THE LAST POINT: Delivering when the pressure is really on​

Over the years, I’ve often wondered what separates the greats of sports from the nearly great and the also-rans that make up the kaleidoscope of endeavours that we all love to talk about endlessly, obsess over and even get into arguments about. For some, talent is the determining factor, for others the physical gifts they’ve been lucky to inherit. More still go with the will to win, the manifestation of dreams through sheer hard work. Truth be told, it is all of the above but as the years pass by, I’ve come to regard one indefinable quality above all others.

​Simply the ability to deliver when the pressure is on – that sounds frustratingly simple, almost reductive; after all, isn’t that what all winners do, deliver when the pressure is at its greatest but the more I stew over the conundrum, the more I realise that this almost mythical ability to perform incredible feats of skill and endurance, to banish all doubts in a bizarre combination of grandiose self-confidence and unshakeable self-belief is almost Michael Jordan-esque, maybe even a little Messi-like.

Jordan was the man who defined the NBA, even more so than Magic Johnston, Larry Bird, Shaq, Kobe Byrant or even LeBron James. Many have surpassed his game-stats but if your life was on the line and you had one player to ensure salvation, Jordan was the man everyone looked to – his team knew it, the fans knew, more importantly, the opposition knew it and there was nothing that could be done. Jordan revelled in his status, not only the GOAT but the GOAT of the impossible.

That sort of a status is a burden but within every team, there is one person burdened with the expectation that when the fire is at its hottest, they’ll be the ones to put their hand into the fire and pluck victory from the flames – Tom Prior did a pretty passable Jordan impersonation in the drawn county final, particularly with the reports that the Ballinamore Sean O’Heslins clubman had been ill in the lead-up to the game. Prior had an almost supernaturally quiet game by his standards but was anyone surprised at all when he lashed the ball to the net to secure his team another bite at the cherry?

Barry McNulty carries that burden for Leitrim and Glencar Manorhamilton, an expectation that no matter the odds, we somehow expect him to deliver. It was the same for Muireann Devaney and Darren Cox in last weekend’s big finals, these two young players carrying a burden of expectation that would stun a team of oxen – by their standards, both had relatively quiet games but Muireann ended up with 11 points to her name, Darren top scored with 2-4 in the Men’s Intermediate Final.

Muireann’s sister Anna deservedly got the nod as Player of the Match in Saturday’s LGFA Senior Championship Final, Glencar Manorhamilton bloodlessly filletting a battling but outmatched St Joseph’s, but the nod could easily have gone Muireann’s way as she and Leah Fox pulled the strings in attack, carving open a tenacious Joe’s defence that just couldn’t cope with the volume of ball going into Manor’s forwards. For that matter, Leah Fox landed 1-4 and was also in the conversation for Player of the Match, Manor’s embarrassment of riches just too much for St Joseph’s to handle.

Not that he’d come out and say it but you got the sense that Darren Cox was mortified that he got the nod as Man of the Match in Sunday’s Smith Monumentals Intermediate Championship Final purely because he felt he never reached the standards he sets for himself, a revealing insight into what drives the young Leitrim star who probably isn’t anywhere near his best after a lengthy battle with two different injuries over the past year and a half.

Maybe that’s an insight into what drives those game winners to deliver time and time again when the game is on the line – Dromahair’s Cian McMorrow did as good a job as anyone in trying to quell the Annaduff magician but perhaps the effort caught up with him, injury forcing him from the contest and in his absence, Cox added two wondrous, intricate goals to his burgeoning collection of worldies in an Annaduff jersey. Safe to say, had anyone else scored those goals, those not being held to the standards he himself has set, they’d have been a shoe-in for Man of the Match and that’s why he got my vote.

That’s not to say that there weren’t other candidates – Dromahair’s James Clancy, Cian McMorrow and Oisin Conlon were very much in the running while Eoin Gill seemed to lift his Annaduff teammates onto his shoulders early in the second half when they looked somewhat lost in what they were trying to achieve. Jack Hughes was another to catch my eye with a hard working, unselfish display while Kyle Russell made a big impact off the bench, the epitome of a ‘super-sub’. And we can’t forget a combative Conor Reynolds who commanded the Annaduff rearguard with the sort of authority we have come to expect of him.

Although a young team themselves, Annaduff are that bit further down the line than Dromahair and when you have Darren Cox in your team, it gives you an edge others simply don’t have. Honestly, I expect big things from Dromahair in the years to come and not just because their Minors won a Division 2 Championship title on Sunday – they are ferociously competitive, very well coached by Kenny Casey and are only beginning to pick up steam, I suspect there is far more to come from them.

The question now is who will step up to the plate and deliver when the pressure is at its greatest next weekend in the Senior Final replay and the Fresh Today Junior A Final? For all our analysis of the teams and what might happen, we don’t truly know who will have the chutzpah to grab the game by the scruff of the neck and write their name into the annals of Leitrim club history.

You wonder if we will get a reaction to the open fields we witnessed in the drawn game, will it be a tighter, more contained game, heightening ever further, if that were possible, the pressure to deliver – that doesn’t have to a wonder goal, it might be an incredibly brave and foolish block, a fingertip interception or last gasp save but we will know it when we see it and that, for all the systems and structures, is truly the magic of championship football.