All-Ireland Senior Football Championship: And then there were six...
No mistaking it, Donegal are the most battle-hardened team remaining. They have faced three Division One teams as well as an improving Galway and a supposedly improving Armagh. They know they have reached this stage on merit while showing they have more depth than most people give them credit for.
We saw in 2011 what it cost Donegal to be without Karl Lacey. Without him and Éamonn McGee against Mayo and their defence doesn’t look as steady. Michael Murphy showed even with injury doubts shadowing him he can be a major player but Rory Gallagher would sure love to have him affecting the play elsewhere if needs be.
Where to start? The machine rolls on, oiled by a plethora of top-class players. A carousel of superb forwards are bang on form, Brian Fenton has emerged as another midfield option and Cian O’Sullivan is fit to fill the centre-back role that left them so exposed last year.
They face into an All-Ireland semi-final without the benefit of any interaction with a fellow Division One side since their evisceration of Cork in the league final back in April. Are they suitably armoured against the questions Mayo or Donegal will pose?
Where they want to be, and all the better after a second Munster final joust with Cork. That was evident in their ruthlessness yesterday. All 26 panel members have seen game-time between the two Cork games and yesterday’s turkey shoot.
James O’Donoghue’s shoulder dislocation is a huge blow, and may be the last time we see him in Kerry colours this season. That will necessitate an attacking reshuffle, but whatever way the forward line is reconfigured, it will struggle to replicate the same, lethal, focal point as the Legion man provides.
They haven’t shown their hand. Hidden away from national glare they occupy the same untested ground as Dublin. There have been no breakthrough players under Noel Connelly and Pat Holmes but there are rumours of a new defensive system from conditioned games designed for Croke Park.
What happens when the direct ball to Aidan O’Shea doesn’t work? What happens to that full-back line when they meet the big boys? Can they beat Donegal, Dublin and Kerry? There’s more questions than answers for Mayo.
Malachy O’Rourke has shown himself to be quite the master tactician and in Conor McManus they have, outside of Bernard Brogan and Aidan O’Shea the most in-form forward in the country. They have great man-markers and their dynamism in the middle has only one or two peers among the remaining teams.
They can be forgiven but they don’t look as multi-dimensional as the likes of Dublin and Kerry and another injury to one of their backs and they could be vulnerable.
Mickey Harte spoke of the younger legs in his team now and that should stand to them from here on in. Darren McCurry and Mark Bradley have emerged to add much-needed extra firepower and inventiveness up front and they remain defensively sound. The qualifier run will have stood to them, too.
They still look light on genuine star power after the loss of most of their noughties heroes and have they enough about them up front even with McCurry and Bradley’s input of late?
Tyrone have been edged out year after year by the game’s big guns at this stage and there is nothing about them this summer yet to say that is about to change.
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