Failure a possibility for only one side at Croker
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
Even if they lose to Tipperary, whatever the margin, they will still have had a wonderful season. They will still have been a breath of fresh air. They will still have won the National League for the first time since 1939. They will still have reached the business end of the championship for the first time since 1961.
They will still be Leinster minor and U21 champions. Anthony Daly will still be the hurling manager of the year. Events tomorrow won’t undo any of that.
Their first priority is to do what Waterford failed to do against Tipperary and make it to half time still alive and breathing. It will be a minor indictment of the manager if they don’t at least manage that.
A day or two after they beat Limerick in the All-Ireland quarter-final Daly received a text from someone announcing he was “looking forward to seeing ur revolutionary 12-man defence v Tipp”.
One wonders how many calls the Clarecastle man put in to Giovanni Trapattoni, him and his beloved two banks of four, for tips on how to make Dublin more difficult to break down.
Not that defending in numbers will constitute the underdogs’ sole task tomorrow. In fact, they have two jobs on their plate: the first to avoid conceding goals, the second to find a way of simultaneously functioning as an attacking force.
As Waterford discovered in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final, defending in depth is pointless if a team is unable or unwilling to ask a few questions down the other end of the field. And the world and his mother have been saying all summer that the Tipp corner-backs look vulnerable. But Dublin have to get the sliotar up there first in order to discover whether they are.
The challengers’ problem in this regard is not so much the injury to David Treacy, neat and all an attacker as he is, as Conal Keaney’s misfortune. In Keaney’s absence they didn’t have a go-to guy up front when the taps were turned on in the second half against Limerick. They couldn’t go long, they became infected by their opponents’ running game and they very nearly paid the price. They won’t have Keaney tomorrow either. They will have Ryan O’Dwyer, who’s bound to be highly motivated against his native county. He doesn’t need to be too highly motivated.
Have we all read too much into the Munster final? There exists the possibility that it was a one-off, the equivalent of a rogue opinion poll in the run-up to a general election. That Tipperary are good but not that good, or at any rate were made to look better by Waterford’s many failures, not least their inability to — in this order — cut off the supply at source; neutralise bread and butter deliveries from out the field; and pick up the scraps when the sliotar broke inside the 20m line.
Where Tipperary were particularly impressive was in their eschewing of self-indulgence, eerily reminiscent of Kilkenny’s iciness in the 2008 All-Ireland final. In their first attack Pádraic Maher went for a point from long-range and put it wide. That was where playing for oneself instead of for the collective began and ended. Tipp went on to hit 18 more deliveries from defence and midfield into the forward line during the first half and harvested 4-7 from them.
But Waterford’s full-back line was made to look worse than it was because midfield and the half-forward line imploded — hence those 19 deliveries. By wiring into their opposite numbers in the middle third instead of standing off them, as Waterford did, Dublin will succeed in cutting off some of the supply at source.
A defence that sits deep and keeps its shape, moreover, will not leak goalscoring opportunities at the same rate. For Seamus Callanan’s goal the Waterford full-back line let themselves be drawn 40 metres out, then turned. If you were in charge of an U12 team who ran after the ball like that you wouldn’t leave the house for a week.
Yet no amount of painstaking cramming will prepare Dublin for their opponents’ movement and patient ball use.
Another potential danger for Daly’s troops is the prospect of suffering a double-barrelled blast, Tipp scoring one goal and then racing through for another goal moments later. The smell of napalm in the afternoon...
Still, let us not recoil from the doom before it materialises. It could be that the MacCarthy Cup holders don’t go for the jugular tomorrow, contenting themselves by picking off points from out the field — all the more likely a scenario should Dublin play an extra defender — and thereby keep something in the tank. Winner made all, never headed, came home under a tight rein, plenty in hand, etc.
An honourable defeat for Dublin after a highly satisfactory season?
Their hearts would recoil at the thought. Their heads might not.
IN view of Anthony Daly’s track record in this area, it’ll be no surprise to see Dublin start with seven defenders. Indeed it’ll be a minor shock if they don’t.
One small adjustment from the norm can be expected, however. Whereas in 2004 Alan Markham operated as a spare half-back for Clare in the All-Ireland quarter-final against Kilkenny, sweeping behind Seanie McMahon, tomorrow the putative spare man — probably Johnny McCaffrey, who has the nous for this kind of job and has done it before — can be expected to operate closer to his own full-back line, shielding them from incoming deliveries and mopping up the bits and pieces that break around the 20-metre line. He’ll be both the fourth member of the full-back line and its first member.
As much of his work will be done going backwards and sideways, a crisp first touch will be paramount; one slip and the Tipp forwards will be bearing down on goal. So also will the ability to handpass the sliotar cleanly back to a colleague. And he’ll have to be alert to knockdowns from his full-back line.
And when he’s in possession and facing downfield, the spare man must have the presence of mind to deliver his clearance to a colleague as opposed to blazing it blindly as far as he can.
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