Will Connolly get Dubs motoring?
I doubt Brennan himself is haunted by it but it does tell us a certain amount about this Dublin team. Experienced players like Brennan shouldn’t be putting the ball onto their weaker foot and pumping aimless passes out over the end line when the heat comes on in the last 10 minutes. But Dublin’s players do and that is why when the Dubs present themselves for action against Kildare tomorrow in the Leinster SFC semi-final, they still need to answer more questions than your average Leaving Cert student has done this last fortnight.
The same could be said, and indeed was said, of Cork players this time last year so it appears the only way Dublin can purge themselves, their detractors and their supporters of doubt is to follow the Cork template of keeping on keeping on these midsummer days.
One of the many theories out there in the ether of internet gossip, high stool whispering and daily intercourse is that there is very little appetite among the top teams for a provincial title and that the qualifier route is the only show in town after the chastening defeats of all four provincial winners last year. As convincing as that theory appears, both Pat Gilroy and Kieran McGeeney will have put all thoughts of a qualifier run to bed during the days and hours leading up to 4pm tomorrow.
This game matters. It matters to Dublin because, although they may have won five of the last six Leinster titles, they can’t really afford to lose yet another big game. Tomorrow’s game is their biggest in 2011 to date and their first real test since the league final when they prodigally squandered another big lead.
It matters to Kildare because after the despair of failing narrowly to reach the All-Ireland final last autumn and a spring where they didn’t do enough to get themselves into Division 1 next season, they need to take a scalp to reaffirm their obvious credentials as a top team. How far Kildare have come can be measured by comparing their performance against Fermanagh in a qualifier three years ago (when both teams went the first 25 minutes without a score) to their showing against Meath three weeks ago when they kept going at a ferocious pace and created 36 scoring chances in just over 70 minutes football.
Comparisons with the iconic Armagh team which their manager led as a player for over a decade are irrelevant and simplistic. Kildare are never going to be Armagh. Their make-up, their constitution and their traditions are poles apart. Besides, time moves on and the Armagh team of nearly a decade ago wouldn’t survive in today’s game — no more than the Kerry, Galway or Meath teams of that era would.
It has been argued elsewhere this week that this Kildare team are a more evolved version of Pat Gilroy’s Dublin outfit and that the Lilies will win because they’ve travelled further in terms of their development path. I’m not one to place much stock in league football at this stage of the year but if that were so, surely Kildare would be operating at a consistently higher level in Division 1 these past few seasons. In championship terms, perhaps this group of Kildare footballers have delivered more consistently under McGeeney than Gilroy’s reconstructed model but in a parallel universe, many feel this pairing could and should have been facing off in last year’s All-Ireland final.
All of that is immaterial now and a nuts and bolts analysis of the team selection and of the pieces of information circling in a holding pattern over this game suggests that we should be in for a sophisticated tactical battle played at pace tomorrow.
Three weeks ago, Meath didn’t have a player around the middle with the mobility or the intelligence to track Johnny Doyle. By selecting Michael Darragh McAuley and Denis Bastick, Pat Gilroy has ensured mobility and aggression to counteract Doyle and Hughie Lynch, but I’m still not sure that they have the thinking skills required to ensure Doyle’s influence is diminished. Doyle is such a creative force that it’s going to take more than just a man marker to curb him and I doubt Bastick or McAuley are going to do much damage to Doyle on the back-foot.
Playing your most natural midfielders is a source of much angst in all of the top five counties, bar Cork, and it seems that it could become an underlying theme of this year’s Championship.
Eamonn Callaghan is central to how Kildare play the game. Kildare will probably feel they need to drop Morgan O’Flaherty back in front of the Dublin full-forward line again this time and with O’Callaghan making those trademark scoring runs from deep, perhaps James McCarthy’s athleticism would be best suited to following Callaghan — leaving Kevin Nolan to the business of playing the football in O’Flaherty’s absence from the half-forward line.
Suspicion about Mick Fitzsimon’s ability as an out-and-out defender are offset by James Kavanagh’s indifferent form and by Peter Kelly’s absence which leaves either McGrillen or Mac Lochlainn to mark Bernard Brogan at the other end. Rory O’Carroll should be able for the physicality and fielding ability of Tomás O Connor around the square as Mick Foley will be suited to Eoghan O’Gara’s robust play around the other. Paul Conlon must be the form player in training to be handed his debut at this stage. I can recall seeing Conlon play for St Vincent’s a few years ago against Crossmaglen and he seemed at home as a tight marking defender. He should be able for Alan Smith.
The other variables heading into tomorrow’s clash are the referee (now Cormac Reilly, who replaces injured Dave Coldrick) and the subs benches. After playing nearly the last two games under the over-fussy watch of Syl Doyle, Kildare could almost feel liberated, but Dublin like it fast and loose too — so no advantage to either side. Dublin might have a slight advantage on the bench with the likes of Cahill, McMenamon, McConnell and Henry all capable of adding something in the final hectic moments but then again, Kildare are fast making a name as the consummate second-half team.
In games such as these, with so many evenly matched teams, tactics and marking arrangements, the only calibration that counts is, as the poet Ted Hughes said, “how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart”.
I’m tired of hearing about the unfocussed genius of players like Diarmuid Connolly. His form this year has been hugely impressive but as someone who’s watched his progress since his Maurice Fitzgerald-like emergence against Tyrone in a Croke Park league game a few years back, he’s been a disappointment. Unfulfilled genius is almost a proverb, a cliché. It’s boring. Players like Connolly who can enhance the aesthetics of a game such as tomorrow’s are needed now more than ever. They have a responsibility to their talents. Colm Cooper was aware of that and consistently delivered from an early age just as Ciarán Sheehan is now doing for Cork and Johnny Doyle has been doing for years with Kildare.
If Connolly can get Dublin motoring or vice versa, if Bernard Brogan can stay free of injury, if Ger Brennan and company get an infusion of the cold blood needed to think through problems when the air is dense with smoke, and if Johnny Doyle can for once not be the game’s best footballer, Dublin can and will win.
HUMDINGER alert. Two years after providing a cracking Leinster final, the two teams most likely to end the province’s embarrassing record of not having a side in an All-Ireland final since 2001 meet in what’s set to be a tasty affair.
Plenty has changed since 2009. Both teams have made progress with Dublin marginally ahead. Pat Gilroy’s system is now embedded even if it has had some hiccups. Likewise, Kieran McGeeney has had reasonable success with his game-plan. On paper, Dublin’s firepower should see them through to the final but then Kildare have been creating scoring opportunities to beat the band and are finishing games in blistering fashion.
However, the Lilies are not bagging goals (haven’t done so in almost 400 minutes of football) and their high wide counts can’t continue here.
Given we have two physical sides here, referee Cormac O’Reilly, a late replacement for David Coldrick, has an extra important role to play.
Coldrick, incidentally, was in charge for Kildare’s league defeat to Tyrone in April where he blew up Kildare for the majority of the 63 frees he awarded. They aren’t a cynical team but have shown a tendency to overdo the physical stuff on occasions. Bear in mind there are also question marks over the discipline of some Dublin players, like Denis Bastick.
Speaking of that Tyrone-Kildare game, it also emphasised the Lilies are far from the finished article. Not scoring for 33 minutes, their total of five points was abysmal.
But as shown by their great qualifier record under McGeeney, they are a real momentum team and with two wins in the last six weeks under the belt they have a flow. Those victories weren’t against any notable opposition, though. Neither was Dublin’s one win against Laois but there they were wringing out the wetness of their league final second-half collapse. Here, the disparity in Division One and Two should be illustrated in the score-line. If not, Dublin’s goalscoring abilities will be the difference.
Dublin
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