1983, got one as well, almost certainly on the strength of his sheer Jacko-icity.

Nine All-Stars came from outside the final in 1997 and 2007. The 1997 Leinster Champions Offaly got only one All-Star, corner-back Cathal Daly, as did Ulster Champions Cavan, whose great midfielder Dermot Cabe was slotted in at wing-forward.

Each province knows what it is to be left without a representative on the All-Star team, but only Connacht has had that dubious honour more than once. Seven times, in fact – 1975, 1982, 1988, 2005 and three years in a row, between 2007 and 2009. Sligo’s Charlie Harrison broke the duck in 2010.

Just four counties have won over half of the 630 awards over 42 years – Kerry have 127, Dublin have 86, Cork have 64 and Meath have 49. Tyrone is the leading Ulster county on 40 while Galway heads the list for Connacht with 37. There are seven counties, including London and New York, who have yet to win any All-Stars at all, with Limerick and Longford perhaps the hardest done by out of those seven in recent years.

The Donegal Football Revolution

Gaelic football is a Heraclitean fire – it is always changing, while always staying the same.

The first big change was in the 1960s, when Down brought coaching and planning to a level never seen before in the game. They knew they hadn’t a midfield to compete with Kerry’s imperious Mick O’Connell, so Down decided to let O’Connell field to his heart’s content, but to tackle him when he landed. That, and changing football from a static game to a running one, totally changed the nature of the football played in the fifty years that followed.

In the 1970s came the Olympic Handball era and the superior fitness of Kerry and Dublin. The ‘eighties saw a return to a more traditional football, with the robust rivalries of Meath and Cork. The ‘nineties saw the return of Down, arrivistes who had become aristocrats as their once revolutionary game had now become the court standard. Galway took a hint of classicism into and across the millennium, until Ulster heralded another revolution.

The Tyrone blanket may have looked shocking in the 2003 semi-final against Kerry but everybody is playing that game now. Until last Sunday, when Donegal broke its metaphorical sound barrier. Cork and Donegal were playing the same game in the first half but in the second half all that changed, as Cork hit the wall while Donegal hit the gas.

It was extraordinary to watch. Two Donegal forwards would loiter with intent in the Cork half of the pitch, at full and centre-forward. The rest of the Donegal team would gather back in their own half – all thirteen of them. Cork had a man on each of the two Donegal forwards, and then a line of five or so defenders stretched laterally across the field, between the 21 and 45 metre lines. Waiting.

Then the Donegal attacks would come, a ball carrier roaring from the deep come hot from Hell, as Shakespeare might have put it, and with outriders in his wake.

Once the runner hit the thin red line, things started to happen. Either Cork would win it, or the ball carrier would lay it off to one of his outriders, or he would break through. It was when the ball carrier got through that was particularly noticeable, because the substantial Donegal support would let loose a throaty roar.

Once the ball carrier was in space he was assured of a score. Why not? He had no marker – he had breached the Cork defence, and scoring a point into the Hill was like popping one over in his back garden. The Cork backs had been left behind.

Cork had no answer to Donegal. Cork arrived in Croke Park as the biggest, toughest and fittest team in Ireland. The theory was that Cork would match Donegal for fitness and then run the bench in the final quarter, crushing Donegal that way. Didn’t happen. Jim McGuinness has tuned Donegal to a level that’s never been seen before.

So what fuels this burning desire? It’s not just fitness. There is a deep and howling need in the people of Donegal to win the All-Ireland. We all think our own people are the best supporters, irrespective of where we’re from, because we’re all formed by where we’re from but reader, take An Spailpín’s word for it. There is nothing like the Donegal support in current Gaelic football.

Much has been made of the Donegal regime and sports science is clearly revolutionising football at every level, but it’s hard not to believe that identity and questions of belonging fuel that extraordinary fire. It hurts to play for Donegal – there was a man walking off the field on Sunday whom An Spailpín would have put straight into an oxygen tent. It’s not money that makes a man do that. It’s something else.

Donegal has suffered a lot from partition as its natural hinterland, Derry, has been cut off from the border. Donegal is part of the south but it’s of Ulster. It exists between the two states – cut off from the partitioned state to which it naturally belongs, but hugely isolated from the southern state, that has never even run a train up to those famous hills and glens.

Identity is important for every county, but in Donegal, it’s important with bells on because of Donegal’s geographical and cultural isolation. The curent Donegal machine is fuelled by all those things that money can’t buy, like heritage, pride of place, mórtas cine.

Whether the current Donegal revolution is a moment in time, a rhyme of hope and history, or an evolutionary leap like Down in the 60s or Tyrone at the start of this century is something we’ll have to wait and see. And all of yesterday’s glory will instantly pale if they don’t seal the deal in four weeks. Dublin and Mayo will have their own thoughts on that. They like where they’re from too.

Cork Worthy Winners of the National Football League

Cork are half-way through their campaign to equal Mayo’s seventy-year-old record of six National Football League titles in a row. If yesterday’s third title in three years is anything to go by, they will do it.

It matters little to the victors of course, but yesterday’s game made for poor spectacle. It quickly became apparent that familiarity has bred contempt between Cork and Mayo and a lot of nasty, mean-spirited fouls littered play. Referee Maurice Deegan had a chance to cut it out when the centre-backs, Cork’s Graham Canty and Mayo’s Dónal Vaughan, treated themselves to a punch-up early in the second half. Sending both men off, for striking or attempting to strike, is the response demanded by the rules, and would have served as a warning against further bad behaviour. Not even a card.

Ger Loughnane, one of the greatest Gaels, used to tell his players that they couldn’t rely on the referee for protection. They had to protect themselves. This is a lesson better learned by Cork than by Mayo. James Horan’s Mayo is showing an admirable bit of snarl in games, but when Cork upped the physical ante Mayo had no answer and were well beaten, really, in the end.

And by what was clearly the better side. Joe Brolly and Pat Spillane believe that Cork won because they had the better forwards, and certainly the Cork forwards did better than Mayo, racking up some very tasty scores. Fintan Goold had a much better day against Mayo than he did during the All-Ireland quarter-final, and Daniel Goulding’s final point was a treat to see.

However, An Spailpín would contend that the soul of the current Cork team is in their half-back line of Noel O’Leary, Graham Canty (formerly John Miskella) and Paudie Kissane. They give Cork a presence and a personality. To beat Cork, you must conquer that line. You must endure more than they endure and inflict more than they inflict.

Mayo were able to do it in the summer, but not yesterday in Croke Park. Cork didn’t see Mayo coming last summer, and they were riven by injury. None of those factors applied yesterday.

A school of thought holds that, because yesterday was for a “national title” and the quarter-final was for nothing, Cork have avenged that summer defeat with interest. Probably not, is An Spailpín’s view but that’s up to the Corkonians themselves to decide and more power to them.

From a Mayo point of view, it’s disappointing to lose another final in Croke Park. Of course it is. But it’s been a great League campaign, not least as the team looked like being on their way to Division II around Easter. But even in the ahses of ultimate defeat. there’s much to be happy with about the campaign.

The defense is settled and solid. The Mayo half-back line doesn’t match Cork’s for presence, but it’s by golly getting there. The first-choice defence is now nailed down.

Aidan O’Shea will anchor the Mayo midfield for the next ten years, but who to pair him with this summer remains a vexed question. Barry Moran has never quite captured his club form, and the returned Pat Harte is looking more and more like a contender.

Up front, the half-backs pick themselves at this stage, but the inside line remains a trickier matter. Mayo haven’t had a nailed-on full-forward since John Casey – Alan Freeman looked to the manner born for two years, but his star seems on the descent now, which is a pity.

Freeman was unlucky last year because, while Andy Moran could play at 11 or 14, Freeman didn’t swap in and out as easily. Cillian O’Connor will start for Mayo in every game, but wearing what shirt is the question. Plenty of food for thought for James Horan and the faithful until Mayo face either London or Leitrim in eight weeks’ time.

Down Goes O'Leary: How Aidan O'Shea Won the Day for the County Mayo

When he was learning about the great game of Gaelic football at his father’s knee, a friend of the blog was regularly asked what was the turning point. It was his father’s way of getting the gasúr to think about the game, and to realise that small events can have momentous consequences. Gaelic football’s butterfly effect, if you like.

Not every game has a turning point, of course. But yesterday there was a huge one, when an emperor was dethroned and a foundation stone set for a new world order.

Mayo were offered at 18/1 in running early in the first half of the game on Sunday. Cork had been gifted a sweet start, the last thing Mayo could afford them, and they were humming. Mayo were 1-4 to 0-1 down and in big trouble.

Noel O’Leary, a player whose praises your faithful correspondent will always sing, was in possession under the Cusack Stand around the 45 metre line and was thinking about where to launch it when he got a shock. The sort of shock you get when six feet five of Breaffy bone and muscle comes barreling into you when you’re not expecting it.

Aidan O’Shea, for it was he, put O’Leary on the deck. As tough an hombre as has pulled on a jersey found himself stretched, whacked, done.

O’Shea got a yellow card for the challenge, which may have been harsh, and may not have been. It’s hard to believe O’Leary considered the challenge anything other than fair; God knows he’s delivered plenty of them himself.

But the game was never the same again. O’Shea putting down O’Leary was the turning point.

O’Shea’s challenge on O’Leary was a primal act of defiance. You may beat us but you will not defeat us. We are not here to be bullied. We are not here to make up numbers. We shall fight you ball for ball and if we lose, we lose on our feet, not on our knees.

There’s more to it than that of course. A lot of things happen in a game of Gaelic football. But An Spailpín will believe until the day he’s called that Aidan O’Shea’s challenge on Noel O’Leary changed the All-Ireland quarter-final.

Of course, Cork were hampered by their injuries. No team can lose so many of its front-line players and still perform at its optimum. They were worthy Champions and Conor Counihan was gracious in defeat, which can’t have been easy. This defeat is very, very painful for Cork football and, with the bizarre way the inter-county calendar is currently fixed, it will be a long time until they can assemble again to deal with their pain.

While for Mayo, and perhaps for the entire football base of Connacht, it was a moment of justification. Not least in light of what passes for football analysis currently.

Whatever happens now, Mayo are playing with house money. Kerry are the best team in Ireland, and Jack O’Connor doesn’t miss much on the line. Cork were complacent on Sunday, but Kerry know the breed of the O’Shea boys, and they will be ready. It’s also to be hoped that Darran O’Sullivan can play in three weeks – his presence will make Mayo’s task all the harder, but his talents grace the game, and the game is bigger than any or all of us. Can’t wait.

Project CIG: How Mayo Can Beat Cork on Sunday

Paddy Power is quoting Mayo as a 9/2 longshot against Cork on Sunday. That means if Mayo were to play Cork eleven times Mayo would win two and Cork would win the other nine. That price is probably a bit mean – it’s hard to see Mayo beating Cork at all, to say nothing of beating them twice.

But Paddy can’t go true price 9/1 or 10/1, because then you realise the difference between bookie odds and true probability. Why, even Pat Spillane himself would take Mayo at 10/1 if he were offered it. Yerra, just in case, like.

And that’s what Mayo must focus on this week. When the back room team sits down to analyse the game against Cork this Sunday they have to realise that not only have Mayo a puncher’s chance, the confluence of events means that one chance in ten may very well have arrived this weekend. For three reasons.

1: Complacency
It’s extremely difficult for any Cork team to take Mayo seriously at the best of times. Why would they? It’s very difficult for Cork to take anyone seriously, other than Tipperary in hurling and Kerry in football, but there’s no way they think anything other than shaking the jersey will be required against Mayo.

Connacht football is a national laughing stock – junk bond status, in Pat Spillane’s nice phrase – and Cork themselves have only to think back to the havoc they wreaked on Mayo in Croke Park in April ’10, fifteen months ago to realise what a stroll in the park it’ll be.

Sure the Mayo manager, whoever he is, probably has to cut the players’ dinners for them of an evening, as they can’t be trusted to work cutlery themselves without stabbing each other or lopping off a digit or a limb. Conor Counihan will rant all he wants but come on. Mayo? All those boys will be thinking about another crack at Kerry, and making up for the Munster Final.

Just like the Mayo players themselves couldn’t take London seriously, and were licking their lips at the prospect of a crack at Galway. Pretty much the same thing.

2: Injuries
Cork are cursed with injuries. There’s a lot of talk in modern Gaelic football about systems and training and thirty man panels and the divil knows what but while An Spailpín pays science due respect I can’t get it out of my head that if you don’t have the players your system won’t save you in the white heat of the Championship.

Cork have more strength in depth than any other team. We saw it in the League final earlier this year, when it seemed like each sub that came on was better than the man who went off. But a lot of that was illusory, as Cork’s growth coincided with Dublin’s falling away.

This Sunday, Goulding is gone. Sheehan is gone. Colm O’Neill is gone. Joe Brolly might be onto something about Canty. That’s a lot of holes.

Cork are still thick with superstars of course – the O’Connors, Paddy Kelly, and An Spailpín’s own favourite, the immortal Noel O’Leary, the pride of Cill na Martra. But Cork will miss Goulding and the rest. Nobody can lose that many first line players without Fate coming to collect at some stage. If Conor Counihan isn’t worried about his injury list, he ought to be.

3: Goals
For years Mayo have used the inside line as a source of third midfielders, or a place to send starting midfielders for a breather because those same starting midfielders were on the tiles the night before and are burning diesel badly.

Not this year. For the first time since the brief career of the unlucky John Casey, Mayo are dangerous inside. None of the three young men along the full-forward line are nationally known. No-one ever heard of Pavarotti either until he started to sing. O’Connor, Freeman and Jason Doherty can do damage if they get ball into them, not least as Cork’s full back line isn’t the rebels’ strongest unit.

The Cork half-backs are, to An Spailpín’s eye, the heart of the team. Kissane, Miskella and O’Leary. Warriors all. Bizarrely, however, the current Mayo half-forwards are an interesting match for them. The Mayo half-forwards have become quite the ground hogs this summer and if they can scrounge a few breaks and deliver it lively inside – rather than ponce off into a corner, soloing thoughtfully, say – well, who knows?

It’s a big ask of course, and the reward for victory over Cork is almost certain butchery at the hands of the Kingdom. But I wouldn’t mind that. I would even accept it as a price worth paying.

Mayo are a very young team and still a few piece short of the puzzle. But a beating from Kerry would help season them, and know what the highest level is like.

And through the winter as the team show their scars and talk about what it’s like to face the best, they could take comfort in the thought of Cork, crying by the Lee all through the winter as the Israelites wept by the rivers of Babylon. The thought of those tears should be reward aplenty, irrespective of what else the Championship has in store. Maigh Eo abú.

Mayo Aren't That Far Away

There is an air of grimly facing the inevitable about Cork’s trip to Castlebar on Sunday. Cork were sweetly obliging the last time Mayo played them in the League regular season, rolling over to have their tummies tickled by the banks of the Lee. They then turned around in a week to have a loud last laugh by carpet-bombing Mayo in the League Final and setting up the further Mayo humiliations to come.

Cork are now the best football team in the country. There is no disputing that fact. Having finally won that All-Ireland last year, their option now is to win a few more, and claim definitive greatness. If they leave it only at one, you can rest assured their witty neighbours to the north won’t be long reminding them that, yerra, 2010 was a soft one.

And for all that, An Spailpín isn’t despairing about summer prospects for Mayo. If anything, the summer looks rather good.

Of all the bizarre events of that hammering from Dublin last Sunday week at Croke Park, An Spailpín was struck by the fact that James Horan made no substitutions until the second half. How many times will teams go down 4-4 to 0-2 after fifteen minutes in any grade without at least one of the backs getting the curly finger?

So either Horan didn’t notice that Mayo were getting a complete scutching, or else he didn’t care. An Spailpín has no idea, but I’d guess that Horan knew it was happening alright, but whatever was on his mind was more important than two league points against Dublin.

If not, why wouldn’t he have hauled poor Chris Barrett out of there, and sent Ger Cafferkey back? If Mayo have as bad a start as that in the Championship, you can rest assured Horan will do something. But for the League; no. Results aren’t what interest him just yet.

Which doesn’t mean Mayo are playing to lose, of course, or that relegation doesn’t bother them. It’s just a question of relativity, just as we all now realise in the modern world that, while getting a pay cut stinks, it’s still better than losing your job.

Relegation wouldn’t be that bad if, for all his tweaking, Horan can hit on a winning formula in the summer. Connacht isn’t as weak as has been made out, and if Galway can do something against the rising Ross in the Under-21 Connacht Final in Salthill this weekend, that might do their senior team no harm either.

Nor are Mayo necessarily doomed to the trapdoor either. How bothered are Cork about a spin to Castlebar? The League is all about judgement. Cork know from Mayo last year that League wins aren’t worth a damn. It’s only about your last game in the League, and how that sets you up for the summer. Stronger or weaker? Better to suffer now than later.

Issues remain with Mayo, and there are issues with nearly every line of the team. But this Mayo. That will always be the way. It’s too early for weeping by the lovely sweet banks of the Mayo. Wait until the summer, and see what the good God brings.

Cork Ascend into Glory

Cork 0-16
Down 0-15

After so many years of bitter disappointment, Cork ascended into glory when they won their seventh All-Ireland football title with a win over gallant Down in a wet Croke Park yesterday.

Down travelled under the weight of expectation drawn from the five teams before them who had never lost an All-Ireland final. Cork’s weight of expectation was even higher; had they fallen on Sunday, how could this generation have ever risen again?

For the first half-hour of the 2010 All-Ireland final it looked as though the day could only end in more rebel tears. Erratic shooting into the Hill saw Cork squander their early advantage in possession, while the Down forwards foraged for scraps and made the most of whatever came their way.

And then, the five minutes that changed the game as Cork laced over three quick points before the whistle to cut Down’s lead to three by half-time, 0-8 to 0-5. After struggling so hard to score in the first half it was like had Cork clicked into that higher gear that they’ve found so hard to find since losing to Kerry last year.

For Down, the writing was appearing on the wall, and it didn’t spell good news. They hadn’t made the most of their dominance, and Cork looked like they had found their form after a year’s search from Malin Head all the way back to their own Bantry Bay.

In the second half, the sands finally trickled out for Down. Martin Clarke, Down’s master of puppets, became less and less influential as the game wore on, shepherded by Cork’s imperious and talismanic Noel O’Leary.

The program tells us that O’Leary is a tree surgeon by profession – An Spailpín likes to think that O’Leary eschews the chainsaw to pull oak and cedar up by the roots with his bare, and think nothing of it. Yesterday, O’Leary took his instruction from the Book of Ruth, deciding that wither Martin Clarke goeth, Noel O’Leary doth also go.

But O’Leary was just one part, if a very important part, of what was the ultimate team triumph. This was the fundamental difference in the teams – Down could not live with Cork in terms of depth of talent. Look at the players who rose from the Cork bench – Graham Canty. Nicolas Murphy. Derek Kavanagh. Veterans of many campaigns, who were not going to let another summer end in disappointment.

It is to Down’s eternal credit that they still hung on as the waves of Cork pressure battered them, and a case could be made that Down were unlucky not to snatch a draw at the death. But for Cork to be denied would have been unjust and they well deserve their seventh All-Ireland football title.

FOCAL SCOIR: Croke Park is really going to have to look at its interval entertainment. Drumming is not music. Thirty seconds is bearable, in its context; Twenty minutes is criminal.

Groundhog Day: Cork Hammer Mayo in Croke Park

Cork 1-17
Mayo 0-12

Groundhog Day in Croke Park for Mayo. All week we listened to this old palaver about a new team, not intimidated by Heaney and Nallen’s old bones in the dressing room, depressing reminder of past failures. This was new-look Mayo, looking to their youth, listening to the sports psychologists, making things happen and all the rest of it.

What did we get instead? We got a throwback to the mid-nineties. The last fifteen years have been a golden era of Mayo football, but all the great qualities of those Mayo teams, not least their great hearts, went right down the Swanee River yesterday in another horror show fully in keeping with the Bad Old Days of Mayo football.

Yesterday, Mayo delivered a display that was true to the county’s most heart-breaking traditions, a display that predates the memories of the majority of Mayo players in the current panel. Castlebar 1986. Castlebar 1987. Tuam 1990. Croke Park 1992. Croke Park 1993. Roscommon 1994. Tuam 1995. Here it all was again, just like we remembered it, better even than the new A-Team movie.

The stagefright. The crippling fear of losing that denies even the possibility of winning. The abdication of responsibility in the forward line. The bizarre decision-making, that saw Alan Dillon setting up Trevor Mortimer to shoot when any even causal observer of Mayo football in the past decade would prefer to see that possession travelling the other way around. Especially if your car was parked within the blasting rang.

The most bizarre thing about the display yesterday was the inertia of it. The game opened in silence, like the teams were playing in the garden of a nursing home and didn’t want to scare the old folks. It was quickly obvious that Mayo were having a Mayo – if you put the forward line into individual barrels and rolled them down the shale of Croagh Patrick they could not arrive in Murrisk more disorientated than they appeared against Cork yesterday.

Which made it even more upsetting that nothing was done. The Mayo News podcast told us last week about how the Mayo team, in dealing with their trauma after losing to Meath, were now under instructions from their sports psychologist to take responsibility and make things happen when they saw games running away from them. Instead, we reverted right back to twentieth-century Mayo, heads down while Corkmen cracked over points like they were in a training run.

As the game slipped away, this was a golden opportunity to see what Mayo were made of. A golden opportunity to unleash McGarrity, Harte, Kilcoyne, Barry Moran or Tom Cuniffe and say get out there son, and come back with your name on the jersey!

Didn’t happen. McGarrity came on at the half – for Ronaldson, astonishingly, thus reducing Mayo’s scoring threat even more – but by the time Kilcoyne, Harte and Barry Moran appeared the last post has been well and truly sounded, as the shadow of Ben Bulben looked suddenly ominous for the first weekend in June.

Sunday’s wasn’t the worst Mayo defeat ever – this is only the league, of course, and the bar is set pretty dang high for Mayo’s Worst Day Ever – but if the circle that Mayo are travelling in gets any tighter, they will soon be able to see their own tails wagging in the gloaming ahead of them.



Technorati Tags: Ireland, culture, sport, GAA, football, Mayo, Cork, National Football League, League Final 2010

Mayo v Cork in the National Football League Final

There are two very good reasons to attend the League Finals this Sunday in Croke Park, between Down and Armagh in the Divison 2 Final and Mayo and Cork in Division 1.

There are the games themselves, of course. Armagh and Down is a classic border rivalry between teams that could make some noise in the Championship. Mayo and Cork is a game between two teams who, along with Dublin, could set up their own school of psychiatry to teach aspirant medical students about the many different ways of not being well in the head.

For instance, it is a trait peculiar to Mayo that only Mayo could find themselves togging out for a football game from which nothing good can happen.

If Mayo beat Cork on Sunday, it will be met by a huge heave of “so what?” around the nation. Mayo have promised in the past and delivered nothing, more years than anybody cares to count.

The optimistic talk current in the county has all been heard before, not least the last time Mayo got a League Final, in 2007 when they were out-generalled by Donegal. And a lot of good that League title did Donegal, as things worked out.

Mayo have marched to the top of this hill before. When you examine the teams who have won the League and the Championship in recent years you’ll find that they are either Kerry or Kilkenny, depending on whether or not you are playing football or hurling. But those two counties are exceptions to the general rule, and it is just plain wrong to think otherwise.

Who has doubled League and Championship other than those two? Once in twenty years in hurling, one in twenty years in football has it happened that a county other than Kerry or Kilkenny has won the League and Championship double. So anybody who does think that a League win will help their Championship cause is basing that belief on something other than the historical record.

To further blight my countymen’s weekend, Mayo have much more to lose by losing the League Final than Cork. Every day Cork are missing someone else, either Pearse O’Neill or Anthony Lynch or Graham Canty or John Miskella or Miah or Jeh or somebody. So if they lose, what harm? Sure aren’t half the team back in Cork?

But Mayo, even though they’re 15/8 or an astonishing 2/1 against in some shops, can’t afford to lose. They spent the League building up a team and if they were to lose does all that work then go down the broad swanee river?

The excellent Mayo News podcast tells us that John O’Mahony has brought in sports psychologist Gerry Hussey to the backroom staff. This is a good move because Mayo clearly have head issues. And they’ll have serious head issues if Johnno has to send for all the King’s horsse and all the King’s men to put Mayo together again in time for a trip to the shadow of Ben Bulben in the first week in June after getting handed their hats by half-strength Cork.

For what its worth - just about nothing - An Spailpín rather fancies Mayo in this one. Mayo have their issues of course, but you can only dance with the girls in the hall and if Cork are only bringing half a team sure Mayo can beat them. Why not?

Enough of the trivial. There’s another, much more important reason to attend the league finals on Sunday.

This is Thursday morning. In a few hours, the people of Mohill, Leitrim, Connacht and Ireland will make the long walk up that steep hill to the church in Mohill, where their hero, Philip McGuinness, lies at rest. Philip’s mortal remains will make their final journey after requiem mass and I truly hope and pray he’s at ease and at rest in a better world than this.

We who remain in the mortal realm, the vale of the tears in the old religion, and we should make the most of it before we too are called. There are worse places to be than headquarters in the sunshine of late Spring. We that are left owe something to those that are gone. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dilís uasal, suaimheas síoraí do, agus áit ag an Aonghusach go deo i measc na laochra Gael.






Technorati Tags: Ireland, culture, sport, GAA, football, Mayo, Cork, National Football League, League Final 2010

Kerry Do That Thing They Do

Kerry 0-16
Cork 1-09

There is a running joke in the much-beloved Peanuts cartoon strip. Lucy promises Charlie Brown that she will hold the football for him to kick it. She’s pulled it away in the past, but each time Charlie, God love him, believes the best of her. So Charlie runs in and kicks with all his might, Lucy pulls the ball away at the last second, like she always does, Charlie goes whoosh! through the air and ends up on the flat of his back, and Lucy’s girlish laughter rings in Charlie's ears. Again.

Cork must have felt very much like Charlie Brown when they woke up this morning. This year was the year when it was going to be all different. This was the New Jack Cork, the biggest, baddest football team every seen on Leeside. They crushed Kerry in Munster, and destroyed Tyrone in Croke Park. They were going to show Kerry once and for all who was boss. They weren’t afraid of Kerry any more.

Turns out Kerry weren’t afraid of them either. And that proved a crucial point.

Every other county in Ireland looks at the Championship one game at a time, and takes it piece by piece. Not Kerry. Kerry start in September and work back. Is this arrogant? Well, not really. Arrogance is misplaced self-confidence. Those thirty-six titles give Kerry something to be self-confident about.

Nobody does football as Kerry do football. There is Kerry, and there is the rest. Kerry's own football culture is fantastic, with levels of competition and excellence unparalleled elsewhere in the country. And then there is the fact that nobody understands the nature of the senior inter-county Championship better than Kerry do.

One of the reasons that the Romans conquered the world was that they learned from their enemies. When Rome was under threat from the Carthaginian navy for control of the Mediterranean, the Romans taught themselves to become sailors. There was no marine tradition in Rome prior to that.

Equally, every time a team has threatened Kerry – Down in the sixties, Dublin in the seventies, Tyrone in this decade – Kerry have added characteristics of the opponent to their own arsenal, making themselves stronger while remaining true to their own fundamental philosophies.

Mick O’Dwyer’s teams abandoned catch-and-kick after Down exposed it in the sixties, and then matched the athleticism of Kevin Heffernan’s Dublin. Pat Spillane held his nose about “puke football” when Tyrone first unleashed the swarm defence, but Kerry gave Cork a masterclass in defending yesterday.

I don’t know who got the Sunday Game man of the match, but I would think seriously about giving it to Tommy Griffin at fullback. It was uncanny to see perfect ball delivered to Colm O’Neill’s chest while O’Neill was in front of Griffin and then see Griffin coming away with the ball and setting up another attack.

The other thing that has made Kerry great in recent times is that nobody understands the true nature of the Championship better than they do. For Kerry, and for Kerry alone, a provincial medal now ranks lower in esteem than the National League.

Other counties may be afraid of taking their chances in the thickets of the qualifiers, or else consider it beneath their dignity. Not Kerry. Kerry realise that everybody whom they could meet in the qualifiers will fear them, while they themselves fear nobody.

Kerry would not fancy a trip to Healy Park, but what are the chances of them being drawn against Tyrone, and losing home advantage as well? Not as high as they were for Mike McCarthy for to slot back into the team like he’d never been away. When you are talking about Kerry, you have to formulate an entirely different set of rules.

Nobody should be more away of this now than Cork, for whom this defeat has to sting. It casts a pall over everything they’ve done this year, as what failed for Cork this year was what fails for them every year.

One of the reasons for introducing the back door in the first place (because nobody likes to say m-o-n-e-y out loud) was this theory that Cork had a great team in the 1970s and, if only they hadn’t played in Munster, they could have won All-Irelands. On the evidence of today, maybe the simpler Championship just saved Dinny Allen and the boys some serious heartbreak further on down the line.

FOCAL SCÓIR: Congratulations to Armagh on a fine win over Mayo in the minor final. Ray Dempsey’s charges played their hearts out but Armagh were a superior outfit and class told in the end. Good luck to them.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, culture, GAA, football, All-Ireland Final, Cork, Kerry

Kerry Haven't Gone Away, You Know

“That’s not Darragh Sé,” remarked An Spailpín Fánach to his houseguests when Kerry made their first substitution in the drawn game against Cork last Sunday week. “That’s the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.”

The fact that Kerry would allow their talismanic midfielder, the man who has epitomised football in the Kingdom since he helped end the famine in 1997, to winter not wisely but too well is eloquent testimony to just how bothered they really are about the Munster Championship, and just how much the qualifier system has destroyed the Championship as we knew it.

We speak of the qualifier system like it was only introduced last year. This is the eighth year of the system. That’s the guts of two football generations. The backdoor is the tradition now.

And nobody adapts like Kerry. That’s one of the many reasons that they’ve won thirty-five All-Irelands and aren’t sated yet. Kerry whined about Down not playing catch-and-kick against them in the ‘sixties, but were quite happy themselves to win eight All-Irelands in the ‘seventies and ‘eighties playing what often looked like Olympic handball. They whined about puke football in 2003 but have since learned how to duke it out with the best of them, thanks very much.

But the chief penny that’s dropped for Kerry is that the Championship doesn’t now start until August, because it’s not until then that you face live ammunition. Until then, it’s just another challenge game really.

Cork and Kerry played a marvellous game by the banks of the Lee on Saturday but wasn’t it hard not to get the nagging feeling that maybe Kerry weren’t really bursting themselves? Sure they would have liked to win, the same way teams like to win the League, but it’s not life or death, which is the way Kerry play after the pilgrims have descended from the Reek. When it counts.

Peter Canavan said it on the TV. Cork looked magnificent, but we’ve seen this from Cork before. Often and all as they’ve beaten Kerry in Munster, any time Cork and Kerry have met when it counts Cork have taken the pipe.

A pained expression flitted across Anthony Lynch’s face when the TV3 man asked him what this win was worth after the game. Lynch came up with some platitude but he must know as well as anybody that this win isn’t worth two balls of roasted snow because Kerry haven’t gone anywhere.

All this talk about shark infested waters in the qualifiers is a lot of old blather. There will be one great big shark if a surprise happens in Ulster this weekend, and An Spailpín reckons that Jack O’Connor will be much more disappointed than Mickey Harte should Tyrone get up-ended. Kerry would much rather face Tyrone once their training has peaked in August and beyond. But Harte may have chosen the direct route this year – who can ever tell with that most inscrutable of men?

For what it’s worth, An Spailpín thinks a death knell may sound for the qualifiers when the boys in Croke Park sit down to do their sums in October. Qualifier attendance has declined over the years as the novelty wore off and people realised that there’s seldom a point in postponing the inevitable. Now the recession is here, and Kildare v Wexford in the Leinster Championship managed only eight thousand souls in Doctor Cullen Park on a beautiful summer Saturday evening, the qualifiers may be on borrowed time.

And small loss after them if they are. As previously argued in this space, the old winner-take-it-all Championship had its great beauties that have been ignored in the rush to cash in with the extra games. The weaker counties’ chances of winning All-Irelands have not increased in the Qualifier era, but at least under the old system you could stop your neighbour doing it. Seldom has bitter fruit tasted so sweet.

And how sweet would the Murphy’s be Leeside over the weekend if they knew that whoever will win Sam this year, Kerry won’t? Instead they know that Mars bars are banned from now on within a five mile radius of Darragh Ó Sé, and the big man will be spending merry summer evenings running up mountains, working off that beef and dreaming of seeing red once more.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, culture, GAA, football, Cork, Kerry, Championship 09

The Cork Footballers are Bluffing

The current Cork football panel made a pretence of solidarity with their comrades on the 2008 hurling panel last night. The footballers released a statement that they too would withdraw their services from the Cork County Board if Gerald McCarthy remains as hurling manager.

An Spailpín Fánach is convinced to his marrow that they are bluffing, and that bluff should be called.

The reason for this is because the footballers are not going on strike now, but at the end of the National League, if McCarthy remains in charge. And if that isn’t a hedged bet then An Spailpín has never seen one.

Here’s the thing: the footballers have had all winter to decide how they feel about the hurlers, so this statement is quite late in the day. If they were serious, they’d go on strike now, and settle the thing once and for all.

But they’re clearly not willing to sacrifice the National League, and if they’re not willing to sacrifice the National League, you can be pretty damn sure they’re not going to sacrifice the Championship – not least when they themselves are a good outside bet to win the thing. Chances of an All-Ireland medal are far less common for Cork footballers than Cork hurlers; they’re not going to give that up just so Dónál Óg Cusack can indulge his ego.

It’s reasonable to presume that last night’s statement is the last throw of the dice by Cusack and his cohorts, calling in the favour they feel the footballers owe them over that Teddy Holland business last year. But the footballers haven’t bought into it, and are just doing this for show. Otherwise, they would down tools here and now. Dónal Óg and the boys are at the end of the cliff. Time to let the sea have them, and be done with the whole ugly, selfish business once and for all.

One of the hardest things to take about the current dispute was all that old blather that this was all done for the greater good of Cork hurling, and the fine young men who are coming behind. No. What age is Frank Murphy? The man is in the autumn of his years, while Cusack, Gardiner, Ó hAlpín and the rest have forty or fifty years of service each before them. They can do plenty for the future of Cork hurling in fifty years. But they’re not interested in that; only in themselves, their “careers” – funny word for an amateur game – and their own high estimation of their worth. This is their final kick, and soon we’ll be able to close the book on the whole sorry business. Thank God, and small loss.






Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, GAA, hurling, football, Dónal Óg Cusack, Gerald McCarthy, Cork

When is a Cork Hurler Not a Cork Hurler?

As the Cork hurling nightmare drags painfully on An Spailpín Fánach can’t help but notice that there is an issue of nomenclature that is being overlooked in the dispute. An issue of nomenclature that, if resolved, could see a radical change of perspective and quick resolution of the dispute.

This is the issue: the group of thirty or so men who like issuing press releases to the Examiner newspaper are referred to in all media as “the Cork hurlers.” And this is plainly not the case.

The question of who hurls for Cork, or for any county, is at the discretion of the manager of that county team. Just because one has hurled for Cork in the past does not mean that one will do so again. In fact, because this is now the off-season, you could argue that there are no Cork hurlers as Cork aren’t actually hurling.

It’s very difficult not to think that Dónal Óg Cusack and his comrades are displaying a stunning level of arrogance in presuming some sort of automatic right to the jersey. If Tomás Mulcahy, John Fenton and Kevin Hennessey, for instance, issued a statement backing the current Cork County Board – who are just people who are passing through as well, of course – would the papers headline the statement as coming from “the Cork hurlers?” Don’t Mulcahy, Fenton and Hennessey deserve the title just as much as Cusack and his comrades? What have John Gardiner and co done on the field of honour that Tomás Mulcahy hasn’t?

The only issue, perhaps, maybe, would be that Dónal Óg still has a role to play in inter-county hurling. An Spailpín Fánach would question that assumption that also. These gentlemen’s inability see bigger pictures would make you wonder just how much a team game suits them.

It’s common in the media to defend Dónal Óg and his comrades by saying that they only want to play – Tom Humphries writes in Saturday’s Irish Times that it “isn’t about playing for Cork. It’s about winning for Cork.”

Up to a point, Lord Copper. All any team can do is play; whether they win or not depends on other factors, not least of whom are the other fellas, who may just fancy winning themselves. Playing a game is an end of itself – winning is an ancillary benefit. It is certainly not something that can be guaranteed.

But, just for pigiron, let’s give Dónal Óg and his comrades the benefit of the doubt. Here’s what Keith Duggan wrote in Sideline Cut on Saturday, where he may have summed up the whole dispute in an aside.

“For the Cork hurlers, it is simple. This group have always been about the very quality Kilkenny have been rightly lauded for - the pursuit of excellence. They believe there is no point playing at all unless the preparation and the attention to detail are second to none.”

No point in playing at all unless everything is just right. One of the common features of children who are spoilt is that they have no interest in playing unless everything is just to their satisfaction. The better brought up children will make the best of things as they are. The latter are more likely to enjoy it, and to enjoy greater benefits from it. Perhaps its not Kieran Mulvey whom is needed by the Cork hurlers but Ms Jo Frost, television’s Supernanny? Would a few hours on the naughty step cause certain parties to get over themselves and get with the program?

Six years since their first strike action, An Spailpín Fánach is still struggling to understand what exactly it is Dónal Óg and co want. After all, Cork have won over one hundred All-Ireland titles across all codes and age groups. Just how bad can the preparation be? How many would they win if they had been prepared correctly?

There’s a fierce amount that doesn’t add up in any of this and the Dónal Óg and his comrades are not being made accountable for their wild statements. For instance, John Gardiner was on Prime Time on Thursday night claiming that Frank Murphy wanted “absolute power.” Miriam O’Callaghan did not ask him to define the term “absolute,” which is pretty far ranging. Does Frank Murphy want the power of life and death, one of the rights enjoyed by the absolute monarchs of Europe before Napoleon and Age of Revolution? This is what we need to know. If Frank is bad that way, then certainly we should be told. But if he’s not, then maybe they shouldn’t say he is.

Miriam asked John Gardiner if it was about pay. Gardiner said “we have no interested in being paid at this time.” The last three words are interesting, aren’t they?

To An Spailpín’s mind, the solution is simple. Gerald McCarthy has only one option. It’s time to phone Eddie Hobbs and, if he’s still elegible, Gerald needs to tell Eddie to start doing laps; he’s going in top of the right on Sunday week for that challenge in Fermoy. Keith Duggan remarks that no-one wants to see a shadow team line out against Tipperary next summer. An Spailpín will sooner see that than see the Association torn asunder by the selfishness of a few who can’t seem to understand that they are only minding jerseys for someone else who’s coming along.






Technorati Tags: Ireland, sport, GAA, hurling, Dónal Óg Cusack, Gerald McCarthy, Cork