McManamon’s fight for Dubs game time

ALLIANZ FL DIVISION 1 FINAL:

Riding high in April, shot down in June or July, he’s been the consummate league performer only to routinely lose out on a permanent championship starting spot come summer.

Without doubt, he’s putting in the best spring of his senior career but he will shortly be faced with combating a downward trend of game-time that is so consistent now, it seems almost inescapable.

Now 26, it’s unbelievable given the value of McManamon to Dublin that he has been handed a starting championship jersey in just five games.

Last season, he didn’t start a single SFC game, coming on in five of Dublin’s six games. A hamstring problem ruled him out of the opener against Westmeath and in all he registered just over 90 minutes of football from late June to September. Compare that to Paul Flynn who began and finished the half-dozen matches, clocking up well over 420 minutes.

McManamon’s last championship start came in the 2012 Leinster final against Meath, when he was substituted with a little over 20 minutes to go. It was the last in a run of three consecutive starts before he was dropped for the All-Ireland quarter-final win over Laois.

Prior to that, he was on the field from the throw-in just once in Pat Gilroy’s 2011 All-Ireland winning season — the provincial quarter-final against Laois — and suffered the same fate in his debut season in 2010 when he appeared as a starter in a qualifier against Tipperary.

“Since he came on the scene in 2010, he’d be playing in the league and then come the championship, he’d become first substitute and that disappointed him, really,” says his St Jude’s clubmate and former Dublin and Mayo footballer Enda Sheehy. “This year? I think this year is different. He’s been Dublin’s most prolific scorer [2-17] and the last day [semi-final v Cork] was his first sort of below-par performance.

“There’s a corner-forward berth there for him. As a Jude’s man, I’m biased but he deserves his starting place. What more can a man do to shake off the supersub role? People say ‘does he have the engine for 70 minutes?’ but I think corner forward is his preferred position and you can have Alan Brogan in the centre- forward position.”

If it’s any consolation, McManamon has all but made that supersub role his own. His name is now synonymous with the term and a list containing Lane, Darby, Billy Byrne and Murphy.

Sheehy points out there is one discernible difference between his friend and those other cameo stars: McManamon is a superior player.

“There’s been that label put on him but unfairly so. The likes of Seamus Darby, he got one goal in the ’82 final which won the game for Offaly but Kevin has been consistently good coming off the bench. He obviously got the goal in the 2011 All-Ireland final and again against Kerry last year. He’s not a one-hit wonder.

“I think this year he’s started in almost every game in the league and he was phenomenal in the game against Mayo. The goal he got, lobbing the keeper, there was no fluke in that. I know there was talk last year that he didn’t mean [to score] his goal against Kerry but the goal this year really showed his class.

“To compare him to the likes of Darby, Vinny Murphy and Noel Lane, he’s a better player than that and I think he has shown that.”

That’s not to say Sheehy doesn’t understand why Gilroy and Jim Gavin have opted to deploy him as an impact substitute.

“Jim Gavin has all these players at his disposal that he can afford to leave the likes of Kevin and O’Gara on the bench, and I suppose this year he’ll have Alan Brogan starting, emptying the tank for 50 to 60 minutes. For a defender to see Eoghan O’Gara or Kevin McManamon coming on, it will demoralise them. Kevin doesn’t go sideways, he goes straight for goal, the head goes down. It’s very hard to stop him.

“But it’s tough to get into that team. I think there are 12 players looking for six spots. That’s scary for the opposition. I wish it was like that when we were playing!”

Whoever thought the phrase “it’s a 20-man game” (21 with the black card) must have had McManamon in mind. He must curse that person.