ON SUNDAY, 29 August 2011, Dublin squeezed past Donegal in a dour All-Ireland final semi-final on a scoreline of eight points to six.
Both sides packed their defence and the Dubs managed just two points from play all afternoon. At the same time at Old Trafford in contrast, Arsenal were getting tonked 8-2.
Despite the lack of entertainment, Pat Gilroy’s side were back in their first championship decider since 1995. Donegal would return 12 months later and succeed the Dubs as All-Ireland champs.
Here’s how some of those involved remember that memorable day.
Barry Cahill
I suppose it’s a good memory seeing as how we won the game. We had suffered a good few All-Ireland semi-final defeats leading up to that between 2005 and 2011. So there was big relief and joy at getting through to the final itself. There was probably one stand out moment for myself in terms of that game. We were lining up for the throw up, I was centre-forward and Karl Lacey was beside me.
We’d spoken in the couple of weeks leading up to the game that one way to combat a blanket defence was to move the ball as quickly as possible, usually by foot, 45 to 50 yard kick passes up the pitch. Because obviously players can’t run as fast as a ball travelling in the air. That was one element of our game plan but when Maurice Deegan threw up the ball, Mark McHugh and Ryan Bradley, the two wing-forwards for Donegal sprinted past me and just sat in front of our full-forward line. Straight away, two or three seconds into the game, they had two players situated in front of Bernard Brogan in the pocket, in the space so that tactic of ours was gone straight away because they already had their defensive system set up. I don’t think it mattered to Mark or to Ryan as to whether Donegal won the throw up or not.
Their role was to try and get and back as quickly as possible. So that was a strange sight to see. It’s not something we’d experienced before. We would have been aware of the defensive set up that Jim McGuinness was bringing. He brought an element of it to the U-21s the previous year in 2010. You try and prepare as well as possible in the three or four weeks leading into a game like that. We were coming off a pretty good performance in the quarter-final against Tyrone, managed to score 22 points that day. But you know we were aware that we weren’t going to get as much time or space and particularly the likes of Diarmuid Connolly who had scored seven from play the previous day. In a few of the A versus B training games we had 15 on the As and maybe 16, 17 on the Bs, just to try and condition ourselves to make it as difficult as possible.
Yeah, certainly from memory the first-half was frustrating. I think we played into Donegal’s hands in that as the clock went on we got to 10, 15, 20 minutes and only had two points on the board (one actually) and we started taking a few crazy shots from 50, 60 yards out, taking pot shots from the end line. There was a lot of frustration. You probably got a sense of it from the crowd as well that there was a lot of frustration.
Broke your ‘three second rule’?
That was something that Pat would have brought in probably mid-way through 2010. Pat would have geared everything in training, within the drills in training, that there was no hop, no solo, as soon as you got it you moved it within three seconds, ideally by foot because it was a quicker way to get the ball up the pitch. That day we probably didn’t use the wing backs as well as we could have. They were getting on a lot of ball but it was 100 yards from goal, very deep. It was a very slow and laboured build up. We were going sideways and back ways with the ball. But yeah, coming in at half-time there was just a sense of frustration. I think we were four points to two down.
Donegal had you where they wanted you – feel trapped?
In fairness, our dressing-room would always be quite calm at half-time. Usually the players in certain lines would group together, so you’d have, for myself, the half-forward line having a chat among themselves for two or three minutes. What’s working well? What’s working not so well? Then the management would come in, usually Mickey Whelan would say a few words and then Pat, go through areas that we want to improve on. I think going out in the second-half we decided we were going to try to run the ball a lot more, sort of run in groups and clusters. If you have three or four lads running together, off each others’ shoulders so that if you are coming up against a wall of Donegal defenders that you’re able to slip maybe a couple of one-twos. I think that’s the easiest way to sort of take out bodies, to draw them in and play a couple of one-twos and travel together and try and get up the pitch in groups.
Kevin Cassidy
When prior to the semi-final did the players know how you were going to line up?
We probably knew on the Tuesday night. Like I’ve said loads of times, when Jim came in we were in a bad place. From the start, as soon as he laid his first plan in Castlefin, he said ‘this is what we’re going to do’ and everybody just bought into it. We never questioned him although a few of us probably didn’t enjoy playing that way. It was just successful for us. We had just after delivering an Ulster title for the first time in 19 years so when Jim said ‘this is what we’re going to do’ every man bought in and we carried on from them. I don’t think anybody was too taken aback by it.
Did you have Dublin where you wanted then at half-time?
Yeah, it’s definitely an All-Ireland that we let slip. Had we got past Dublin, we would have beaten Kerry because they wouldn’t have been able to handle the way we set up that year. We were naive in thinking we had Dublin where we wanted. Colm was through on goal and had he have been just a wee bit lower and it hit the net the game was over. We invited Dublin on a wee bit and Cluxton got a few frees and what have you and Dublin gained momentum and it just broke us down. I think at that time after Diarmuid Connolly’s sending off had we pushed Michael further up the field we would have got a score or two and it would have been too much.
Jim looked at our panel and said he can’t afford to go man to man because these boys will blow us away. That game was 6-4 at half-time, that was the plan, to retreat and force Dublin to shoot from awkward angles, force them into a place where they hadn’t been before. It worked to a certain extent because the Dublin players were looking around, the Brogans and Diarmuid Connolly and they weren’t getting the room to open up and score at will.
At half-time, we were happy with where we were. We were happy we could push on in the second half. It was maybe a bit naive, but Dublin are a different animal from what they were back then. We watched them a lot on TV, but the last day out against Monaghan, they were scary.
Jim McGuinness
It was a different type of system under Pat Gilroy. They kept the six defenders back. It was rare to see the half-backs push on. That’s not the case now. Everyone pushes on. It’s a totally different dynamic from that point of view. In terms of their attack, it’s not that much different.
They still like to get the ball in, they still like runners off their full forward line. They’re dynamic in the middle still. What they have done is give their half backs licence to bomb on. They’ve got the best goalkeeper in the country and that’s a huge weapon in their arsenal also.”
“I don’t think there is anyone to touch Stephen Cluxton. I’ve the utmost respect for ‘Papa’ (Paul Durcan) but Cluxton’s stats are ridiculous. They’ve 70 to 80 per cent retention in their own kick-outs. That’s unheard of. That gives them a huge platform.
Our thought process was to win the game. We put the team out with a gameplan to win the match. Defensively we did a phenomenal job. Offensively we didn’t — we only scored six points. That’s what let us down. Every game is taken on its own merits. If we’d got things right offensively, we’d have been in the final. But again, that probably would have been too soon for us.
We’d won nothing in 19 years. We weren’t that far enough down the track in terms of development. It might have been too much, too soon. We were working on things and talking about things, getting up the field and supporting the attack. But we just weren’t far enough down the track to implement that.
The level of understanding wasn’t there. Our score average wasn’t enough that year. Our average was 12 points. The season after when we won the All-Ireland it was 17. So we went five points up on the scales because we paid attention to how we attacked.
Karl Lacey was a huge loss too to us at a vital time. Seeing a player of that stature coming off the pitch was a difficult thing for us. But that’s football and you just had to try to get on with it.
