Knowing and doing are two different things
But it’s a two-way boulevard.
Cork supporters arrived at Croke Park yesterday unsure what team and which version would show up. Perhaps their apprehension was shared along the sideline. Not the Donegal end of it, mind.
“I would have no nervousness at all about how the boys will react to this,” said Jim McGuinness afterwards.
“If the supporters want to go crazy, let them go crazy. We’ll have a very clearly defined goal for the next four weeks. It’s up to the players to execute that and every time we’ve asked them in the last two years, they’ve done it, so I don’t have any apprehension inside me that they won’t do it again.”
Where Donegal have certainty and definition, Cork’s farewell will reek of angst and torment.
Coach Conor Counihan identified poor option taking as a part-cause of their demise and for sure, the lack of clear-headed thinking with the ball in hand was ghastly. Not so much, though, as the lack of leaders in red yesterday at Croke Park. One would struggle to convince a stranger that the team in green and gold were the August freshmen. With the honourable exception of Eoin Cadogan, who was immense in his guarding of Michael Murphy, and Colm O’Neill, it was a parched desert.
When Colm McFadden eased Donegal 0-15 to 0-10 in front, there was still 12 minutes of semi-final combustion remaining. Not that you’d notice by the demeanour of most Cork players. All the more ironic then that O’Neill’s 71st minute goal made it a one-score game.
Counihan, finishing a two-year term yesterday and may walk away now as perplexed as many others about why, at this time of the year, Cork come up shy. Amid the tactical maelstrom in the first period, at several stages, Cork stretched Donegal’s grid both lengthways and breadth.
In one break, five marauding Cork jerseys breathing down on a stretched defence. Inexplicably though, Cork went early and wide and the chance went abegging. That’s January thinking, not August.
It’s unfair, if only a little, from the comfort of the press seats to suggest Cork would have been better served playing the game with their heads up, but the number of turnovers and wasted overlaps in the first period, legitimises the point.
At times, Donncha O’Connor and O’Neill were isolated inside on their men, with 30 yards of grass in front of them but were left starving and frustrated. Is that managerial say-so or player know how? A moot point.
Either way, it saw Cork trail at the break 0-8 to 0-7.
We don’t know for sure what the respective coaches said at the interval, but Cork’s second half introduction of Pearse O’Neill suggested a change in tack — if not necessarily for positive reasons. Glenswilly’s Neil Gallagher — arguably the country’s most improved player this term — enjoyed schoolyard dominance at midfield in the first period, and though he didn’t put his name to a score, he was well ahead on assists.
Paddy Kelly remained the deep lying playmaker for the Munster champions but in front of him, Cork’s scoring efforts were becoming increasingly outlandish.
Meanwhile McGuinness, unbelievably, was telling his players at half-time they were too lethargic.
“There was more flow to our play coming out of defence in the second half,” he conceded. “The half-backs and midfield drove on a bit and we clipped on a few points.”
By the 45th minute, they had clipped on enough to commit the cardinal error of scanning the horizon for the winning post. 0-12 to 0-8 in front, they dared to go man for man in their own full-back line and almost paid. Ciarán Sheehan gathered just right of Paul Durkin’s goal and shovelled a pass to Colm O’Neill who, unluckily, hit the underside of the crossbar. A simultaneous look at scoreboard, clock and Cork faces confirmed the moment would be pivotal.
Though Sheehan reduced the gap to three a minute later, Cork didn’t have the look of a side that was ready for a final 15 minutes of trench warfare. Kerrigan kicked high and aimless, Canty looked like a man sidestepping Father Time as he carried possession into the Donegal forest. His frustration was typified by a wild effort at goal, but better practised colleagues were equally profligate.
And all the while, Donegal did what Donegal advertise they’ll do. Toil like dervishes and wait until the right option presents itself — notwithstanding the fact that the option was almost always overlapping on their shoulder.
Murphy, eventually released from Cadogan’s grip, landed a 50m free that was acclaimed by a guttural roar not heard in Croker since the Armagh and Tyrone risings early in the decade. 0-14 to 0-9. They had two more points from McFadden and McElhinney before Colm O’Neill’s goal — courtesy, it should be said of a push an Offaly man would be proud of.
“When I took over as coach two years ago,” reflected McGuinness, “you wouldn’t believe the amount of people who told me I was off my rocker, that it was a poisoned chalice, that the players would let me down.
“It has been the opposite of that. They have done everything we have asked them to do and they are very proud to represent their county.”
The players, says McGuinness, are heading into the best four weeks of their lives.
“ Twenty years is too long for Donegal [since their last All-Ireland success]. What we want is to get young lads coming into GAA clubs in Donegal on the strength of this, maybe be a Michael Murphy in 10 years’ time.
“But for the moment, we just want to put All-Ireland medals in these fellas’ pockets.”
Not long now, Jim.
