GAELIC GAMES:THIS OLD game makes Anthony Daly pulse just by being what it is. Hairy, unpredictable, tetchy, tense. He can't do sang-froid, he can't be unattached. Wouldn't want to be, even if he could.
Daly came to Croke Park yesterday having had his fill of being told he was making a pointless journey. He watched his young team tear strips out of the day and nearly toss the All-Ireland champions overboard. When he came to talk to us afterwards, there was real irritation at the notion that this was all a big surprise to people.
“Driving home from last week’s semi-final, it was a good thing the motorway was wide because some fellas on the radio were giving us no chance at all.
“You know, we’re Walsh Cup champions, league champions and there’s great pride in the boys. The only day we didn’t perform this year was in the Leinster final. We were very disappointed that evening and we promised ourselves that we would perform today. I certainly believe we did that. But this is hard enough to take. All-Ireland semi-finals and me don’t seem to get on anyway.
“I’m very disappointed to come so close and not to get there. But awful proud of the boys as well. They stuck to the task and probably a bit of poor decision-making at times cost us. Tipp were that little bit more economical and they had the cushion of the early goal as well.
“Funny enough, the early goal can sometimes lead to a bit of extra complacency in a team that maybe was a little complacent anyway, which would have been natural for them because of the way they were written up all week.”
Daly wouldn’t be who he is if the build-up hadn’t bugged him. Games are for the winning and battles for the fighting, regardless of the size of arsenal available. He conceded that going up against a team that could bring Brendan Maher off the bench when you’re down five top-shelfers yourself probably stacked the deck a bit.
But even so, predictions of a repeat of the Munster final sought out his craw and stuck themselves in it with aplomb.
“It was never going to be like the last day for them. That was a bit of a freak show down in Cork with the seven goals. It’s a rare thing for a team to hit two days like that on the bounce. It must have been hard for the Tipp management to get them 100 per cent tuned into us with all, with everyone talking about the final.
“I think Michael Fennelly even said it in his interview last Sunday, something like, ‘That won’t do against Tipp!’ So it’s hard for lads to get their heads tuned in with all that going on around them.”
His players came out ahead in most of the major one-to-ones but still woke up on the wrong side of the result. A triumph of length of tooth over enthusiasm in the end.
“We did win a lot of the personal battles but they were clinical at times when we weren’t,” Daly said. “We took the wrong option at times I felt. We worked on a bit of system there over the last couple of weeks and, while it worked to a good degree, we needed to take better options. That will only come from the experience of being involved in days like this.
“It’s our first time in a semi-final in a long, long time and I think it will stand to our lads. But that’s no great consolation tonight.”
The goal they needed didn’t come. A couple of skirmishes, a few lobbed-in 65s, a Maurice O’Brien shot that rose instead of scudding below the crossbar. In the end, Daly nutshelled in his own wise way.
“Sure look, hurling. A thousand mad things and someone comes out on top.” Somebody should put that on a t-shirt.
