POOR KNOCKMORE. Prey, like so many western footballers, to the sorrowful mysteries of big time football. The best of their sweetly confident style was put on display a few weeks ago. They came to Croke Park yesterday like high rollers; big and happy and open and predictable. They felt like rubes to a Crossmaglen team who knew the run of the cards as well as any shark.
In the year or so since they were last beaten Crossmaglen have learned the art of winning football with economy. They put height and muscle into the midfield, determination and guts into the defence, and small fast men into the attack. No line stood out as an exploitable weakness.
Club championships are generally won by balanced sides who get on a roll. Big stars, won't usually haul half a team's worth of passengers up that long hill. So it was with Crossmaglen. They have some wonderful footballers, but more importantly they have no bad ones.
Heroics came from predictable sources and from some unlikely spots, too. Full back Donal Murtagh gave many inches away to three different Mayo men tried at full forward. He outwitted them all.
We came to Croke Park yesterday to see if Knockmore could repeat the trick of hitting their full forward line with perfect passes for full 60 minutes. They couldn't. We came away gape mouthed instead at the colossal performance of Oisin McConville, the Crossmaglen wing forward who more than any other player on the field represented the difference between the two sides.
Two points from McConville bookended the game yesterday. He opened the scoring with a free in the first minute and closed the game out with an impudent point which served as a grace note to a wonderful attacking performance. In the business of putting Knockmore to a death by a thousand cuts he was ably abetted by his brother Jim, 10 years his senior, and his counterpart out on the right wing Cathal Short.
Repeatedly, those three ran at the Knockmore defence, blowing past beefy challenges and weaving deft passes.
Knockmore had no such artistry to call upon. Ray Dempsey, carrying rumours of an injury beforehand, did little to vouchsafe his good health during the 30 minutes he was on the field. Kevin O'Neill did well on a poor service and while Padraig Brogan ended up with a tally from play which suggests adequacy, the amount of ball he wasted makes for a more damning verdict.
In midfield Crossmaglen did as they always do, bringing big Colm O'Neill from corner forward to crowd the area and make room for the their nippy runners up front.
Knockmore opted not in trail after O'Neill and left Fergus Sweeney to sweep across the full back line. Sweeney performed but in hindsight Knockmore may regret not using him to better advantage offensively. What they needed most was a supply line to their capable wing forwards.
Crossmaglen set the pattern of play almost from the beginning. Oisin McConville and Gary McShane gave them a lead before a Kevin O'Neill free and a Brogan shot off the crossbar hinted that Knockmore might be game.
Then one of those freakish twist's which the club game often suffers befell Knockmore. Colm O'Neill broke down a kick out in midfield. It fell to Oisin McConville who, perhaps for the only time yesterday, steepled a ball high into the Knockmore square. The ball fell straight out of the sunless sky, deflected off goalkeeper Pat Reape's fingers and dropped into the net.
Crossmaglen followed up immediately with a fine point from John McEntee and suddenly, after just 10 minutes of play, it was hard to see a way back into the game for Knockmore.
By now the Armagh side were running together some beautiful moves. The McConvilles used the broad Croke Park pitch intelligently, heading for the corners where they drew men and challenges before jinking their way back inside.
Every point had the cold and draining cruelty of a stab wound. For instance, Brogan and O'Neill clawed two scores back for Knockmore when Oisin McConville won the ball amidst a chaos of tumbling midfielders. He made it into clear ground to see a Knockmore defender hurtling towards him. One change of pace and he had moved clear untouched to clip over a wonderful point.
The gulf in sophistication between the two attacks was emphasised again, more significantly, before the break. Jim McConville took receipt of a brilliant pass and slotted the ball to the net only to be denied for overcarrying. From the free out Colm O'Neill broke the ball down to Short who glided, quick as a fish, past two defenders and slipped a pass to Oisin McConville who drew a battalion of desperate defenders before threading a pass through to Jim McConville, unmarked again. McConville's goal was like the click made by a bolt hitting home in an expensive lock. Half time and Crossmaglen led by 2-5 to 0-6.
Knockmore made some repairs at the break. Ray Dempsey was withdrawn. Tommy Holmes came in, at left half forward, Shane Sweeney moved to left corner forward, with Declan Sweeney moving to full forward and Brogan going out to left half forward. Conceived in haste, none of the changes worked.
On the evidence of the semi final, the two Sweeneys needed to be more involved in the middle, not isolated in deep. Brogan never really threw his weight around sufficiently in the middle third and Colm O'Neill continued to roam freely.
Crdssmaglen scored the first two points of the half and should have had a goal when Joe Fitzpatrick blasted wide from four or five yards out.
The closing 20 minutes never grabbed the imagination of the near 35,000 crowd. Knockmore strung some points together, closing the gap laboriously, only for Oisin McConville to score four points in the final 10 minutes (plus one apiece from Jim McConville and Michael Moley) to emphasise the tightness of Crossmaglen's grip on the game.
For Armagh, as a whole, yesterday marked a welcome break from the years in the wilderness. For Crossmaglen, triumph comes after years of determined struggle against adversity. The quality of football yesterday might have been middling, but stories like Crossmaglen's are the staff of life for this thriving competition.
