As the Derry bus pulled off, Chrissy McKaigue sat in the second seat from the front, staring off into the distance. He turned 34 on Thursday. He has played in all four divisions of the league, won back-to-back Ulster titles, seen every colour and shade of intercounty football there is. This is the closest he’s ever come to an All-Ireland final. Maybe the closest he ever will.
This was a sickener for Derry. Full vomit emoji, total chunderfest. Imagine coming to an All-Ireland semi-final and outfoxing Kerry. Imagine scoring 1-11 in the first half, good for a three-point lead at the break. Imagine holding Kerry scoreless for 18 minutes of the second half. Imagine getting to the 66th minute with a two-point cushion. Imagine doing all that and still going back up the road with your guts ripped out.
And not because Kerry nabbed a late goal. And not because you got sucker punched. And not even because the ref gave a soft free at a crucial stage. But simply because you made the oldest mistake in the book – when you were on top in the game, you didn’t make the scoreboard sing like you should have.
That trio of wides in the middle of the second half from Ciarán McFaul, Niall Loughlin and Ethan Doherty were the killer misses. Score them and the soft free is a footnote. They should have been the cushion. You just can’t do that. Not when you’ve done everything else to the letter. They’re what everything else is for.
So now Chrissy McKaigue sits on the bus staring out at the rain and the road back to Derry is three hours long. He’s been at this ding-dong a long time. He made his debut for Derry on this very weekend 15 years ago. He’s played against them all, been sent out to clamp down on the best forwards in the game over a decade and a half. Held his own more days than he didn’t.
His role here was completely fundamental to the Derry gameplan. He was going to straight-up mark David Clifford. Man-on-man, no double sweeper, no plus-one sitting in front. Derry were going to shock everyone by moving away from their deep-lying, nihilistic brand of game destroying and commit huge numbers to attack. McKaigue was going to have to fend for himself, like a shopkeeper in a zombie apocalypse after all the townspeople have made for the hills.
So in that context, what’s par against David Clifford? The Kerry marvel scored nine points here – four from play, one from a mark, four frees, three of which he won himself. What does that say about McKaigue? Is that good? Ciarán Meenagh certainly thought so.
“We felt we matched up brilliantly on everybody else,” the Derry manager said. “And we felt we had the best man marker in the game in Chrissy McKaigue but for us it wasn’t about taking David Clifford out of the game. It was about managing his impact. He’s an incredible player. He may be the greatest player who has ever played the game or if he’s not, he’s definitely in that conversation.
“I thought pound-for pound, Chrissy gave some account of himself today. I thought it was an incredible battle. It wasn’t like we dropped three or four players to double or triple mark him. We couldn’t do both things today – try and win the game and try to stop them hammering us. We played with ambition and courage. We couldn’t have led by three at half-time or by two after 63 minutes unless we put our trust in Chrissy.”
All of which is perfectly true. McKaigue was taking on water from early on but he mostly kept the boat afloat. And in that 18-minute spell when Kerry weren’t scoring, he twice broke up attacks that were looking for Clifford. He was just about keeping the roadblock intact to the only scoring avenue Kerry could trust.
But Clifford found a way. He drew a McKaigue into a foul on 67 minutes and iced the free to level matters. He pounced on a turnover in midfield on 69 minutes to push Kerry two clear. He twice mopped up possession back in his own defence, which brought a particular gush of praise from Jack O’Connor afterwards.
“An incredible second-half performance,” the Kerry manager said of Clifford. “It was like he was willing the team. The way he played in the second half, that he was willing the team to get over the line.
“I’m not saying he was poor in the first half! But it was just the fact that he came out the field in the last quarter of an hour and he was back in his own full-back line and he was just doing things that I’d never seen him doing before. Winning ball inside in his own square and stuff like that. It was almost like he said, ‘Whatever happens, we are not going to be beaten today.’”
And they weren’t. And Derry were. And on the bus back up the road, Chrissy McKaigue has to be wondering how close he will ever get to a final again. They were four minutes plus stoppage time away from it and now the snake goes all the way to the bottom of the board.
Sport is so very brutal like that.
