Dublin at point of no return
The gradual breaking up of Gaelic football’s greatest team has reached a fork in the road. There is no turning back now, Dessie Farrell is clearly in a situation where a new Dublin team must be built.
James McCarthy and Brian Fenton announced their retirements late last year while Farrell confirmed on Saturday night that he did not expect Paul Mannion or Jack McCaffrey to be involved this season. It is unlikely we will see them in blue again. Mick Fitzsimons might yet join the exodus, but Farrell remains hopeful he will be able to call upon John Small.
Davy Byrne has returned to the squad while Stephen Cluxton is involved as well.
Former Dublin hurling captain and full back Eoghan O’Donnell showed well in periods at full forward with the footballers against Mayo on Saturday. O’Donnell is a strong direct runner and brings a physical presence to the attack. Ex-AFL player James Madden also showed flashes of potential, he has blistering speed and carries the ball with real purpose – though it will take him a little time to readjust back to Gaelic football.
But a scan through the subs on Saturday shows the changing dynamic of this Dublin side – the bench included players like Conor Tyrell, Nathan Doran, Senan Forker, Alex Gavin.
“There is new energy and new blood around the place, it sort of brings you back to brass tacks and you see the hunger and the appetite that is there, that can be infectious in terms of rubbing off on other lads,” says Farrell.
“For those fellas who have maybe stepped away recently or thinking about their position at the minute, I can understand completely because they have been very successful as individual players and they have been wonderful ambassadors and role models and fantastic servants. They have left a wonderful legacy and you can understand with the demands of the game now and what’s involved if these fellas did want to step away or take time, that’s completely understandable and we respect that.
“But by the same token, our focus has to turn to the here and now and what the future is, that is what we are trying to do here, build that depth in the panel again.” – Gordon Manning
Cahill brave to goad the Tipperary public
The fixtures have worked out well for Tipperary – or at least it looks that way now. Giving Galway a thorough rinsing means that if they can repeat the trick against struggling Wexford on Sunday, they’ll have more or less torpedoed any relegation prospects in the space of the league’s first week.
That might sound like a low enough bar to be clearing but it would be a solid piece of business to get done. Cahill doesn’t need Tipp to be treading water in a relegation battle – he has enough fires to fight without that sort of pressure on him and his panel.
Cahill is never one to be backward about his intentions or his expectations, both within and beyond his immediate group. So it was maybe no surprise that he used his post-match press duties on Sunday to throw down a bit of a gauntlet to the Tipp hurling public. It was a very Liam Cahill thing to do.
“There’ll be ups and downs in this campaign,” he said. “I think the knowledgeable people who know the hurling landscape in Tipperary and know what’s going on will understand that. We will meet bumps in the road that will create difficulty.
“But it’s about patience now as well and I know that’s not going to cut much slack with the impatient, less knowledgeable Tipperary hurling folk that are out there.
“All I can say is that we are really trying hard behind the scenes, we really are. I mentioned bravery there earlier about the direction we’re going and the change we have to make. I’d ask the Tipp supporters to be brave as well and come out and support them.
“There’s not much bravery in going up to Croke Park every year over the last decade for semi-finals and All-Irelands and all that. They’re easy things to do.”
Now, there will be plenty of Tipp hurling folk – knowledgeable and otherwise – who will reckon that maybe Cahill might consider that he’s going to need a bit more than a January win over a poor Galway side before he starts goading his people. But at the same time, it’s a quietly brave thing to do.
Tipp’s travelling support was noticeably the thinnest of all the teams in last year’s Munster championship and Cahill clearly feels his young panel deserve better. But they have to hold up their end of the bargain too and staying out of a relegation scrap is Job One. At a stroke, Sunday’s game at home to Wexford has been ratcheted up a notch. Let’s see how they – and their public – respond. – Malachy Clerkin
Never mind relegation – hurling managers must go digging for jewels
The hurling league has been rejigged with the seven best teams thrown into a (teddy) bear-pit with the introduction of two relegation spots intended to focus everyone’s mind on winning. That enhanced level of jeopardy brings the hurling league more into line with its football sibling, where staying in Division 1 has been every team’s primary spring goal for many years.
For the strong teams in hurling, though, Division 1 had been like Hotel California: you can check out any time you like but you can never leave.
But even with the new residency rules the league is still a numbers game. Brian Lohan said after Clare’s defeat to Kilkenny that he was “carrying 45″ players at the moment “and they all want to play.” Cork are understood to have a panel of 44 for now. Lohan made the point that they used a staggering 23 players in the All-Ireland final last July; Cork used 22.
The provincial championships are no place for chancing a rookie and hoping for the best, so even with no dud fixtures in Division 1 this year and the present threat of relegation, managers will still be minded to give their panel players a spin. They must; they have no choice.
On Sunday Clare used five players who are 22 or younger, including one player who is eligible under-20 this year. In the All-Ireland final last year Clare used 10 players in their 30s, nine of whom started. As well as everything else, Clare need to start building a bridge to the next generation.
But in that numbers game, Clare, Cork and Limerick have significant degrees of comfort. Tipperary, in contrast, have 17 new players on their panel, and only two players who started the 2019 All-Ireland final also started in Salthill on Sunday. They must begin again from a place close to scratch.
Galway need a new team, but they are still in the process of digging the foundation, never mind pouring concrete. Wexford have been slaughtered by injuries and retirements and defections and having bust a gut to stay in Division 1, they’re going to suffer in the coming weeks.
Would Division 2 be such a place for their rebuild next year? – Denis Walsh
Goalkeepers on the move
The new goalkeeping rules in the FRC enhancements greatly restrict what ‘keepers can do in defence – take no passes in their own half apart from inside the large rectangle from a player already there – but they get free rein going forward.
Armagh’s Blaine Hughes was an All-Star nominee last year after a confident season in which his more conventional instincts found favour with manager Kieran McGeeney, who resisted the temptation to bring back Ethan Rafferty when the latter had recovered from injury.
Rafferty also picked up an All-Star nomination, two years ago when rewarded for his adventurous outlook, which made him something of a quarterback, orchestrating attacking movement up around his own 40. The new rules appear to be made for him and he was duly brought off the bench for the final 10 minutes.
A former outfield player, Rafferty is an assured exponent of the roving goalkeeper and it will be interesting to see how McGeeney evaluates his options in the months ahead.
They won’t be the only county. Galway’s Connor Gleeson spent a fair bit of the first half roaming free in Armagh’s half but although the extra body created extra space in attack, little enough came of it.
Manager Pádraic Joyce was asked afterwards if he felt you had to push the goalkeeper forward under the new rules and took a restrictive view.
“You don’t have to do it but for me, the goalkeeper’s job is to kick the ball out and stop the goals going in. You can be over-elaborate if you want. You can play games where the keeper comes out and all that kind of stuff.
“But you’ll see over the weekend, I guarantee you, that some keeper will get caught and a goal will be scored at the far side. A minute will undo 20 minutes of good work.
“We have another keeper there, Conor Flaherty, who’s probably a different type of keeper to Connor so we’ll give him time in the league as well and see what suits us best.”
[ Galway ride the storm and hit Armagh hard in the second halfOpens in new window ]
Joyce’s prophecy duly came to pass the following day – and on live television. In Dr Hyde Park, Down’s goalkeeper John O’Hare had an eventful match in Division Two. He misjudged a shot, which ended in Cian McKeon scoring Roscommon’s second goal, saved a penalty from Enda Smith and in the 58th minute, watched on as Colm Neary made a terrific block during a Down attack.
The ball fell to McKeon, who picked out Ciaráin Murtagh 50 metres farther up the pitch and his excellent shot from 40 metres steered the ball into an empty net for his team’s third goal in a high-scoring win. Nor was this the end of the focus on Down’s goal.
In the 66th minute, manager Conor Laverty withdrew O’Hare and sent on a forward Oisín Savage. Wing forward Danny Magill dropped back into goal and had time to make a great save from Daire Cregg, but the day was done. – Seán Moran
Enough with the hurling nanny state – it should be called Division 2
We need to start calling the second tier of the hurling league Division 2, because that is what it is. Why should the second tier of the hurling league still have the number one in its name when the second tier of every other league in the GAA is described by the number two? And what about the divisions below the second division? Just use the numbers we learned in baby infants. In sequence.
Division 1A and B was fine when the top tier of the hurling league was 12 teams of mixed abilities, split into two groups. But once they decided that the league should be a meritocracy and Division 1 should be occupied by the best teams, they needed to do some simple rebranding.
At the root of all this is the GAA’s nanny-state approach to hurling. For many years, before the championship was stratified and relegation introduced, the GAA was hell bent on herding as many teams as possible into the top tier and keeping them there. What they’ve done with the second tier of the league is a relic of that old thinking.
By naming it Division One B, and presenting it as a mezzanine level, does anyone really think there are 14 Division 1 teams in hurling? Nobody tries to make Division 1in football any bigger than it already is. It would make no sense. The teams in Division 1B are trying to get out of Division 2. They’re not offended by a number. – Denis Walsh
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