THE MIDDLE THIRD:No one would begrudge Mayo their win but they got the big calls on the day and were lucky to be treated leniently as they tried every trick in the book to slow the game down in the closing stages
WHEN YOU get to this part of the year, you know you’re down to limited time and you have to make the most of it. I’ve been to matches all across the country this summer and when there are only a couple of them left to go to, you can’t be worrying about the length of the drive or the price of the petrol.
So on Sunday morning, I picked up a couple of compadres in Listowel that I had half-asked would they come along. One of them was a Finuge man, the other from Cahersiveen. They half-offered to drive in response to my half-offer of a lift. Needless to say, I lost out on both counts.
Not only were we up in time for the minor game, we were up in time for a call to the Palace Bar beforehand. That was insisted upon, nothing would do but we had to make it our business to go in there and talk about the game.
I went on up to the minor game, which was very disappointing from a Kerry point of view.
Dublin have an exceptional minor team and our lads, though they have lovely skills and play good football, couldn’t keep up with them physically. Dublin are at the cutting edge of what’s going on at underage level and you can see the DCU influence in everything they do.
They’ve given themselves a head start on the rest of the country and we have a fair bit of catching up to do.
I was surrounded by Mayo supporters for the senior game. It was funny to listen to them during the game, just to see how one-eyed supporters can be. They could only see one team playing and seemed to feel the referee was totally against them.
In the game I was watching, Joe McQuillan was being far harder on the Dubs than he was on Mayo but nobody around me could see it that way. I suppose we’re all like that with our own county on a day like Sunday.
In the cold light of day though, anyone that goes back over that game carefully has to see that McQuillan made big calls in Mayo’s favour in the first half as they were establishing their lead. An awful lot has been made since last year’s All-Ireland final about the amount of Dublin games he refereed and, in fairness to James Horan, he turned up the pressure on him perfectly in the build-up to the game.
There were four very dubious calls that went Mayo’s way in that first half and I just thought that they were calls they would not have got against Dublin last year.
It just goes to show the effect outside pressures can have on even the top referees. McQuillan would never admit to being under pressure going into that game but you wouldn’t be human if you weren’t wary of your next Dublin assignment after the controversy of last year. It has to be there somewhere in your mind, no matter how strong you are and how much you tell yourself it won’t affect you. Mayo got the better end of the stick in the first half, no doubt in my mind about it.
But that’s no good to you unless you take advantage of it and Mayo were definitely the sharper side in that first half. They were helped as well by some of the decisions made on the Dublin sideline. I’d have no problem with what Pat Gilroy tried to do with Alan Brogan – if something like comes off, it’s a masterstroke and it was worth a go.
But I warned here last week that playing Michael Darragh Macauley in the half-forwards was only wasting his ability to dominate the middle of the field and that’s how it turned out.
It was only when he went there for the second half that the game turned back Dublin’s way.
Instead, it was Aidan O’Shea who was the big influence on the first half.
We’ve seen time and again over the past two seasons just how strong and physical Dublin are and how they can overwhelm you and beat you back if you’re not able for them.
O’Shea had three or four interventions in that first half where Dublin fellas hammered into him and he didn’t take a backward step.
Sometimes all you need to do is be able to show that you’re not going to be intimidated and you’re going to stand your ground.
My two travelling companions said afterwards that they didn’t think O’Shea was up to much in the game – maybe they spent a bit too long in the Palace Bar.
But the thing is, even if he didn’t play a lot of overly-technical passes or get forward for scores, everyone else in his team would have come off the pitch afterwards knowing what it was that he had done for them.
Barry Moran did the same near the end. At crucial stages, both of them stood up and were men. You don’t have to be shooting the lights out all the time.
But even at half-time, you couldn’t be sure it was going to last. All the way through the interval, I proved my credentials as an expert fence-sitter. To every Mayo man that said hello I said: “Ye’re halfway there.” To every Dub I said: “It’s not gone yet.” I’m a terrible cop-out artist sometimes. I made a note to myself that I should maybe stop trying to be all things to all people so much. You can’t be a political animal all your life. Sometimes you have to choose.
And then, what do you know? I was right on both counts. As Dublin came back at Mayo in the second half, it was Macauley who led the charge.
Everything Dublin did well in their comeback came from the centre of the pitch and in Macauley and Paul Flynn, they had two men who just refused to let the game slip away without a fight.
Flynn is one of my favourite players in the country. His mentality, his ability, his willingness to find answers when everything is going against his side is just superb. That huge point he kicked in the second half from the right-hand side with his right leg was the kind of thing very few players can pull off and it kicked Dublin’s momentum up another gear at a big time in the game. It gave them belief that all wasn’t lost.
Mayo couldn’t handle Dublin as they got a run on them. When you’re a player in a team that is getting overrun, you find it very hard to change the flow of the game. That’s the key problem – everything seems to be attacking you instead of the other way around. O’Shea wasn’t able to stem the flow anymore like he had in the first half and suddenly everything was coming through Macauley and Flynn and the ball was constantly in the Mayo full-back line.
What happens then is a combination of you starting to get desperate and the referee starting to lose patience with you. Tackles that were tackles in the first half when you had all the momentum are fouls now that the ref can see that you’re panicking. One free becomes two frees, two frees becomes three. What Mayo did when they could see that the tide was turning was to drop deeper and get more men back in defence. It’s a completely natural reaction and totally understandable but it isn’t the right way to go about winning the game.
It’s easy to say it sitting in the stand but everyone could see that the more Mayo dropped back, the more encouragement Dublin were taking from every attack. Mayo needed to be kicking on, pushing the scoreboard along, causing desperation in the Dublin defence. It was no surprise when they eventually did get a score to stop the rot, it came from a free of their own.
Teams forget that the advantage of a big lead in the second half is that it puts the trailing team’s defence under huge pressure not to give away any more scores. That makes them just as likely to panic-foul so you have to run at them and turn the screw.
Instead, what Mayo did was to try every last trick in the book to slow the game down. They stood in front of frees, they tackled in threes and fours to cause shemozzles, they spent a huge amount of time staying down with all sorts of cramps and knocks. Obviously some of them were genuine but it’s clear that some of them weren’t.
I wouldn’t hold it against them at all, they were playing within the rules and only doing what every other team in the country does. But referees should be stronger in those situations. They’re around the players, they know what’s going on. I think if a rule was brought in that play wouldn’t be stopped for cramp, it would do a lot to change the end of games. I’ve had cramp on the field, everyone who ever played the game has. But it’s easily treated and you don’t need everybody to down tools for two full minutes to sort it out. Bring in a rule that the physio can run on and treat cramp while the play goes ahead and I guarantee you’d miraculously see an awful lot less of it.
Mayo held on in the end and I’m delighted they did. I doubt if there’s a person in the country who begrudges Mayo and Donegal their place in the All-Ireland final.
The people around me were totally delirious with joy afterwards, just as the Donegal people had been the previous week. They’ve given the game a shot in the arm. Good for them.
I met up with my two bucks afterwards and gave them the choice of stopping for food on the way home or stopping for pints. It was no contest – pints won out. But there was a twist – they insisted we stop in Séamus Darby’s pub in Toomevara just to torture ourselves.
We filled the road home with nothing but talk about the game, just as the thousands of cars heading back to Mayo would have done, just as the thousands of pubs in Dublin would have done.
It’s something special that we have and it’s days like Sunday that keep all of us coming back for it. It starts at eight in the morning and you’re not done with it until nearly 11 at night. We were as in thrall to the day as any Mayo man or any Dub, just because there’s always something new to talk and argue about and thrash out. You wouldn’t be without it.
Closer to home, we got word through that Marc Ó Sé was going to be on The Sunday Game. One of the boys asked who he was on it with. When I said it was Martin McHugh and Tony Davis he said: “Well sure at least we’ll win that. Marc has more All-Irelands than the two boys put together!” And on we drove, a carload of Kerry men grasping for straws at the end of a fine day out.
