Observing Rebels rising
Being positioned right underneath the scoreboard has its advantages and disadvantages. When the game was a contest in the first half, you’d have to take a few steps forward, crane your neck and have a gawk up just to be sure you had it tallied properly in your head.
As Cork pulled away early in the second half, there was less craning of the neck as we marvelled at their movement, hunger and confidence as they upped the dosage. But it was only as we walked down the embankment on the final whistle and had a final look back at the scoreboard that we realised what had been achieved by this Cork team.
In posting 2-18, with all bar one point from play, Cork not only enjoyed their biggest win over their nearest and dearest since 1990, but also put paid to the notion that Kerry were once again building a defensive unit to rival the meanest out there. Prior to Sunday, most Kerry folk would have accepted that they weren’t going to qualify for a league semi-final but there was some amount of succour and comfort being taken from the fact that they had only conceded 4-76 in six league games since early February. That 14.7 points average concession swelled to 16 by Sunday evening last and Kerry were sent home to think again.
The reward for Cork is another day out in Croke Park and the bonus is of course that they’re getting to take on the All-Ireland and National League champions in their backyard. It’s a classic win-win situation for Brian Cuthbert and his troops.
Beating Dublin tomorrow will further bolster a developing team’s confidence as only good Croke Park days can, and even in defeat, Cork are likely to learn more about themselves than they would from any amount of warm weather training in Portugal. The learning curve isn’t supposed to have an express lane, but Cork are burning it up right now.
How good are they? We sense that they are about to become very good. Not so much on what we saw last weekend in Tralee, when they chewed up and spat out a team devoid of leadership, but because we suspect that there is more to come.
When Eoin Cadogan returns at the back, Aidan Walsh comes in at midfield and Colm O’Neill graduates from his sublime comeback cameos to playing more consistently over the course of the next few weeks, then Cork’s hand will be very strong indeed.
In the meantime, the full-back line of Shields, O’Sullivan and Clancy, which went largely untested the last day, gets more exposure. Fintan Goold, unlikely to dictate to the extent he did last Sunday, gets further opportunity to establish his credentials as a dominant midfielder and John Hayes keeps the O’Neill slot until reality and necessity dictates otherwise.
The curiosity factor for the second weekend in a row is in Patrick Kelly’s deployment in the centre-back position. Matty Donnelly’s showing in the number 6 position against Dublin last weekend gives Kelly the template from which to draw inspiration.
Three years ago, in the National League final against Dublin, it was Kelly from the half-forward line who spearheaded Cork’s comeback from eight points down and while the challenge is an altogether different one now, Kelly has the smarts and the wherewithal to make a decent go of it from his station.
It has to be anticipated that James Loughrey picks up the white hot Diarmuid Connolly and Damien Cahalane, who more than any other player, made his inside forwards look good with crisp incisive foot passes last weekend, will spend more time than he would like on the back foot tomorrow.
Sooner or later, Brian Cuthbert’s vision of “the boy in the back garden” wanting to kick the ball will have to change because very few teams will be as accommodating as Kerry were last weekend and as Dublin were five weeks in Croke Park. For the moment, the kicking football that Cork are playing is exciting and thanks to the black card regulations, there is more scope than ever for the knifing runs of Paul Kerrigan.
It seems, however, that Dublin are getting serious about things again and in the last two games they have shown not only that priceless assurance that winning Sam Maguire gives teams, but the capacity to make that assurance and swagger count.
For all the talk of yellow, black and red cards being picked up during the course of the league campaign, none of the top teams have the same discipline to punish both stupidity and dishonesty as Dublin have.
In the last two weekends, Mayo and Tyrone have found out what Kerry did in the All-Ireland three years ago — you do not, under any circumstances, invite a Dublin forward to tackle you because few do it with such relish and conviction. When Dublin get a sense of a team playing out the game, “stuff happens” as Donald Rumsfeld liked to say.
It is hard to avoid the feeling that stuff is happening in Derry too. In fact, wherever Brian McIver seems to go, stuff happens. Derry teams have at times before shown a steely collectivism, most recently in John Brennan’s first year in charge three seasons ago, but now they have managed to translate that into a pattern of decent results. Most importantly, up to now, they have avoided the bad luck, the in-fighting and the injuries that blighted previous efforts.
The fact that they are facing Donegal in the Ulster Championship in six weeks time may influence how Derry would feel about another day out in Croke Park at the end of the month, but for a team still trying to convince themselves that they’ve bridged the gap between Division 1 and Division 2, beating Mayo tomorrow would do them no harm at all.
If we ignore last weekend’s A versus B team shadow-boxing in Castlebar, Derry have been really impressive while beating Kerry in Killarney, coming from 10 points down against Cork, eight points down against Tyrone and beating an admittedly weakened Dublin in Celtic Park.
The clash of Mark Lynch and Donal Vaughan will be worth watching because, for all of Lynch’s brawn, he has yet to meet a centre-back in NFL 2014 as abrasive as the Mayo man. Alongside Vaughan, Lee Keegan, the best wing back in the game by a mile, should take care of Enda Lynn.
Fergal Doherty will test the theory of Mayo’s immobility at midfield and Ger Cafferkey and Emmet McGuckin should go toe to toe in one of those traditional cat and mouse battles that entertain us all.
There has been something very impressive about how Mayo have gone about getting themselves back into league contention after their opening two defeats away to Kildare and to Tyrone.
Since then, the only blemish has been the last few minutes of madness against Dublin a fortnight ago.
I sense they may well get the opportunity to set that right at the end of the month. Dublin and Mayo to advance.
