Five things we learned from the GAA weekend: Don’t mess with the Ulster final

Don’t rearrange the Ulster final

It was getting on for nine o’clock in the evening in Clones and the Donegal bus still hadn’t set sail for home. There was no hurry in the day for them now, everything was smooth and serene and a world away from the bedlam of a few hours before. The whole panel came out onto the pitch with ice cream cones in their hands for a team photo. “The nicest cones you ever tasted,” said Jim McGuinness.

All around, Clones was a snowglobe settling again. The terraces were strewn with the detritus of another Ulster final, the television workmen were reeling in miles of cable, the locals were coming out their doors and reclaiming the town for themselves.

Not for the first or last time, you noted that nobody sitting down with a blank piece of paper would ever dream of putting one of the national sport’s biggest games in a place like this. A town with no public transport to speak of, no way to contain everyone that doesn’t include miles and miles of abandoned cars, phone coverage that is patchy at best, wireless coverage that is worse. It’s a completely mad endeavour.

And yet there’s nothing like it. You couldn’t sit at the Ulster final yesterday, or last year, or the year before and not be completely sucked in by the whole thing. Plenty of us sit in sterile rooms and make judicious – and entirely sincere – statements about how the provincial championships are an awful waste of time and how they need to be killed off or rearranged or something this or something that. But none of us ever do it in Clones on Ulster final day.

Messing with a day like this in the Irish sporting calendar would be no small thing. We’d want to tread softly about it. — Malachy Clerkin

Have Cork exposed a rare Limerick vulnerability?

The other side of the story is Limerick. On Saturday night they looked vulnerable in ways that would have been unimaginable at any other time during their Masters of the Universe years. For Cork to go after them with pace wasn’t new – they had tried it many times before. The difference was Limerick’s inability, for most of the game, to shut down the running lanes.

In the opening half Limerick were more open than at any time since the 2021 Munster final when Tipperary led by 10 points at half-time. One of Limerick’s golden rules – which, once upon a time was also one of Brian Cody’s golden rules – is that their half-backs sit deep to compress the space in front of the full-back line.

Until Saturday night nobody had tried positioning three inside forwards so close to the endline on re-starts that their boots were nearly out of play. In the modern game, launching the ball into the forward line from between the two 65s is everyone’s preferred build-up option, but against Limerick this has always meant running the gauntlet of their giant forwards with their ferocious tackling. Turnovers in the opposition half is Limerick’s adrenaline gland, as we saw again during their comeback on Saturday night.

Against the breeze in the second half, Cork’s long puck-outs weren’t nearly as effective, but Cork didn’t resign from their determination to go after Limerick with an air offensive. For Cork’s second goal Seamus Harnedy made a clean catch inside the Limerick D. Late in the game, when Cork were trying to find a way back, Brian Hayes made a couple of brilliant high catches. Robert Downey was outstanding under the dropping ball. Cork also made a conscious play of batting high balls to clued-in receivers.

[ Nicky English: Kingston epitomised Cork’s refusal to accept gallant losers role ]

One of Cork’s puck-outs in the first half involved Shane Barrett launching himself into Diarmuid Byrne’s air space with the sole intention of spoiling the Limerick wing-back and ensuring safe passage for the ball to Harnedy, who was standing, unmarked, but by appointment, 10 metres away. In that play, Cork’s attitude was: hammer the hammer. Limerick’s half-backs have been dominating teams in the air for years. Cork went after that.

The most alarming thing for Limerick, though, was their inability to manage a match-winning lead going down the stretch. The last time that happened was in their first All-Ireland final in 2018, when in their greenness and anxiety, they allowed an eight-point lead dissolve to just a single point.

And conceding 3-28?

All of a sudden, Limerick have issues to resolve. — Denis Walsh

Northern exposure

By half-time in Clones on Sunday, some of the crowd in the uncovered stand had had enough of the status yellow rainfall and could – from the relative comfort of the status dry press box – be seen retreating from St Tiernach’s Park.

It meant conditions weren’t ideal for the silver jubilee presentation of Armagh’s 1999 Ulster winning side, who had closed a gap of 17 years when lifting the Anglo Celt Cup.

The captain of the team, current GAA president, Jarlath Burns, was back on the field with his colleagues, waving at the crowd. Not having won Ulster since 1982 appeared to act as a stimulus for the county, which went on to take six of the following nine titles.

Also taking a drizzly salute were the joint-managers of 1999, the two Brians, McAlinden and Canavan.

As survivors of the previous Donegal-Armagh provincial final in Clones (the 2006 and ‘04 matches, both won by Armagh, were played before bumper attendances in Croke Park) they at least wouldn’t have been taken by surprise.

The 1990 final between the counties was played in a persistent haze of rain: “It’s raining in Clones,” ran Marty Morrissey’s RTÉ commentary. “No wind. No sun.”

Brian McAlinden was Armagh’s goalkeeper and Brian Canavan next to him at corner-back.

As managers, they repositioned the county as All-Ireland contenders, winning back-to-back Ulsters in 2000 and going on to lose narrowly to three successive All-Ireland champions, Meath, Kerry – after a replay brought about by Maurice Fitzgerald’s late, late free from nearly 50 metres – and Galway, after another late intervention in the qualifiers by Paul Clancy.

In the rain at Clones 34 years ago, they lost narrowly to a Donegal team, under Brian McEniff, then in the process of building a successful first All-Ireland challenge, which came to fruition two years later.

The final score in 1990 was 0-15 to 0-14 in Donegal’s favour. On Sunday, that was the score in Armagh’s favour heading into the final minutes but on this occasion, there was an equaliser, courtesy of winning captain Paddy McBrearty. — Seán Moran

Communication breakdown

With the GAA’s clampdown on Maor Foirne going on safari around the pitch, and their new hardline approach to players taking off their helmets and throwing themselves to the ground to engineer a stoppage, every team is suffering from breakdowns in communication. After Cork’s loss to Clare, Pat Ryan said that it can take as long as a minute to get a message onto the field, which is an eternity if there’s an emergency.

John Kiely has addressed the issue before and returned to it on Saturday night. During Covid, when quarterly water breaks were in play, much was made of Paul Kinnerk’s interventions with his tactics board. His ability to identify corrections in the maelstrom of a championship match is one of his many talents, but the impact of that is greatly reduced if the message is stuck in his throat, or lost on the breeze. Limerick clearly had stuff to address on Saturday night, but they didn’t have their players’ ears until half-time.

“In the modern game, you are not allowed get messages onto the pitch. There isn’t much need for coaches anymore, maybe we should stay at home and watch it. It is a difficulty. What sport in the world doesn’t allow communication with the players that are participating? It is pure bonkers. It is the same for every county. Pat Ryan must feel the same as well.

“You can’t get a message onto the pitch – 44,000 people going balubas. You can’t hear from six feet away. Here we are destroying our vocal cords – I hope they have a fine pot of money put aside for the big claims. Maybe they should have a rethink of what they are doing. Rugby, soccer and of these games, you can easily get a message into the players. I think every GAA manager and coach is frustrated beyond belief you cannot get a message [onto the pitch] – even three in a half.”

In-game problem-solving has always been critical in football and hurling, even if the practice wasn’t always described using those terms. In the modern game, though, if your players aren’t spotting things and fixing them on the hoof, are you not in trouble? In reality, can such micro-managing be done from the sideline?

“I would have been trained essentially as a platoon commander,” said Jim Gavin a couple of years ago. “In a platoon, you have three sections, eight soldiers in each section. But I can’t stand behind number eight rifleman and tell him where to shoot. He will fall to the level of your training. In the last minute, or seven minutes into overtime, you’re a man down, a point down, and the five-in-a-row is on the line, they will default to the level you’ve trained them.”

That has been Limerick’s greatest strength for years: they defaulted to the level they had been trained. — Denis Walsh

Donegal men flourish in exile

Clones wasn’t the only place Donegal men had success over the weekend. A notable feature of London’s hammering of Offaly on Saturday in Tullamore was the extent of Tír Chonaill contingent who did such damage, led by the irrepressible Ciarán Diver who racked up 1-5 from play. By the end, there were five Donegal players involved on the London side, with Daniel Clarke and Michael Carroll also on the scoresheet.

Even if London were always going to find a win somewhere along the way in the Tailteann Cup, nobody expected it to come here – and definitely not in such a comprehensive fashion. Beating Offaly by 2-20 to 0-12 on their home ground not only registered them their first championship victory since reaching the 2013 Connacht final, it was also comfortably their biggest ever championship win.

It gives them a huge chance now of going through to the preliminary quarter-final of the competition. Offaly have to go to Limerick on Saturday and can’t really afford to lose any more ground, with Down to come and an ugly-looking points difference against them. London welcome Down to Ruislip this weekend. Conor Laverty’s side can’t say they weren’t warned. — Malachy Clerkin