LAST UPDATE | 19 Jun 2023
ONE THING HAS become abundantly clear over the last couple of months. Nobody is winning the Sam Maguire or the Tailteann Cup with their face unmarked and jersey nice and pristine.
This is a gruelling, damaging slog towards the cups and whoever gets there in the end will deserve it. Here, we look ahead to this weekend’s games.
All Ireland SFC
Galway v Mayo
Prior to the weekend, you’d have been looking at the various group stages and the natural conclusion to draw was that Sam Maguire would eventually wash up west of the Shannon.
The one blot between them was Mayo’s loss to Roscommon on Easter Sunday, that coming gift-wrapped with a user-friendly excuse that it was a mere seven days since the league final win over Galway.
Their recovery was confirmed with victory over Kerry in Killarney and a grinding win over Louth.
Galway’s own form ran along similar lines. A league final, a breeze through Connacht and then went into the last round robin top of their group.
Last weekend however, dredged up all sorts of strange Juju and ghosts of non-performances past.
And so the season boils down to this. Their third meeting this year with one draw and one Mayo win. Will Damien Comer, Dylan McHugh and Sean Kelly all be out on the field? Now, or never.
Donegal v Tyrone
Let’s go back a decade ago, and a tale Sean Cavanagh tells of the Tyrone team bus coming over the bridge from Stranorlar to Ballybofey. By the side of the road, a Donegal fan is holding up a door, yes, an actual door, so that the Tyrone players can read the daubed writing; ‘Out the backdoor for Tyrone.’
After losing to them in 2011 and 2012, Mickey Harte arrived with a brand new weapon in Niall Morgan for long range frees, but Donegal made a nuisance of themselves and destroyed his confidence on the way to a win.
The meeting in 2015 was summed up with Stephen O’Neill’s sprint and charge at Neil McGee, intent on inflicting maximum damage. He merely bounced off an unsuspecting McGee, summing up the relationship they had back then.
At times, both of these sides have been glancing over the shoulder, waiting for the towel to be thrown in. Miraculously, Donegal are climbing out what was a wreckage of a season. This is exactly the draw to quicken the heart rate and, having escaped an execution last weekend, Tyrone must feel the walls closing in.
Kildare v Monaghan
Two teams that show remarkable similarities, not least in their records this year. Monaghan and Kildare both won won three and lost four of their league games.
They both won their opening provincial championship game, before losing the semi-final to the eventual winners.
In the group stages, they drew a game, won a game and lost one.
The Kildare formline is most bizarre and inconsistent. Against Derry in the league earlier this year at Newbridge they appeared a complete shambles. And yet in their league meeting and Leinster semi-final matches against Dublin there was clear evidence of significant improvement.
Beating Roscommon is an incredible injection of adrenalin for them. But the night before in Omagh, Monaghan turned in their usual passive display they are so prone to whenever they are fancied by losing to Donegal and coughing up home advantage for this round.
Does an unexpected win have more of a positive effect than the feeling a team can get from feeling their cheated themselves?
Cork V Roscommon
Anyone following Cork’s labouring progress in trying to get daylight between themselves and Louth in the opening round in Navan, might have felt that the two points hard-earned that evening would be enough for them to squeeze through.
Nobody expected a win over Mayo. Even though a Mayo collapse has become a hardy perennial, nobody seems to notice it until we are right in the middle of the meltdown.
All of that strips away the credit for Cork and their management team, headed up by John Cleary, who have had a difficult and often baffling season.
With their draw against Dublin and ten point win over Sligo, Roscommon’s gallop is once again halted when it appeared they were the real deal. Now they are left with an enormous task at hand.
Tailteann Cup semi-finals
Down v Laois
Sometimes in our search for a deeper meaning around a team performance, people pick up on a tactical tweak or a slight change of shape and exaggerate it to batter a theory into place.
Other times, the energy within a group just naturally changes and the cause can be something indescribable. That’s how it feels for the counties of Down and Laois as they head to Croke Park.
Both teams finished third in their leagues on ten points – Laois a rung down the ladder in division four – and had a sugar hit of an opening championship win before reality bit hard in the next round.
Drawing with London and the surrounding criticism Laois suffered, inspired them to a win over one of the tournament favourites, Fermanagh. Down will be fancied, but complacency can arrive undetected, like a cat burgler.
Meath V Antrim
After pouring so much of himself into the Meath job for so many years, Andy McEntee would always have always aspired to this day happening, however difficult it might be.
In any season, Antrim are due a wobble. A chronic lack of confidence means it is almost an annual certainty. The thing is, they usually start the season on the straight and narrow and when the pressure comes on, they tend to fold.
That wobble however, came early on in the season when they threw away commanding positions in league games against Down and Fermanagh, followed by that 31 point defeat to Westmeath.
Since then, their consistency has arrived and McEntee’s tendency to favour big men feels revolutionary in Antrim.
The chastening lessons of the league and Leinster championship loss to Offaly has been bruising for Meath, but their reaction in winning all three group games and a 14-point win over Wexford has them strong fancies.
