We forget sometimes that it’s a simple game. We are down to the serious stuff now: 12 counties left standing and knockout football and the whole carnival moving to Croke Park, where time speeds up. There is one common denominator in why the better teams prosper and the more ordinary teams start to fall away around now. It always comes down to finishing in front of goal.
We saw it over and over again last weekend. Look at how Jamie Clarke responded in those crucial few seconds when Armagh needed a goal in Thurles. Putting the ball away was the most natural thing in the world to him. We saw it with Bernard Brogan in Croke Park: in from the cold and converting every ball he got into a score.
And we saw the other side of it too: huge chances not taken and momentum shifting. There is a lot of white noise around Gaelic football now and there is so much emphasis on tactics and preparation and analysis that we forget that having the composure to do the right thing in the white heat is almost always the difference in the score line when it is all over. That’s why the best teams survive.
A team can use honesty and effort and fitness and a good tactical plan to bulldoze their way through to this point of the summer. But from now on, it comes down to pure quality players
I always remember the year we played Monaghan in the quarter-final in Croke Park. We were on the ropes. Their corner forward, Ciarán Hanratty, was full of mischief down the Canal End and he was nearly through on goal at one stage when the game was in the balance. From where I was standing, it looked like he was about to pull the trigger. But Tom O’Sullivan, his marker, didn’t commit or go to ground. He held his nerve and sort of shepherded him to the point to where the angle narrowed and Ciarán ending up putting his shot wide.
He was young and starting out whereas Tom had been here and had the composure. It was a consummate, very deliberate piece of defending. We hung on and won by a point and went on to win the All-Ireland. That was one of those small, vital moments that could have changed the season. You probably don’t see as much of that kind of defending now with packed defences. But the point is, quality shines through in all areas of the field.
And we have reached that stage of the All-Ireland where composure and decision making and, most of all, accurate finishing in front of goal, will decide the outcome of the All-Ireland. You can dress it up as however you want. A team can use honesty and effort and fitness and a good tactical plan to bulldoze their way through to this point of the summer. But from now on, it comes down to pure quality players.
Look around the country. Every team is doing the same things. Club teams are using the same drills as county sides. You get word back that this is what the Dubs are doing and this is what Mayo do or whatever. Everyone is cutting edge. That’s all well and good.
So who can give you that extra thing? I remember coming into Kerry training over the summers and you’d have a guy in who was going well in the county championship. He was worth his run in training for a while, to see how he fared. And you would start doing a few drills. You might be doing kicking drills where you would pass between two cones at a nice slow pace. But then it would be ramped up to going flat out. And then you could really see who could execute the skill at the quicker pace. That’s what matters. When it comes to the white heat of the championship, keeping cool under extreme pressure and taking the right option becomes a rare skill. Only a select few possess that.
Take the Leinster final. In one way, it is unfair to compare young Daniel Flynn to Brogan because he is only starting off. I think he is a fine player and has all the attributes to develop. The first point Daniel scored was a crowd-pleaser and it was fantastic to look at. But it was a bit selfish too. It was ad hoc and it was a bit of a gamble. And as the game went on, you could see that in his decision making and his clutch plays, he is still on a learning curve.
When the goal chance came against Stephen Cluxton, he probably snatched at it a little. You can bet that he routinely finishes those at training or at club or most championship games. But in Croke Park, thinking and playing your way through the frantic pace Dublin set takes getting used to. And some never get used to it.
It's like the Premier League and you are watching it on Match of the Day and thinking, "Jesus, I could do what your man is doing". But then when you see it in the flesh, you realise that this stuff is happening at a hundred miles an hour and you wouldn't have a hope. It is easier said than done.
So Cluxton saves his shot and Dublin take the ball down the far end of the pitch, where Brogan was. Everything Brogan did was about composure. He came on and kicked five points under heavy pressure – bar his first one into the Hill 16. Even that score, if you look at it carefully, was a lesson in finishing and decision making. He didn’t rush because he knew he had time before the covering defender would get to him so paused for a second or two and then he sucked his marker into committing to the tackle and then he took off. He created the space so that it looked like both an easy score and bad defending. In actual fact, it was an excellent score. And it was based on composure.
Flynn, meantime, probably tried too hard to make up for the miss as the match went on. Sometimes, it’s better to just stand back, take a deep breath and do a few simple things – make a pass, make a run to try and play your way back into the game. But even that takes composure.
And I think that’s what will separate the teams now that we are down to the last 12. It’s the old saying: control the controllable. You can control effort and kick-outs and who kicks the frees and how you set up. You cannot control the referee or the opposition or how fast they will come out at you or their mindset.
The tactical aspect of the game has never been more pronounced. But ultimately it comes down to the quality of players a manager has. Jim Gavin couldn’t win All-Irelands without players like Cluxton, Brogan, Connolly and whoever else you want to fill in. Éamonn Fitzmaurice wouldn’t have won his All-Ireland without Donaghy or James O’Donoghue. The same is true with Jim McGuinness and Michael Murphy and Neil Gallagher.
The ball plays way faster in Croke Park than any other pitch in the country. That is a given. So the whole game speeds up a notch or two. And it is then that the really natural finishers have an opportunity to show what makes them different. So I am looking forward to seeing what Jamie Clarke will do in Croke Park at a high pace on Saturday week.
Jamie’s composure was exceptional against Tipperary in those few crucial seconds when the game hung in the balance. That’s what decides tight games. Liam Kearns was disappointed in the referee and maybe he has a case but he will look back and see that the time management by his players let them down too. Three 14-yard frees and they opted for goals? It was suicide.
Had they tapped those over, they would have had their draw and who knows what would have happened. But in real time, the pressure is heightened and for the vast majority of players, thinking becomes muddled and hurried.
It is those few players who can keep their decision making crystal clear and take the right option when everything around is going at 100 miles an hour who swing games.
In the Ulster final, Darragh O’Hanlon scored 0-3 for Down but his day probably hinged on that goal chance just before half-time. In the cold light of day, people can analyse that and say, “Ah Darragh should have just passed that to the net”. All very well. I know I couldn’t pass it to the net if I found myself there.
And I knew I couldn’t do that so if I was ever in that position, I would be looking to offload the ball, and to a fella who could – Mike Frank Russell or Colm Cooper. That is the composure I liked to think that I had.
I wouldn’t have been found in that position because I knew my limitations and my strengths and I tried to concentrate my game within those borders. But because the patterns of the game have changed now, we see more and more fellas popping up from half back or corner back and finding themselves with these goal chances.
James McCarthy got in the same position for Dublin; he also a number five but way more experienced than Darragh. And he has this ability to finish in him. From the comfort of our sofas, these opportunities look more difficult to miss than to score. That’s a deception. In that second, when you are operating in real time, the genius lies in making it look easy. There is no rewind button. Players like O’Donoghue and Brogan do that routinely.
There is no rocket science. It remains a simple game. On one level, tactics are absolutely crucial. But they are also a kind of a sideshow. All serious teams have their homework done and the fitness done. The uncontrollable moments – the position you find yourself in at a given moment – are what decides championships.
Can you teach composure? Maybe to some extent. Some lads will make the same mistakes at 32 as they did at 22. Then there are lads who have all kinds of talent but are probably uncoachable.
Dublin have such an array of talented players and players are very adaptable and it all becomes a game of chess until the ball is thrown in. They have these natural, highly versatile footballers but they also have born finishers. When Brogan kicks those scores, it looks as if he is playing in his back yard. I suppose he is to an extent. But sometimes he is kicking over his shoulder without even looking for the posts.
He never looks hurried. That’s what sets Brogan and the other few true finishers apart.
There are a lot of highly skilled players around the country. Every club has one. People say, “Ah, he could be on any team in the country”. Or they talk about these legends that could have been brilliant but lost interest or fought with the manager or whatever. But at the same time, until you see them in that environment where everything is speeded up you can’t really know what they have in them.
And how many of the teams left now have we seen in the hundred mile an hour scenario? Only three, to be honest. It has been an entertaining championship and it’s been great to see teams like Kildare, Roscommon and Armagh and Galway pushing for quarter-finals.
Tyrone are back-to-back Ulster champions but they have to discover now if they can thrive at the next level. We know that Mayo can do it. We know that Dublin can do it. We know that Kerry can do it. But after that, it remains to be seen if the other teams can live with the quicker pace coming down the tracks.
To do so, they need to take their chances when the moment arrives. That becomes the line in the sand.
