No racing certainties — even with a multi-trick pony
Today there’s a choice: Montrose or Murdoch?
On the basis that we know RTÉ’s Gaelic football panel — Mr Grumpy, Mr Grumpier and Mr Trying Waaay Too Hard To Be Outrageous — very well, this is an afternoon for trying Sky Sports 3.
Rachel Wyse is mistress of ceremonies, calm and pleasant and assured. Senan Connell and Peter Canavan are the resident talking heads, with Brian Carney also hitting them with questions. The only person any of them want to talk about is James O’Donoghue, the pony of the moment.
He is, says Canavan, “pure class”. He has – good work by the Sky researchers here — kicked 1-7 off his right foot and 0-8 off his left in the championship to date. All told, the man is a not a two-trick, not even a three-trick but a multi-trick nag, a combination of the Gooch, Mikey Sheehy and Arkle rolled into one. It comes as a mild surprise to see O’Donoghue taking the field with his colleagues as opposed to being softly set down on the hallowed turf from a winged chariot drawn by Apollo’s steeds.
Over for a moment to RTÉ where Joe Brolly is, amusingly, citing none other than Peter Canavan as a reference point for O’Donoghue: you know, the old joke about taxis and carrying people. Brolly sees a similar “easy acceptance of the huge responsibility that’s on him. He knows it. He’s cocky.” Brolly praising a player’s cockiness: does a higher form of encomium exist anywhere on the planet?
Back to Sky where Dave McIntyre is the man behind the mike, assisted by Paul Earley. It soon becomes clear that McIntyre is a very good commentator indeed. He’s up with the play, his player identification is spot-on and if he is not yet in the Barry Davies department when it comes to phrase-making, he does come up with a neat line when O’Donoghue lands a beauty from out the field.
“If the posts were a metre wide he still would have kicked that point.”
Approaching half-time there’s a kick of an entirely different colour. Lee Keegan flings out a petulant boot and receives a red card. As a million Twitter timelines explode with people complaining that David Coldrick shouldn’t have dismissed Keegan, Earley restores some balance. “A kick or an attempted kick is a red card.” So: a stonewall sending-off, end of. Not that it will stop the grousing, naturally. How typically GAAesque to pillory Coldrick for applying the rules. Doesn’t the silly man realise that’s not actually his job and that he’s really there to make a game of it?
Kerry lead 0-9 to 0-5 at the break, eight of their points having come from play as opposed to three of Mayo’s. A channel switch to RTÉ. To Brolly, “the outcome is inevitable,” quite possibly the least sensationalist – if not, the most accurate – statement he’s ever made.
Back again to Sky, whose interview guy Damian Lawlor, resplendent in jacket, button-down shirt and a particularly natty spotted tie, pops up with Eoin Liston (short-sleeved shirt, no tie). It’ll take a huge effort from Mayo to pull this one out of the fire, the Bomber asserts. Nobody can argue with that either.
If there’s one thing we’ve come to know about James Horan’s Mayo, however, is that whatever their sundry limitations, a lack of spirit is not among them. They reach into themselves and point by hard-won point draw level. Dave: “A fantastic contest here, end to end stuff!”
Moments later the 14 men are, improbably, five points up. O’Donoghue misses a chance to narrow the gap; scratch one of those tricks. When in trouble, reach for The Star; Eamon Fitzmaurice goes for the Hail Mary option by bringing in Kieran Donaghy and the latter does exactly what he’s supposed to by winning a long ball and laying it off for You Know Who to billow the net. O’Donoghue is back to being a multi-trick pony and Kerry live to fight another day.
How did the 14 men so nearly do it? Colm O’Rourke gets all philosophical by way of an explanation. “The prospect of execution concentrates the mind wonderfully,” he muses. It is left to Brolly to point out the obvious. Mayo were five up with four minutes left and failed to close it out.
To Limerick next Saturday for the replay. Men, mistresses of ceremonies, ponies, everyone. Saddle up.
