Lessons for the learning: Part I
Put away your thoughts about the final replay, too. We’ll come back to that later in the week.
If the cliche that sprang, fully formed, on the draw in Croke Park yesterday, was that neither team deserved to lose, we’ll flip that around.
Did either side deserve the win?
Kilkenny will be kicking themselves that they didn’t close the game out, but they were so poor for much of the first half that it was mildly surprising they were still in contention when Henry Shefflin stood over that late, late penalty.
Galway will argue they deserve another shot at the title, but a thimbleful of calmness in the last three minutes could have won the game twice; Iarla Tannian and Joe Canning both saw the ball trail away wide from scoreable positions. They needed to convert the hardest of those late chances to get another day out.
Consider also a few of the statistics that studded yesterday’s game in Croke Park. Kilkenny had three wides in the first 10 minutes, and just two scores in the first quarter, but they led going into injury-time.
Galway managed only two scores in the third quarter, and five wides in the same period, but they led in the 55th minute thanks to Niall Burke’s goal.
Henry Shefflin went for goal on 15 minutes from a 20m free, saw Fergal Moore turn it around the post and missed the resulting 65. Yet he was the Kilkenny player who drove over the lead point with two minutes left.
Joe Canning scored the superb goal on nine minutes that put iron in the Galway soul, but missed second-half frees that might have sent the Tribesmen up the steps of the Hogan Stand.
Yet he was the Galway player with the nerve to level the game with an injury-time free, his boots scraping the sideline and the memory of a free he’d just missed — from an easier angle — fresh in his mind.
Conclusions? Apart from a nagging feeling that the Canal End has become the scoring end — both sides were unhappy shooting into the Hill — there was solace for the two teams in the immediate aftermath.
“Little things,” said TJ Reid after the game, an ice pack on one of those broad shoulders. “We missed a few frees in the first half. If we’d scored those, we would have been up there with Galway at the end of the half, maybe leading. These are the small things that make the difference.
“The penalty? Leave it to Henry, He’s well able to decide for himself, he’s there long enough. We were drawing — if you were a point down you’d think differently, maybe — but he took the point.”
Ah yes, the penalty. Shefflin blasted it over the bar to put Kilkenny ahead with the clock turning to 70 minutes. The man who gave that penalty away also had to face it. If you were expecting a plea for clemency, forget it. James Skehill’s plea was guilty as charged.
“Ah, it was a penalty alright,” said the Galway keeper. “I was happy (Shefflin went for a point). Any time I see him standing over the ball and it goes over the bar, I’m happy.”
After that Kilkenny might have made it safe — Reid and Michael Fennelly strung a neat triangle of passes together for their Ballyhale clubmate to try a shot from the middle of the field, but it was at the very edge of Shefflin’s range: wide.
Given where Kilkenny had been, having half a hand on the trophy at any stage in the game was some achievement, and a tribute to the way players like Brian Hogan and JJ Delaney improved after half-time.
Reid admitted that Niall Burke’s second-half goal, coming against the run of play, had seemed a bad omen: “Brian Hogan was coming back and collided with the lads coming out, the ball broke to Niall Burke and he buried it.
“When something like that happens, you’re thinking ‘they’re on top again’. But as players we’ve never given up — that’s why the spirit is good within the team, we keep fighting until the final whistle.”
The draw means preparations for the replay will have to be improvised over the next couple of days. Reid saw one immediate change in circumstances.
“It’s going to be weird back in CityWest anyway,” said the big forward. “It’ll be a different atmosphere there. But nothing’s lost yet. The MacCarthy Cup is still there to be won.”
Skehill saw another advantage in the extra day out. “I suppose the younger fellas will be familiar with it now,” he said. “When they were thinking about the game during the week, they didn’t know what to expect. They’ve probably witnessed All-Ireland finals in the past but never felt what it as like to run out on the pitch, for instance.
“In that sense it’s a bonus. Meeting the president, hearing the anthem before the game — that’s all common ground for them now. Even the decibel level when they come running out of the dressing-rooms. They’ll know what to expect the next day.”
So will we. A winner, for one thing.
