What might have been for McCartan

THE morning after the nightbefore and James McCartan isleaning against a wall in one of the few quiet corners the Citywest Hotel has to offer ruminating over what came to pass and what might have been.

When your team loses an All-Ireland final by just one point, the minutiae are always going to be magnified and certain matters concerning this year’s decider demand closer inspection than others.

This is his first post-mortem. The Sunday Game and Monday morning’s newspapers have yet to be consumed but Down’s manager has a gut feeling about what has already been said and written.

“I assume you are all saying things like ‘why didn’t we do things around the middle of the field to change it’?

“We knew what the problem was but at the same time we reckoned our best foot soldiers were in there.

“We could maybe have varied our kick-outs a wee bit more. That’s the thing that sort of rakes with me today.”

It was an honest assessment from a manager who didn’t shirk from accepting the blame when Down were out thought and outplayed by Tyrone in the Ulster semi-final in Casement Park earlier this season.

The amazing thing is that Down were actually within a point at the end given their woes in the middle.

‘Wee James’ said it would have been one of the “greatest bank robberies of all time” had they pulled it off.

Yet, with Ambrose Rogers absent through injury and Dan Gordon detailed to troubleshoot in the full-back role, McCartan would have been justified in asking what he could have done to turn the tide in midfield.

A more puzzling decision was the substitution of Paul McComiskey with 15 minutes to go after the Dundrum man had contributed three points from play in what was his best performance of the summer.

There was some consternation on the line at the time but it turned out that Down had merely erred in the order in which their replacements were to be introduced.

McComiskey was always going to be called ashore, just not at that juncture.

Pat Gilroy did likewise earlier this summer when calling Alan Brogan to the line during the quarter-final defeat of Tyrone and at a time when the influential forward had just started to find his stride.

A growing trend then but a strange one, surely? “The role that we are asking players to play in the half-forward line involves a lot of work,” McCartan explained.

“Fifteen minutes into the first half Danny Hughes was knackered so we put him into corner and pulled Paul out. Everyone knows that Conor Maginn is coming on, everyone knows that Nicholas Murphy was coming on and Derek Kavanagh and Colm O’Neill and Ronnie Murtagh. You just try to change things.

“You don’t want to take a man off that is playing exceptionally well but you do want to change things because you are losing the game and you want to ask a different set of questions of the opposition. That is the only way I can answer that question.”

Whatever about that decision, McCartan ended the year in the black rather than the red. The challenge now is to ensure that they don’t retreat into the shadows from whence they came.

McCartan knows he has fashioned a rod for his own back by achieving so much so soon but the failure to mark the 50th anniversary of Down’s first All-Ireland with a seventh title will always stain his memory of the season just gone.

“We tried to pay that team a tribute and pay respect to those guys. On a personal level I had family ties so maybe it was a wee bit more for me than the players.

“It wasn’t something that was talked about in the dressing room. It was just a fire burning in my belly. We just couldn’t do it for them but I would like to think they do appreciate the efforts made by the players of 2010.”

In the end, nothing became them so much as their dignity in defeat and, in particular, the sight of the Down players walking en masse towards the celebrating Cork panel to offer their congratulations.

McCartan appreciated the moment between warriors, one that was facilitated by the GAA’s efforts to keep fans off the pitch after games, but he isn’t totally at ease with the new crowd safety policy.

“I have mixed feelings about (the gesture) now – I know this is probably going to be a headline somewhere – because I don’t want the GAA to use that as a tool to ensure there is no more pitch incursions.

“It was an instinctive thing. In hindsight I maybe would have wished it was a private thing and maybe I could have taken one dressing-room into another dressing-room.

“Down always felt that whenever we won in the past we did it with a sense of respect for the team we had played and I just probably wanted to go that extra mile.”

They had been doing it all summer.