With 10 minutes to go in the 2015 Allianz Football League semi-final against Dublin, Monaghan goalkeeper Rory Beggan jogged up to take a pot at a long-range free into the Hill 16 end of Croke Park. He always has the distance but his aim was a little off on this occasion and the attempt trailed wide, leaving Monaghan with just a one-point lead to go to war with down the stretch.
We know too much about Jim Gavin’s Dublin to waste much time wondering was one point enough.
On 60 minutes, Monaghan led 0-14 to 0-13. On 66, they trailed by 0-17 top 0-14. Coughed up two cheap frees that were money for jam to Dean Rock, got scorched for another couple from play by Emmet Ó Conghaile and Jack McCaffrey. They scraped and scrapped away to bring the margin back to a point by the end but Dublin endured and survived. As they nearly always do.
Under Gavin, Dublin have played 64 games in league and championship. Of the 21 that have been close – meaning the final scoreline has the teams separated by a goal or less – they’ve won 11, drawn six and lost four.
If we take the current league table as a reasonable approximation of the top six teams in the country, they have the highest percentage of wins and lowest percentage of defeats in tight games. This is where Dublin live and they are comfy in their surroundings.
No team has played Dublin under Gavin more than Mayo, no team has run them close as many times.
In 10 encounters since the start of the 2013 league, six games have ended with a goal or less between them, three of them drawn. But none – and there’s no particular need to emphasise this be the rub but we’ll do it anyway – none with Mayo ahead. It’s a habit Stephen Rochford’s side badly need to get out of.
Dick Clerkin played in that league semi-final in 2015 and scored one of the late points after Dublin had kicked three clear. He was sidelined with injury the following year when Bernard Brogan and Cormac Costello knocked over injury-time points to nick a Saturday night league game, again by the minimum. Mayo, Monaghan, Kerry, all of them. the challenge stays the same.
Back themselves
“The big thing I found against Dublin was that there was no drop in intensity on their part,” Clerkin says. “It’s very much a feeling of trying to hold them out rather than possibly going at them. They’re not a the team in those circumstances that’s sitting back absorbing the punishment to try and get over the line. It’s very much the other way around.
“Whereas very often Monaghan are the team who are sitting back and trying to protect a lead, in tight games Dublin never seem to do that. We were attacking well and we were chipping scores but they were coming back as quick. They have that confidence at the end not to play cagey, to back themselves to keep going. They stay on the offensive. They go for the win. They’re not afraid to lose, that doesn’t come into it.”
Stats can lie, of course. Not all victories by a goal or less are equal. Dublin's All-Ireland final wins in 2013 and 2015 were by a point and three points respectively but you'd be bending the truth a touch to describe either game as being on a knife-edge as the final whistle approached.
But the same rules apply to everyone and the sample size is big enough to draw a reasonable conclusion. When the temperature is highest, they’re the most flame-resistant outfit around.
“Go through the last 10 minutes of those games, I would say it’s very rarely a big mad moment of brilliance that sees them through,” says Clerkin. “Even just look at the points Cormac Costello got to win the All-Ireland final – none of them were all that intricate or anything.
“He took his points well but they were nothing you wouldn’t see at a club league game. But he had the confidence to do the simple thing right and his team had the confidence in him as well. That sounds simplistic but you’d be amazed how much work goes into it.
“When you’re on the pitch in the last 10 minutes, every mistake is magnified tenfold. There’s no comeback on it. And the key is to try and not be too conscious of that. In the first 10 minutes of the game, you play a bit looser because you know there’s a chance to fix it if things do go wrong.
“But if you tense up too much in the last 10 minutes because you know there’s no comeback, that makes you take the extra second on the ball and you find yourself going backwards and inviting them onto you. If you don’t have that confidence, if you don’t back yourself, you get swallowed up by players who do. That’s why the cream comes to the top in games like that.”
As Mayo know, only too well.
