What, if anything, can Monaghan do differently?
The early flourish from the Hughes brothers, Darren and Kieran, had both scoring points with the outside of the boot in the first four minutes but this was followed by a ragged enough period that saw Down forward, Seán Dornan catch two high balls, which promised much but delivered little.
Then Rory Beggan, one of the most comfortable kickers in the goalkeeping game, failed to find his targets with his first four kickouts and by the ninth minute, he had resorted to going short with most of his restarts. He stuck with that approach for the remainder of the first half.
Sensing Monaghan’s caution, Down proceeded to pump long high balls into an in-form Connaire Harrison who took them for 1-3 in the first half alone. In those opening 10 minutes Drew Wylie, so commanding in the league, was uncertain and hesitant in everything he did and his game was completely thrown off course as a result.
What we’ve seen from Monaghan these past few weeks is so different from their bold play during their spring games against the top two, Dublin and Kerry. It really makes you wonder what has changed — apart from the seasons.
When Monaghan deservedly beat Kerry in Killarney last February, Drew Wylie and his brother Ryan were so aggressive in the full-back line from start to finish that neither Paul Geaney nor James O’Donoghue scored from play.
Likewise, against Dublin in the final round in Clones in April, the boys from Ballybay set the tone from the off and the game was in injury-time when Monaghan succumbed to a late Jack McCaffrey winner.
It’s been quite a while since the Wylies or Monaghan set the terms of engagement in a competitive match against a top-class opponent.
They will get that chance this evening.
In order to give themselves a fighting chance against Dublin, the habitual lazy pushes in the back (Drew Wylie), the flapping under high balls (Fintan Kelly), the rushed shots (Kieran Hughes, Dermot Malone) and the sloppy concession of frees must be replaced by the conviction that we saw so often during the league. Even at that, it’s going to take something extraordinary to get Monaghan to their first All-Ireland semi final in nearly 30 years.
The pity of it all, as history will show, is that anytime Monaghan’s have come to Croke Park with a half decent team, they have had to face a team for the ages.
In the late 70’s, they met Kerry who were a year into their four-in-a-row. By the time of their next meeting in 1985, Kerry were on their way to a three-in-a-row. The Kingdom scraped past them twice in the last decade, and then manager, Séamus ‘Banty’ McEnaney lamented that Kerry always seemed to be “on their road”. He went on to describe their defeats in 2007 and 2008 as akin to “having your heart removed without surgery”.
Now, after four quarter-final defeats, they find themselves back in the last eight at the fifth attempt, trying to derail a team hell bent on a three-in-a-row. They may have scraps of memory from recent clashes with Dublin to nourish them but there is nothing really that would suggest an upset this evening.
There were signs in the second half against Down last weekend that Monaghan might just give the Dubs more to think about than Kildare did in the Leinster final. We know Conor McManus has his eye in from free-kicks from both sides of the pitch and from all reasonable distances. His only missed shot from nine frees last week came off the ground from about 52 yards in the 11th minute. We saw, too, that McManus is best served by having genuine scoring threats alongside him. We have long marvelled at his ability to make difficult ball stick when surrounded by opposition defenders. Surely now the time has come for Malachy O’Rourke to take some of the heat off McManus and give Conor McCarthy and Jack McCarron a start as supporting acts up front..
O’Rourke’s post-match comments last Saturday suggest he sees McCarthy and McCarron as finishers in the same way Jim Gavin views Bernard Brogan and Kevin McManamon these days. McManus’ two points from play last weekend came in the 48th and the 68th minutes as McCarthy and McCarron had begun to weave their magic around him.
The argument for Monaghan going all out attack and dying on their shield never seemed as compelling. One of the few good things about quarter-finals against Dublin: If you lose horribly in front of a packed house and on television, you will not have lost in vain. You will have entertained us. Think Fermanagh against Dublin from two years back. And yet, we must ask, what, if anything, can Monaghan do differently?
Their goalkeeper Rory Beggan is one of the few goalies who can launch old-style kicks beyond midfield to the half forward line to initiate the kind of attacks that Paul Durcan and Donegal did in 2014 when Dublin last fell in championship football. Trouble is, if Dublin don’t push up en masse on Beggan’s kickout, he’s not the type of goalie that can change his mind in mid-step. We’ve seen Beggan get flustered more than once on short kickouts this summer.
Perhaps it will be a day for straightforward and long. Either way, Armagh’s Blaine Hughes or Tyrone’s Niall Morgan will watch Beggan’s approach with interest. Most of the top teams are still susceptible to a kickout won beyond midfield, with Kerry being caught out a few times by Galway last weekend.
Fintan Kelly, Karl O’Connell, and the Hughes brothers have the legs to get up and down the pitch all day but have they the wherewithal to cover the space that Dublin will want them to give up? Can they force Dublin to shoot from further out the field? For all they’ve scored in their three-game Leinster campaign in 2017, Dublin failed to score from outside the 45m line. Of course, not many teams manage to score from that range, but it was noteworthy, nonetheless, last weekend to watch how reluctant teams have become to attempt scores from frees and from play in the 45m-48m range.
The absent Diarmuid Connolly was the master in that area and we shouldn’t have to wait much longer to see him back.
Further good news came for Dublin this week with Jim Gavin’s confirmation that Michael Darragh Macauley, Paul Flynn, and Jonny Cooper are match fit and ready to go for the weekend. The timing couldn’t be better as the Dubs enter a new championship with a regenerated panel, one that lends itself to endless nuance and manipulation.
Monaghan rejoiced at their scoring return of seven points from the bench last weekend and yet they will worry that their first forward to score from play was McCarron’s in the 46th minute.
No such worries for Dublin who roll on pondering first world concerns such as whether Jim should go with new flame Con O’Callaghan or with old sweetheart ‘Berno’ from the off.
Either way, the outcome has a cruel inevitability about it.
