Maurice Brosnan: In the new Gaelic football, what we presume to know is permanently under threat

Niall Scully's performance for Dublin against Galway showed the game is about far more than scores. Pic: ©INPHO/James Lawlor

Before the Football Review Committee implemented their grand transformation of the game, they canvassed the public for their five favourite skills. All five responses related to being on the ball.

Now, the natural response to that is, well, of course. Is that not the pure ambition for every dreamer on any field? To hold the ball, catch it, kick it, and engineer all kinds of wonderful scores. There is no harm in such a desire. That said, success is about so much more than unvarnished attack. An entertaining spectacle is about more than scores. For teams and the sport to thrive, it must be about more.

The ultimate manifestation of that was Niall Scully’s magnificent display for Dublin in their stunning win Sunday over Galway in the All-Ireland SFC quarter-final. We’d list his entire contribution to this tie, but it’d run well beyond the prescribed word count. The 32-year-old did it all.

Dublin’s entire closing sequence was managed by his steady hand. His late two-pointer into the Hill was a ballsy move. Galway were one point clear after Shane Walsh finally clipped over, having already missed a two-point free and struck the post a second time. The margin was wafer-thin. The safe option was to manufacture an equaliser, squeeze the subsequent kickout with an extra man, and kick for home from there. Scully didn’t have time or patience for any of that.

His subsequent drive for a tap-over free was complemented by an unfathomable breaking-ball win. Referee David Gough stopped play due to the head knock Scully sustained in the collision. It was a bi-directional impact, the exquisite kick into Colm Basquel for the decisive penalty at one end, and a pocket-picking strip-tackle on Walsh at the other.

In this natural, nationwide rediscovery of a love for Gaelic football, we needed a weekend like this. All of the attributes the authorities were trying to resuscitate arrived in a rush. For the first time in an age, the entire quarter-final weekend delivered. It was fire and brimstone, a healthy Saturday evening crowd and a Sunday sellout, a thrill ride capable of sinking its hook in and dragging you along towards an unknown destination.

It was a weekend that saw Kobe McDonald commit the supposedly sacrilegious sin of hand-passing to himself. There are underage coaches that would fume at that in training; here was an 18-year-old audaciously putting it on display in his first outing at the big house. It was also a weekend in which Enda Hession and Donnacha McHugh comprehensively bested their matchups to re-anchor a Mayo defence that had been creaking in recent weeks. There was Dylan Geaney’s immense finishing. And what about that breathtaking block by the Keel dynamo Keith Evans?

How Louth engineered their kickout press with a man less was just as integral to their survival as any attack. Against a rookie goalkeeper, they manipulated the arc, covering four with three or five with four, so that further out the pitch they would be set man-on-man. They won 12 of Monaghan’s kickouts to ensure they were never diluted by the extra man.

Some of these individual showdowns were masterclasses. Con O’Callaghan scored three points in the first half of the closing act. For his first in the corner, he was marked by Jack Glynn. His second was off John Daly. He was fouled for a converted free by Liam Silke. Cian Hernon did the same before the number 11 evaded him to score the final point of the half. Four different markers, the same inevitable result.

That is not to say the football quarter-final weekend was defined solely by quality. There was poor play too, erratic finishing, porous defending, wayward kickouts and some fatal lapses in discipline. Scully himself started with two rash wides with his first two shots, then simply set out to make up for them with successive two-pointers. Four shots, four points. What a return.

It underscores another fundamental truth of the game: there is no expectation on any player to be perfect. This is organised chaos; the measure of a great player isn’t their immunity to errors; it is how they react to them.

Even if it is a manufactured reaction. There would have been a school of thought that Ger Brennan was actually targeting Scully with his explosive comments earlier in the league, when he muttered that 'some of our fellas who've been around the block' aren't performing and are on thin ice. It was put to the Dublin manager after, with Scully referenced in the question.

“There was a lot at that time, even thinking back to that comment. The season is so short and I suppose I’m not one for hanging around; I try to be as honest and direct as I can. Do I get it correct all the time? I absolutely don’t.

"But I didn’t want to have a handy first season and filter out older fellas as an acknowledgement of the service they have given to Dublin because that would be a poor finish for them. So you try to poke a few bears where you can and elicit a response.” 

The full scale of the emotional weight was felt on Saturday and Sunday too. The cacophony of unadulterated joy that greeted Louth’s triumph, the hollow ache of regret for Monaghan and Cork, the sight of Tyrone stalwarts taking their time in what could be their final outing in HQ, and the gut-wrenching finality of it all.

What we presume to know is permanently under threat. It is impossible to survive after a red card. Wrong. Kerry are runaway favourites. Wrong. The Dubs are spent. Categorically wrong. There weren’t many who predicted a place in the final four for Louth or Mayo. We need that. The violent lurching, that volatility.

Who could have imagined the odyssey Dublin have been on since the league? Since that infamous final day when they were relegated against the same opponent in Salthill and Ger Brennan received his controversial suspension for a clash with Galway S&C coach Cian Breathnach-McGinn.

In the bowels of the Hogan Stand, post-match media duties were delayed due to the semi-final draw. As Pádraic Joyce eventually exited the dressing room, his friend and selector John Concannon was by his side. So was his strength and conditioning coach.

They made the long walk towards their bus. On the way, the Dublin players began to pour out of their victorious dressing room en masse. They couldn’t avoid each other, so they merged together and kept on going side-by-side. After a weekend like this and a season like this, what else could they do but laugh?