Why Dublin need BB’s A game
And what of the Mayo team that came from behind against Kerry only to have all their shortcomings laid bare two weeks later in the league final against Cork? In their three championship outings they’ve been ruthless against Leitrim, won ugly against Sligo and blitzed Down before getting the sucker punch of losing Andy Moran — “the heart and soul of the team”, as Horan said afterwards.
We saw last weekend how having only three championship games of questionable quality can militate against a team in an All Ireland semi-final and for all the times we’ve heard this week that Mayo are “in a good place”, the loss of Moran, the only consistent element in at times, wildly erratic full-forward line, must be severely destabilising.
Moran is far from irreplaceable, however, and once the initial disappointment subsided, Mayo will have plotted and planned a course to be navigated without their skipper. They will have been encouraged by the nature of Dublin’s quarter final win over Laois. They will have noticed how the normally unflappable Rory O’Carroll and his two lieutenants, Mick Fitzsimons and Philly McMahon were quite jittery when the ball was in their general vicinity.
Mayo have one of the most solid defensive systems we’ve seen all year, they have become quite competitive at midfield but their full-forward line struggles to put up scores when they come up against teams with a particular emphasis on defence – 0-13 scored against Cork, 1-7 against Donegal and even 0-12 against Sligo in the Connacht final, reinforce that belief.
In their league final against Cork only Cillian O’Connor scored a point from play and of the starting trio against Sligo, only Andy Moran managed a score from play. All of the evidence presented suggests Mayo have to do something radically different up front to cause the Dublin defence any bother tomorrow.
That could mean playing Aidan O’Shea on the edge of the square with Cillian O’Connor alongside him. All the other options, Enda Varley, Michael Conroy, Jason Doherty and even Alan Freeman seem too timid and too lacking in genuine craft to take on the Dublin rearguard.
There are no such fears for Mayo from numbers 1-12. If anything over the course of the last 12 months Mayo have appeared too anxious to prove that they are no longer a soft touch. Looking for contact when it would have been best avoided has been a particular foible of their otherwise excellent half-back line of Lee Keegan, Donal Vaughan and Colm Boyle. These three are fantastic footballers and supreme competitors but they will need all their instincts finely tuned against Paul Flynn, Bryan Cullen and the returning Alan Brogan.
Brogan’s importance to the Dublin cause was rarely as pronounced as it was on August weekend. Time and time again his replacement at centre-forward against Laois, Diarmuid Connolly, won and carried ball, but for all his talents, the St Vincent’s man lacks the head-up vision of Brogan (though not selected at centre-forward, I expect he will take that usual role from the throw-in).
When Connolly isn’t firing his forward colleagues tend to suffer as a result. Connolly is one of a number of Dublin players who haven’t kicked on from last year and if he continues to dance to his own beat, he could find himself on the peripheries very quickly. Having Alan Brogan back on the 40 changes the dynamic considerably but his lack of match practice is hardly ideal.
There have been signs all summer that Bernard Brogan is one good score away from hitting form, but it hasn’t been happening for him in Alan’s absence. Some have suggested he’s been trying too hard but I believe the malaise to be a bit more complex than just that.
Championship 2012 is littered with examples of marquee forwards who haven’t sparkled as brightly as expected — Michael Murphy, Colm Cooper, John Doyle, Donncha O’Connor, Benny Coulter and Bernard Brogan. It seems that the subjugation of individual talent for the sake of the team is the prerogative of the new world order and talents such as Brogan’s are no longer in a position to shine as brightly.
The only option available to Brogan is to knuckle down rather than rage against the prevailing trend. More than once this year, he has been content to make one lung bursting run, receive the pass, lay it off and stop up. That was never his form and without constant movement, Brogan becomes an ordinary forward.
The great American playwright, Sam Shepard, said a while back that the “funny thing about having all this so-called success is that behind it is a certain horrible emptiness.”
Unless he starts playing like his season and that of his team depends on it, Brogan could soon experience that emptiness. He is one of the few forwards remaining in this year’s championship who have the capacity to just flick a switch and make it work, but the virtues of patience, forbearance and persistence might benefit his team more.
It would, of course, be unfair to lay all of Dublin’s concerns at Brogan’s feet. Pat Gilroy and his sideline team made a few strange moves in the quarter-final. Taking off Denis Bastick and persisting as long as they did with the tactic of playing Michael Dara McAuley away from the engine room were just two such examples.
The issue of clumsy and over-robust tackling has bedeviled Dublin all year and Cillian O’Connor will punish all indiscretions tomorrow. Holding Laois scoreless from open play for the entire second half a month ago might seem impressive on the surface but conceding at least five scoreable frees is not the form of champions.
For Dublin to earn a crack at Donegal in three weeks time they are going to have to give us something we haven’t yet seen this year. It may be a tour de force from Bernard Brogan, further signs of emergent leadership from Kevin Nolan, Kevin McManamon’s impact of 12 months ago or even a cameo from less heralded players like Eoghan O’Gara, who threatened much in spring but hasn’t quite hit the heights since. We know what we’ll get from Paul Flynn, Bryan Cullen, McAuley and the entire defence but for Dublin to prove their worth as champions they need to show signs of growth and development.
For all the growth and development Mayo have undergone during James Horan’s tenure, they still crave the recognition their transformation deserves. Mayo teams with some of tomorrow’s performers have taken big scalps in Croke Park before in 2004 and again in 2006, but I believe beating Dublin will prove beyond them this time.
