Leadership is a hard thing to define, but you know it when you see it. One of my favourite bits of play at Croke Park last weekend came late in the Tyrone v Dublin game. Young Eoin McElholm got the ball on the arc, looked up and saw Ciarán Kilkenny ahead of him. Instead of turning back or playing safe, he licked his lips and went for it.
He didn’t give a damn about the number of All-Irelands Ciarán Kilkenny has won. It didn’t occur to him for a second that the fella standing in front of him is one of the most athletic players the game has ever seen. He didn’t care that he was playing into Hill 16, in the last 10 minutes of an All-Ireland quarter-final, with only a point between the teams.
All he saw was a chance to put the head down, press the accelerator and take his man on the outside. He skinned Kilkenny and left him chasing his shadow. It was as if he was saying, ‘move over kid, you’ve had your time’. I thought it was one of the best bits of leadership you could ever see.
It was there in the Meath game too. Look at the composure Mathew Costello showed when he was setting up the goal for Jordan Morris. Meath had a three-on-one when he got the ball, so the goal was on, no question about it. But Galway were after getting a run on them and there were nine minutes left on the clock. Nothing is a given at that stage.
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As the move was developing, you could see Costello run away from Morris to create space. Then, when he got the ball in his hands, he made a point of not looking in Morris’s direction. Instead, he made a very small, subtle move with his hands and eyes as if he was considering trying to go around Connor Gleeson and grab a goal for himself.
That’s all that was needed. Gleeson reacted, Costello kept his eyes on the goalkeeper but flicked the ball to Morris on the back post and it was an open goal. The right move at the right time and Meath were back in charge.
Compare that to the chance Tiernan Kelly made a mess of in the first half of the Armagh v Kerry game. He made a brilliant steal from Dylan Geaney on the Kerry 45 and headed for goal. Armagh had a four-on-one, with Niall Grimley and Rian O’Neill to one side and Oisín Conaty to the other. One simple pass was all it needed.
But even in the moment, you could see that Kelly had no notion of passing. Once he didn’t lay it off straight away, you could sense that he was going to keep running until he got close enough to go for goal.
And if you and I can see that from the stands, you can be damn sure Shane Ryan in the Kerry goal could see it at ground level. So Ryan was able to take a calculated risk; he steadied himself for the save rather than having to move across to whichever option Kelly used. Once Ryan tipped the shot over the bar, you could see Conaty, Grimley and O’Neill all give Kelly an earful.
Leadership is about doing the right thing rather than the spectacular thing. I heard people saying at half-time that David Clifford was very quiet in the first half. But I thought he was exceptional. Seán O’Shea shot the lights out but the amount of running Clifford was doing to pull Armagh defenders out of position was a sight to behold.
He was getting extra attention the whole time, with Ross McQuillan dropping back in front of him and Barry McCambridge marking him from the side. But he still fought his way into the action and scored that incredible point off his right leg. And then, straight after it, he won a free and got the crowd lifting again.
The huge thing from a Kerry point of view was that so many of them caught fire at the same time. They caught onto that leadership shown by David and Seánie and kicked on themselves. Joe O’Connor was an obvious example in the second half. Graham O’Sullivan and Gavin White scored two points apiece.
You need that domino effect. So many Kerry players followed their leaders. Mark O’Shea had a whale of a game in midfield. Seán O’Brien had the game of his life. In that spell when the Armagh kickout was being hammered, they were the ones getting into the middle of the battle and making it awkward for the All-Ireland champions. Nobody was singling them out as match-winners beforehand, but they were vital to it.
The contrast with Galway’s lack of leadership in the early game was so clear to see. Other than Damien Comer when he came on, so many Galway players just weren’t trusting themselves to break free and show the others what the day needed. They were tentative with their shooting and only really went for Meath in that short spell in the second half when they put up 2-3 in quick succession.
Comer was brilliant for those few minutes. He came on when they were six points down. He touched the ball four times and they were level. But too many of Galway’s big leaders faded from view. Paul Conroy couldn’t get into it when he came on, John Maher wasn’t able to get a foothold outside of setting up the goal, Shane Walsh was obviously finding the slippy surface tricky to keep his feet on. They left themselves open to being nailed and Meath took full advantage.
All in all, it was a brilliant weekend of football and I had most of it wrong from the outset. My thinking was that Donegal, Dublin, Galway and Armagh would come through. But whatever about the first game, the big leaders in the other three were what brought Tyrone, Meath and Kerry through to the last four.
