As the Monaghan team bus snaked up the country last Sunday night, the mix of giddiness and satisfaction could have fuelled most of the miles it took them well past midnight to cover. For the first time since 1987, a Monaghan team had won a game in Kerry.
In fact, so long ago was it that the last Kerry team Monaghan beat on their own turf featured a 20-year-old Mick Galwey at midfield. If that small nugget of arcania might not have meant a whole lot to the Monaghan squad – most of whom weren’t alive in 1987 – the sense of achievement was no trivial thing.
Malachy O’Rourke’s side had done more than just sealed their Division One status in Tralee. They’d taken another step towards convincing themselves that they belong in amongst the big beasts.
In perspective
“We’re realistic enough to know that Kerry at this time of year are a completely different proposal to what they will be later on,” says Malachy O’Rourke. “They’ve a number of men missing and probably they will be very disappointed with their performance against us. We have to keep things in perspective.
“Having said that, no matter what Kerry team you play, you have to be happy with beating them in their back yard. We were delighted with our performance. In the week building up to the game, something we focused on was the fact that we’d picked up all our other points against Ulster teams.
“So this was a challenge we set ourselves – could we go down the country and put in a good performance against a team like Kerry? We hadn’t done that against Mayo so we wanted to test ourselves and see if we could take this step. So there wasn’t massive euphoria after it. There was a sense of satisfaction of knowing we could achieve something we had set our sights on.”
In the evolution of O’Rourke’s Monaghan team, he has constantly offered them mini-challenges and tasks that they might want to cross off their list. When they faced Tyrone in the Ulster Championship last year, another coach might have swerved the fact that it had been 26 years since Monaghan had beaten their neighbours to the north.
But instead, he made it a cornerstone of the build-up, telling his players that they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t worry about Tyrone having their number.
“There was no point pretending that we hadn’t a bad record against Tyrone. We faced up to it, we knew we hadn’t gone well against them in the past and had to try and change that.”
In that vein, deciding to make last weekend about trying to pick up points outside Ulster was entirely in keeping with how O’Rourke operates. If Monaghan are to grow as a top-of-the-tree outfit, it has to become a matter of course that they hold their own the further south they have to travel. For what it’s worth, this was their first win over a Munster team of any stripe since 2009.
O’Rourke’s time with Monaghan has seen plenty of milestones passed. When he came in, they were destitute. Coming off the back of two successive relegations, they were in Division Three and had lost 14 out of their previous 19 matches in league and championship. Since he took over, they’ve lost just eight out of 32.
And risen all the while. Successive promotions, Division Three and Division Two titles picked up along the way. A first Ulster title for a quarter of a century. Successive Ulster final appearances for the first time in 70 years. A first championship win in Croke Park since 1930. On the verge of a first appearance in a league semi-final since 1998.
Establish ourselves
“To show that progression year on year is very good,” says O’Rourke. “This league was a challenge for us. We ended last year getting beaten fairly heavily by Dublin and it was important that we used this league to show that it didn’t affect the boys in any way. We wanted to show that we could come back and build on last year and we knew that if we could show that we were able to establish ourselves in Division One, it would be a big lift.
“We’ve done that so we’re delighted. These players have great character, they have great attitudes, they’ve come back and got in and worked really hard to do all the things we’ve asked of them. They’re so keen to improve as individuals and as a team.
“That puts it up to us to provide them with everything a modern player needs in terms of strength and conditioning, nutrition, advice, all of that. There’s no doubt we’re happy with where we’ve come from over the past few years and now it’s about maximising the potential within the group.”
O’Rourke has used 24 players over the course of the league so far. He’s had to get by without 2013 captain Owen Lennon and All Star corner back Colin Walshe due to long-term injuries, as well as two of the younger brigade in Jack McCarron and Paudie McKenna. Nonetheless, he’s found a settled enough side with 14 players having played some part in at least five of the six games so far.
From a long-term planning point of view, most pleasing for O'Rourke has been the development of a tight batch of players in their mid-20s. Monaghan football has waxed and waned over the past decade on the shoulders of players who are looking at 30 from the wrong side – Lennon, Dick Clerkin, Paul Finlay, Vinny Corey, even Dessie Mone hits the big three-oh this year.
O’Rourke’s train is driven now by the Hughes brothers, Darren and Kieran, as well as the likes of Drew Wylie, Fintan Kelly, Dermot Malone and Kieran Duffy.
“Yeah, well that had to happen,” says O’Rourke.
“There’s a group of boys there who have become firmly established in the team over the past few years and we needed that. The more experienced boys realised that themselves. They’ve put in a tremendous shift but they know that they can’t go on forever.
“It was important to get that middle tier of players established and for them to make their mark on the team and become the new leaders and keep pushing the thing on. These lads are at the right age and it’s up to them to keep doing it now.”
For someone like Mone, that group is coming along at just the right time. When he started off, it was Tommy Freeman’s team and everybody else found their level around him. This one feels like it has a broader base.
“You’ve got to give younger guys a licence to do what they’re capable of,” says Mone. “I always say to them that their job is to take the form of their club football into the county side with them.
“That’s what it’s about and if they do that, they will make progress. If you’re telling young lads not to do this and not to do that, you’re limiting them and that’s no good to anyone.
Much faster
“The younger guys have been fantastic, considering this is the first time most of them have played in Division One. The pace of the game is the big thing. It’s so much faster and you realise very quickly that mistakes come with a much bigger price. Especially on the counter-attack – if you make a mistake there, you’re going to be punished for it.
“And punished severely, as we were against Mayo and Cork. That Cork game was a lesson. Ryan Wylie had a great game on Colm O’Neill but you can’t give these top forwards an inch. The young guys on the team learned a lot from that game and they’ve been brilliant.”
In Clones tomorrow, they’ll learn a bit more about themselves. Hell hath no fury like a Dublin team in need of a result. Monaghan aren’t quite nailed on for a semi-final spot – a draw will get them there – but one way or another, it’s not the position most of us had them marked down for at the start of February.
“There’s no doubt that at the start a lot of people would have assumed we’d be going straight back down,” says O’Rourke. “But that wasn’t really the view we had. We went in with a very positive mindset. It wasn’t a case of trying to scrape together enough points to hang on, it was more that the first job was to stay up and then go on from there.
“The fact that for the last couple of years, we’ve gone through the same process has helped us I think. Each year, we started off with the intention of getting enough points to stay in the division first of all and then once we reach that target, push on and try to finish as high as we could.
“Regardless of the opposition, you’re still going out with the same mindset and mentality – consolidate first and then push on.”
Step by step. Box after box. Tick after tick.
