Beggan a key weapon for Monaghan
Class always finds a way.
One of the main outcomes of the recent tweaks to the new rules was to make life trickier for the roaming goalkeeper. The FRC clipped their wings, as such. It appeared the brief era where the goalkeeper was arguably the most important player on the pitch had come and gone.
And yet Monaghan’s top scorer in Saturday night’s Division 2 final victory over Roscommon was Rory Beggan. The Scotstown man finished the game with 0-7, including three two-pointers from frees and a point from a 45.
Beggan was Monaghan’s top scorer in the league with a haul of 0-38. His accuracy from long-distance provides Monaghan with a lethal weapon.
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Beggan did come up the field during open play against Roscommon, but it’s his ability to consistently kick long-range placed balls over the black spot that sets him apart. And while Galway’s Shane Walsh has rightly been lauded for his long-distance kicking during this year’s league, nobody has made better use of the arc than Beggan, who scored 17 two-pointers. The key difference is that Beggan’s two-pointers have tended to come from placed balls rather than open play.
“I always said it was a bit generous of a score to give for a free like that but, look, once it’s within the rules I’m happy out,” said Beggan after Saturday night’s win over Roscommon.
It’s unlikely to be the end of his scoring exploits this year. – Gordon Manning
FRC navigates the league finals
Phase one of the great FRC experiment concluded with the four divisional finals. The rules are now ready to translate into championship from next weekend.
There has been a fairly strong consensus that football’s regulatory framework has improved the game for both spectators, players and especially referees, who have coped outstandingly well with the new demands.
Similarly, they have benefited from the improvements targeted at their duties: elimination of backchat, penalising of dissent and practical discouragement of previously standard truculence by ‘enhancements’ such as the solo & go.
Were the various league outcomes at the weekend influenced and to what extent?
Kerry completed a third successive match without a two-pointer but it was also a third successive win. The only league match that saw them outdo their opponents in orange flags was the match in Castlebar where Mayo beat them.
The divisional finals split two ways with two winners, Monaghan and Offaly scoring more two-pointers in their Divisions 2 and 3 triumphs, whereas Wexford and Mayo lost their matches in Division 4 and 1 to teams, Limerick and Kerry, that didn’t score any.
Monaghan ploughed on, shooting six two-pointers against Roscommon to leave them ahead of early pace setters Galway as the campaign’s brand leaders in the new 40-metre dispensation.
Jack O’Connor’s Kerry also scored a league-topping 17th goal of the campaign and the benefit to them of increased space up front is fairly clear.
Finally, one trend that remained unaltered was the slightly better strike rate of Division 1 teams finishing the league programme behind their final opponents. Kerry became the ninth county to win the competition despite finishing the regulation season below the defeated finalists.
Seven counties have confirmed the league standings in the final in the 18 years of the current structure, leaving aside the Covid seasons of 2020 and ‘21 when no final was played. – Seán Moran
McStay takes the low road
First rule of giving out about the referee – never do it when you’ve just taken a beating. In a one-score game, when the blood is up and the adrenaline is pumping, reasonable people will give you a bit of a hearing. When you’ve just collapsed in a national final without properly laying a glove on the opposition, they won’t.
Kevin McStay has been around for a long time on every side of the fence – player, manager, pundit, columnist. Listening back to his press conference after losing to Kerry on Sunday, you could tell he had an angel and devil on either shoulder. The devil was telling him to bring up the way David Clifford was refereed in his battle with Donnacha McHugh. The angel was telling him to leave it and get the hell out of Dodge.
So McStay chose the middle route, caveating his perfectly reasonable points with hossanahs to Clifford’s qualities as a player and to David Coldrick’s expertise as a referee. And nobody heard a word of it. Mostly, they heard a losing manager crying about a referee in a league final where his team had only scored 1-12.
McStay isn’t wrong, of course. One of Clifford’s underestimated talents is his ability to convince referees that he is being blackguarded from the moment he comes out of the dressingroom. Watch him throw the ball down in disgust after an early foul to signal to the ref that this has been going on since the first whistle. Behold the disbelieving looks around at the linesmen and umpires, putting it up to them to protect him. That’s the game. Clifford plays it extremely well.
But just because McStay might not have been wrong in his assessment doesn’t mean he was right to bring it up when he did. Mayo and Kerry will surely meet again – dropping a few well-chosen words in the build-up to a championship game would probably have made more strategic sense.
When you’ve just been routed in a league final, it looks like deflection. – Malachy Clerkin
Kerry opt for the old-fashioned way
The Division 1 final was the third game in a row in which Kerry failed to score a two-pointer. When Jack O’Connor was asked about it afterwards, he preferred to dwell on the number of goals they had scored in the league, a statistic that was on the tip of his tongue.
“I wouldn’t care if we never kick a two-pointer for the rest of the year if we can keep winning matches,” said O’Connor. “But we’ve kept up our record of getting goals, I think that’s 17 goals in the league. I don’t even think we’ve taken too many two-point shots.”
On Sunday they didn’t attempt any. One of the interesting trends from the last report of the GAA’s Games Intelligence Unit was that the number of two-point attempts from open play had dropped from an average of over nine per game in round three of the league to less than six per game in round six. In contrast, the number of two-point attempts from frees had remained relatively steady.
What is clear is that as the rules bed in every team will be conducting their own risk analysis. What also emerged from the latest Games Intelligence Unit report was that the number of two-point attempts in round six was significantly lower in Division 1 than in the other three divisions. Clearly, many of the elite teams have come to a conclusion about the risk/reward balance of two-point attempts.
The other variable, not captured in the data analysis, is weather conditions. Wind was a big factor in the early rounds of the league with some dramatic scoreboard turnarounds, energised by two-pointers but facilitated by a helping wind. On Sunday there was scarcely a puff of breeze in Croke Park. Mayo attempted a pair of two-point frees and one rash kick from an angle. They landed one.
Going down the stretch in big matches during the summer, you can be sure that two-point attempts will add to the drama but they might not be the game changer that we thought at first. – Denis Walsh
Croke Park poses final dilemma
Given the brilliant blue skies and perhaps a little confusion around the changing of the clocks, certain residents around Croke Park may have been fooled into thinking there was an early stampede of Kerry and Mayo supporters heading to the Division 1 final.
From shortly after 8.30am, just under 12,000 runners came down the Jones’ Road. Only they weren’t actually going to the match but instead following the 13.1-mile route of the inaugural Dublin City Half Marathon.
Considered a runaway success by both the organisers and those who took part, the dilemma now is how many more people the event can possibly accommodate next year.
All in great contrast then to the much slower and far less impressive trickle of people heading towards Croke Park in the afternoon. Only 21,596 spectators turned out for Sunday’s double-header, the Division 1 decider preceded by the Division 3 final between Offaly and Kildare, one of the lowest attendances of modern times.
Saturday’s Croke Park double-bill, where Monaghan beat Roscommon in Division 2 and Limerick beat Wexford in Division 4, drew only 11,450. In both cases, the spectacle and atmosphere was subdued.
Last year, 33,121 attended the top-flight final between Derry and Dublin (with Donegal and Armagh playing in Division 2), and that was considered disappointing, at least compared to the 45,041 that attended the Mayo-Galway final in 2023. Mayo won that game, then lost to Roscommon in the quarter-final of the Connacht championship a week later.
In 2022, the pairing of Kerry and Mayo drew 31,506.
Football and hurling league final attendances will always vary depending on the competing teams, and indeed the chosen venue. The sold-out Division 1A final between Cork and Tipperary at Páirc Uí Chaoimh next Sunday is evidence of that.
In 2016, the football league final between Dublin and Kerry drew a full house of 82,300, while the 2017 edition between the same counties brought 53,840.
The problem for the GAA is twofold. Firstly, the further dilution of the importance of the league finals, particularly for Division 1 teams, given the proximity to the championship isn’t being lost on the supporters. Secondly, the GAA’s apparent unwillingness to consider alternative venues for the football finals, or even tossing a coin for home advantage, is further hitting potential attendances.
The build-up to Sunday’s final at times felt like an anti-promotion, several of the teams still in contention going into the final round of games making no secret of their desire not to be there. When Kerry and Mayo did qualify, the feeling was great, but...
It might still be too soon to say the football league finals are on life-support, but without some rethink regarding dates and venues their days may soon be numbered. – Ian O’Riordan
