You’ll always find excuses if you want them
Saturday’s Qualifier defeat by Offaly in Tullamore was seriously disappointing and signalled the end to what has been a frustrating season from both a personal and a team perspective.
After such a defeat, your mind is suffocated with a flurry of emotions — disappointment, shock, despair, disgust, confusion. All were present in our dressing room on Saturday evening and it wasn’t a nice place to be. Forlorn expressions illustrate a stark realisation that Championship aspirations have come to an abrupt halt and all the hours clocked up on the training field have just been flushed down the pan. Unexpected, as much as unprepared, words of thanks and appreciation are spoken to a crestfallen audience, the words washing over each player as they try to come to terms with the previous hour’s events.
The long bus journey home through Ireland’s notorious midland routes was like being buried alive. With your iPhone batteries as dead as Championship hopes, few words are spoken as nothing feels appropriate. A sorry end to what was frustrating season.
While a lot of progress was made in terms of blooding new players in face of the many departures from last year, Monaghan’s end-of-season record doesn’t make for good reading. Two wins in competitive fixtures mightn’t paint a fair picture of how we performed this year but in a results driven business, it’s the reason we find ourselves playing Division Two football next year and have to make do with an armchair perspective for the remainder of the summer.
When defeat presents itself in the manner it did at O’Connor Park on Saturday night, the natural reaction is to immediately search for a plausible explanation, an excuse behind which you can find some solace and resolution. Like most things, if you look for excuses you will always find them. But sometimes you just have to accept that on the day you weren’t good enough and simply beaten by a better team. In the face of what seems to be somewhat difficult circumstances within the county, I wish Offaly the best of luck for the rest of the qualifiers. I certainly won’t try to analyse our downfalls here, there are plenty of others who will have done that already.
There is a saying that suggests you are not defined by what you do or what you have achieved, but by how you rise after you fall. There are many examples of how great teams and sportspeople have bounced back from demoralising setbacks. You only have to look back to the US Open and Rory McIlroy to see arguably the best example of how defeat and disappointment in sport can be overcome. Unlike Rory, though, we have to wait a lot longer than six weeks to seek redemption for this year’s disappointment. But such is the case for the 28 or 29 other teams who don’t taste success this year. I have always believed that if you’re good enough for long enough, you’ll eventually get your just rewards. Luck will always even itself out.
I remember reading Páidi O Sé’s autobiography and he constantly refers to having to ‘go at it again’ whenever he suffered a setback or defeat, few that they were. Part of the job description for an inter-county footballer is that you have to take the rough with the smooth, enjoy the good days and don’t let the disappointment of the bad ones deter you from going at it again. Like George Foreman once said, ‘no matter how hard it feels, no matter how much it hurts, you just gotta get up’.
Look at Derry and Wexford this year. Twelve months ago they were in the same position we find ourselves in now, prematurely dumped out of the Championship, disappointing league form and faced with an uncertain future. Twelve months on they are flying high and into their respective provincial finals.
Inter-county players are a funny breed; they think nothing else matters during Championship season with the whole world revolving around them and their county’s fortunes. It’s probably why defeat is taken with such despondency when it inevitably comes for most, but the reality is that there is much more to enjoy and appreciate in life and it only when the season ends you allow yourself to fully appreciate them.
Once the disappointment of the past two weeks subsides, I have a promising club scene to look forward. This year my club, Currin, as the longest affiliated club in the county, celebrates its 125th anniversary. As a member of the 125 committee we have a big celebration night at the end of the year to plan for and it promises to be a great occasion for the club and community. Also for the first time in the club’s history, we have a realistic chance of gaining promotion from intermediate to senior level. Having spent most of our past toiling in the realms of junior mediocrity, this would be a massive achievement for a small club and parish.
However, all that will be overshadowed by the wedding planning that will now take inevitable precedence prior to the big day in December. Wedding fairs will be order of the day for the freed up weekends I didn’t want and my decision-making will turn from what boots to wear to what colour chair covers we will have at the reception. (Ivory is the front runner at this stage, since you asked.) There is also a small matter of a stag to be organised which hasn’t got much attention until now. I wonder how much flights to Vegas are these days?
Finally, I want to pay a special word of thanks to the Monaghan support that travelled to Tullamore on Saturday night. They outnumbered the home support two to one and but unfortunately we failed to provide them with opportunities to let their voices be heard. One of the most heartening things that has happened in Monaghan over the past number of years is the loyal support that has followed us wherever we go. From Belfast to Ballybofey, and from Killarney to Cork, you were always guaranteed to see swarms of blue and white populating the stands. They have been there for the good days and the bad and while Saturday’s defeat was not easy, I have no doubt they, like the players, will come back next year to ‘go at it again’.
