JUST FOUR WEEKS ago, Monaghan were cut to shreds by a Derry team that looked capable on that particular day of anything.
The scoreline told one tale – Derry’s tally of 1-21 alone. But the damage was done in the way Monaghan struggled with the angles of Derry’s attack. Time after time, they found teammates with popped passes over a defender’s head.
The ‘Backdoor Cut’ has become the hipster tacticians’ flat white accessory of Football Season 2k23, replacing the squared handpass for a team mate to palm/throw the ball to the back of the net.
Derry used it to great effect in Omagh, so Monaghan were well warned.
Monaghan manager Vinny Corey, along with his brother and selector Martin, are thinking football men. They had to address this, so they stationed defenders playing just in front of their men. But also had a blanket of other defenders anticipating a ball over the top.
How successful that proved was borne out by the fact the only sniff of a goal came when Conor Doherty squared a ball a little too high for Chrissy McKaigue – yes, you heard right – to fist to the net.
Corey also recognised that evening in Omagh that time waits for no man. Their starting team was looking a bit creaky, with significant miles on the clock.
As a result, Darren Hughes and Conor McManus were left on the bench here. Prior to the game, Jack McCarron also joined them, his lack of pace being targeted by Conor McCluskey in Omagh.
The marking jobs were solid. The physical and eager Gary Mohan was moved to midfield to wrestle with Conor Glass. A mixture of Shane Carey and Karl O’Connell was the detail for Brendan Rogers and they went brave with Derry’s most prolific scorer, handing the task to young Ryan O’Toole.
Conor Doherty is somewhat unsung in the Derry firmament, but he is a force of nature who makes things happen. Usually. Instead, his evening was spent trying to swat the buzzing fly in the kitchen that is the perpetually moving Ryan McAnespie, freshly returned from a spell travelling in Australia.
One man wasn’t rested though. Karl O’Connell. It was he who stepped up and kicked his first point of the game in the 76th minute to tie up the matter.
“Listen, Karl has been brilliant all year. For a man of 35, he owes Monaghan nothing. To pull out a score like that in the 75th minute . . .” purred Corey.
“It wasn’t any old score, it was a big score to pull out. And they were a hostile support and plenty of noise. But what a player and what a season he has had. He deserves an awful lot of credit.
“He gave us a lot of energy in everything he was doing. He was matched with Brendan Rogers there. He gave a real power-packed performance there I felt throughout, as well as the equalising score. As I said already, he deserves great credit for doing what he is doing at this stage.”
As the game wore on, both Hughes brothers, Darren and Kieran were brought in for the final push. So too was Jack McCarron and, eventually, Conor McManus who had an involvement in the final move that brought the equaliser.
Asked why they didn’t get more prominent roles, Corey answered, “You have to balance all that up. We only get a week to prepare for the next game. So you have to manage all that.
“So you have to balance the whole thing out and we will see a lot more in those boys as the year goes on.”
Starting with Clare in Clones this weekend, one might assume.
As for Derry, a team who are destined for Ballybofey this weekend in the second round, their manager Ciaran Meenagh acknowledged the extraordinary times the Derry football team are living through over the past few weeks.
“It was a very difficult game, it was a game we were exceptionally worried about, the emotion of that Ulster final and the come down after that,” he said.
“The players have went through a lot and there has been a lot of emotion involved, and you have to take into account the Monaghan team, the respect we have for them, the warriors they have been for ten-plus years, that team.
“They were smart in how they set themselves up, they didn’t get caught like they did before, they gave themselves plenty of legs and then they gave themselves options off the bench. Look, hats off to them, they were always going to be a difficult task.”
Occasionally, Monaghan let themselves down when expectation is growing. But their supporters will surely make a greater effort to get to Clones this weekend after their response to the seven-point defeat in Ulster to Derry.
“You have to take your hats off to them, they deserve amazing respect,” added Meenagh.
“The manner we beat them in the last day and the way they dusted themselves down, they are a lesson to everybody in terms of how you come back.
“They have given their supporters great pride in following them for a long time. That was a wounded animal coming here today and it was going to leave them a difficult proposition and they will be a difficult for everybody moving forward.”