Replay readings suggest this will be tight, with a busy referee
asks what previous All-Ireland final replays can tell us about Saturday’s game?
And for the sake of the counties’ respective club championships, let’s hope there is a margin at full-time, be it at the end of regulation- or extra-time. Three of the last four All-Ireland replays have been settled by a point — Meath 0-13 Cork 0-12 in 1988, Meath 2-9 Mayo 1-11 in 1996 and Dublin 1-15 Mayo 1-14 in 2016. There was a four-point difference in the 2000 replay between Kerry and Galway.
In four of the last five All-Ireland final replays, there has been higher aggregate score totals than the first day out. The chances are the team that scores the same or less than the 1-16 equivalent of 19 points on Saturday will lose.
Lee Keegan was the opening goalscorer three years ago as Declan Meehan was in 2000 when he scored the only goal of the match. Both ended up on the losing side as PJ Loftus did when he grabbed the first goal in the 1996 replay.
Three years ago, three players were sent to the line for black card offences — Jonny Cooper, Keegan and Rob Hennelly. In 1996, Colm Coyle and Liam McHale was ushered to the line following a mass brawl while in ’88 Gerry McEntee was sent off early.
There was the aforementioned 1996 digging match as there was following McEntee’s rabbit punch on Niall Cahalane in ’88, which prompted a large melee. Just before half-time in the 2016 replay, a row between Cillian O’Connor and John Small was the trigger for a shemozzle involving 12 players. Diarmuid Connolly and Donie Vaughan also took issue with one another in the build-up to it.
Kevin Walsh was sorely missed when he had to retire injured in the first-half of the 2000 final and Vaughan was a loss when he was forced to finish up at half-time in the 2016 game.
Conor Lane will want to be as anonymous as possible but given the familiarity between the teams now that is wishful thinking. Pat McEnaney is still scorned in Mayo after 1996 and Maurice Deegan to a lesser extent three years ago when he didn’t dismiss John Small for an obvious black card trip or Brian Fenton for a second bookable offence. Then again, Jason Doherty was lucky to stay on, too.
Cormac Costello’s point turned out to the difference in 2016 and it was Aodhán MacGearailt who sent over the insurance score with his fist in the millennium year. Brendan O’Reilly lofted over the winner in 1996 and eight years previous it was a Colm O’Rourke point that gave Meath the cushion before Cork’s late fight-back.
Michael Fitzsimons (2016), Seamus Moynihan (2000) and Martin O’Connell (1988). Tommy Dowd was given the 1996 award but the honour has become the preserve of the defender. It’s six years since a forward, Bernard Brogan, last claimed an All-Ireland final man of the match. That’s seven games without an attacker winning the gong.
The 1972 final replay loss to Offaly was the last time Mick O’Connell and Mick O’Dwyer played in Croke Park. Whether it is in victory or defeat, the same fate awaits a number of Dublin’s stalwarts.
