Talking points: Plenty are timing it right to turn spring crisis into summer bloom
PERFECT TIMING: Armagh manager Kieran McGeeney, centre, and selector Ciaran McKeever. Pic: Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
The slow-motion camera captured the moment perfectly, the deep emotion and delight on Glenn Ryan’s face, pumping his fist in delirium and satisfaction just after Kevin Feely had kicked the winning score for Kildare against Roscommon.
The immense sense of euphoria was also evident on the face of Kieran McGeeney after Armagh beat Galway by a point in Carrick-on-Shannon. Similar to John Cleary in Limerick on Sunday, and Aidan O’Rourke in Omagh on Saturday, they also felt a deep sense of contentment after Cork and Donegal also upset the odds to secure a win against Mayo and Monaghan respectively.
There were stages during the league, and in the early stages of the championship, when Armagh, Kildare, Cork and Donegal experienced some difficult days. Armagh and Donegal were relegated while Kildare spent the spring doing their best to stave off relegation and avoid dropping into the Tailteann Cup.
Donegal lost their manager Paddy Carr, while relegation was exacerbated by the controversy of the county having no football development squads at that time. All those struggles were compounded by Donegal’s five-point defeat to Down in the Ulster quarter-final. Cork had a decent league campaign but their defeat to Clare in the Munster quarter-final threatened to derail their season.
Now though, all four teams are looking up, with Armagh going straight through to a quarter-final, and Cork, Kildare and Donegal having home preliminary quarter-finals.
In his post-match analysis on GAAGo after the Donegal-Monaghan game, Michael Murphy spoke about the benefit a team can often accrue from overcoming adversity. “Sometimes when you’re really down and in those desperate places, there becomes a real edge to your training,” said Murphy. “There’s no other place to go other than coming out swinging and fighting.”
Armagh could have won Ulster. Kildare could have beaten Dublin in the Leinster semi-final, but the timing of Armagh, Cork, Donegal and Kildare’s form underlines the importance of getting it right later rather than earlier in the season.
All four teams still have a lot to do, but who remembers the bad days of the spring now?
Before Clare played Derry in their final round-robin qualifier on Saturday, there were whispers around the county that it was to be Colm Collins’ final game in charge after ten years at the helm. It was. Collins announced his decision to the players in the dressing room before confirming the news afterwards.
When Damien O’Meara asked him in his post-match TV interview if it was a difficult decision, Collins answered the question in his calm and understated manner. “Ah, no, I’ve done my term and it’s time for somebody else to take up the baton now,” he said. “There’s a fabulous group of players there and I’m looking forward to watching them without (patting his chest) the pumping of the heart.”
Collins’ smile as he delivered that line neatly encapsulated how he never got too high or too low, which was a neat metaphor for the level-headed way he managed the county, establishing a level of stability and consistency that Clare hadn’t seen since John O’Keeffe’s tenure in the latter half of the 1990s.
When Clare defeated Cork in the Munster quarter-final in April, Collins’ composed reaction at the final whistle reflected his belief that Clare could, and would, win. Collins and his backroom team first started formulating that plan on the bus journey home from Derry after their league defeat had confirmed their relegation to Division 3.
They had been in a similar place the previous year, albeit in a different context. After losing to Limerick in Munster on penalties, Clare could have felt sorry for themselves, but they decided instead to go all out for the qualifiers, where they reached the All-Ireland quarter-final, which they lost to Derry.
When Collins first took over and Clare were in Division 4, he told the players that his aim was to get Clare into the top eight. Most of the players thought he was mad. The fact that Clare reached the last eight twice during his term underlined the conviction of Collins’ ambition.
Clare also nearly managed to make the Super 8s in 2019 when losing narrowly to Meath in the last 12. They were a consistent Division 2 team for years but it wasn’t always about staying there either because Clare went close to reaching Division 1 on three occasions, coming third in Division 2 in 2018, before losing a playoff semi-final against Mayo by four points in 2021. If results had stayed the same with ten minutes remaining during the final round of matches in 2020, Clare would have reached Division 1, before being squeezed out by Armagh.
Collins was humble enough to always surround himself with high-quality coaches to help him take Clare to that next level, from all corners of the country; Paudie Kissane, Ephie Fitzgerald, Mick Bohan, Alan Flynn, Brian Carson, Gerry McGowan, Mark Doran, Declan O’Keeffe and Joe Hayes.
He always saw the bigger picture so much that one of Collins's greatest legacies was how much he wanted everyone, and not just Clare, to benefit from that bigger picture. Twenty months ago, Collins took his ticket as one of Clare’s Special Congress delegates in Croke Park to make a contribution to the debate and subsequent championship format change.
His plea for change wasn’t enough as the motion to flip the league and provincial championship gained just over 50% of the vote. Yet what other inter-county manager would show up – or ever has shown up - at Congress to argue for a better way forward for teams everywhere?
Collins’s plea wasn’t enough that day but it still helped to prompt some change, the outcome of which is now in play through the new system. When Collins finally walked away on Saturday, he looked like a man more than content with the rich legacy he has left, especially with Clare now playing at the level he always wanted. And in the environment and arena Collins had long wished for Clare to be operating in.
In the brutal arena of knockout championship, the underdog is often at the mercy of being brutalised by the bigger dog, eaten alive before even getting out of the kennel. Tipperary’s bark was so loud and their bite so deep and vicious on Saturday evening that the wounds and scars they left on Offaly will take a while to heal.
After their capitulation against Waterford, which cost them a place in the Munster final, and almost a place in the championship, Tipp were snarling and growling, looking and playing like an angry beast from the first ball.
Once Tipp got the scoreboard firing early, they were threatening to break all kinds of scoring records, which they did, recording the highest score in championship hurling. Their final tally was 59 points. The last game to come close was the 1954 All-Ireland semi-final when Wexford blasted Antrim for 12-17 (53).
By the half-hour mark, Tipp had clocked 3-22, which would have been enough to win nine of the 11 games played in this year’s Munster championship. Tipp got off 59 shots in total.
And yet this actually wasn’t Tipp’s biggest win against Offaly (in all competitions) as they annihilated them in Roscrea in February 1962 in the 1961-’62 National League on a scoreline of 11-11 to 1-2.
Tipp’s ruthlessness on Saturday manifested itself most in their lust for goals. Seven green flags could have been at least 12, possibly even 13. After scoring seven goals in their first two championship matches, Tipp failed to register a green flag in their last two matches in Munster. Liam Cahill knows that if Tipp are to make a real impact in the remainder of this championship that they will need to score goals.
And they look to have that scent of blood in their nostrils again.
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