Deception is name of the game in inter-county football

In the gathering gloom last Saturday night, small groups of Donegal and Monaghan players congregated in the car park outside Kingspan Breffni Park to shoot the breeze. If Cavan town wasn’t such a traffic logjam, they may have gone separate ways earlier. Yet they seemed pleased to have the chance to chat.

Less than an hour earlier, they were rattling each other’s teeth with bone-crunching shoulders but, as they chatted, all you could see was their pearly whites. Several would have tested the strength of each other’s jersey fabric in some of the heated encounters during the Ulster semi-final, yet here in all its glory was what Monaghan’s most famous son Patrick Kavanagh referred to as the wink-and-elbow language of delight.

Each of them knew full well this wasn’t over. In seven days’ time, they would again go to battle but as the Donegal players sipped tea and coffee and Monaghan players dropped their kit bags to chat there was ease. Not that you would have known it by the animosity and contempt they exhibited for one another between the white lines. Respect has many different faces. There is so much about football we don’t really know.