GAELIC GAMES:DAYS LIKE this cry out for a yarn. Something to rise it, to lift it above the habitual and the banal. On a June afternoon that felt borrowed from March, we thought for the briefest moment that we had one. With just over six minutes to go in the opener between Kildare and Meath, Joe Sheridan shanked an attempt at a point into the Hill 16 end.
His side were four points down and a man short and if they were going to catch fire, someone had to put torch to tinder fairly quickly.
Sheridan’s shot was wonky and took its time to come to earth, dropping in a sort of slow-motion arc that gave the whole of Croke Park time to engage their inner storyteller. There, right there under the dropping ball in front of the goal was the yarn. Graham Geraghty.
Stealing in for his first touch of an intercounty football for three years, like an old punk about to graffiti his first wall since the days when the cops were his elders. Getting there first and palming it to the corner of the net. Croke Park kicked into life and we had what we came for.
Alas, alas. Within seconds it turned out we hadn’t. Referee Syl Doyle had a hunch Geraghty might have been in the square before the ball and his umpires couldn’t advise him otherwise. No goal. Even though television replays left at least enough doubt for it to be a toss of a coin, no goal was the decree. And with that, the yarn dissolved like spit on a hot footpath.
What we were left with was pretty straightforward, no more and no less than the 41,786 crowd expected when they walked through the gates.
Two Leinster championship matches decided by cosy margins in the end-up. A Kildare side with few enough holes in their hull to be able to kick 18 wides and still amble through to the semi-final.
To face a Dublin team that could afford to make a viable All Star nominee out of the Laois goalkeeper and still gain handy passage. It was only carelessness that had Kieran McGeeney’s side still visible beyond Meath’s dashboard so close to the end.
Their wide tally was one higher than it had been a fortnight ago against Wicklow and this time around they didn’t have a gale to kick into. McGeeney was adamant afterwards that he wants his men shooting rather than running down blind alleys but the fact that 10 different players registered at least one wide makes it a reasonable assumption that they might spend some time working on ways to get their best scorers on the ball close to goal.
“I think at times in the first half we were actually trying to make too sure of the shot,” said McGeeney afterwards.
“We had fellas bouncing to pull the ball back inside and when you do that, two or three men will get back goalside. In the second half we had men running off the shoulder and creating better angles. We had more options.”
Those options won them the match. After going in 0-5 to 0-7 down at the break, Kildare scored five of the first six points in the second half.
Wing-forward Eamonn Callaghan scorched the ground for four points in 20 minutes and Johnny Doyle was the best midfielder on the pitch for the second game in a row, causing Banty McEnaney to send in the lanky Mark Ward from the bench.
Ward stopped the bleeding – even catching a ball above Doyle’s head at one point, barely getting off his feet as Doyle sprung and flailed – and Meath got the margin back to two points.
That was as good as it got for them. Substitute Brian Farrell got a straight red when nobody was looking in the 54th minute, for an off-the-ball infringement on Emmet Bolton that looked pretty harmless in truth.
Put it this way – between it and Geraghty’s non-goal, we can surely now agree that whatever debt Meath owe from last year’s Leinster final has been paid. Kildare scored the last three points of the game to win by 0-16 to 0-10.
They’ll meet Dublin now, who eased through with the same sort of win the other two main All Ireland contenders also splashed on the face of the weekend.
Laois clung to the comet for 40 minutes but only because their goalkeeper Eoin Culliton did his best Manuel Neuer impression with three blinding saves inside the opening half-hour – twice from Diarmuid Connolly and once from Bernard Brogan.
But once his opposite number Stephen Cluxton kicked his third successful 45 of the day to put Dublin 1-9 to 0-8 ahead on 47th minutes, Dublin rubbed all mystery from the game. Connolly and both Brogan brothers scored as they liked from then on and there was barely a ripple of applause when the final whistle signalled a 1-16 to 0-11 victory for Pat Gilroy’s side. This was perfunctory stuff, a fuel-stop along the motorway they trust is leading to a better place.
“Those were exceptional saves that the Laois ’keeper pulled off,” said Gilroy, “because those shots were really hit low and hard into the corners. But I wasn’t that worried about them because we were still creating the chances and in fairness to Diarmuid, he eventually scored one. I don’t think it affected the team. They kept doing what they were doing.”
All that doing buys them a date with Kildare in three weeks. Ever so gently, the summer shakes and wakes and spins its yarns.
Westmeath get Antrim in qualifiers
AFTER PUTTING the heart across Galway on Saturday afternoon, Westmeath were rewarded with a more palatable draw for the preliminary round of the All-Ireland Hurling Championship qualifiers last night when they were paired with Antrim. Granted, they will have to travel to Casement Park on Saturday, June 18th, but if they manage to pull off a victory there, they will be rewarded with a home tie against Carlow the following weekend. On the other side of the draw, Cork were handed a trip to Laois on Saturday week. Presuming they come through that one, Denis Walsh’s side will then face Offaly.
Hurling Championship – Qualifier Draws
(first-named team plays at home)
Preliminary Phase – Saturday, June 18th
Antrim v Westmeath
Laois v Cork
Phase One – Saturday, June 25th
Laois/Cork v Offaly;
Antrim/Westmeath v Carlow
