THE LAST POINT: Mind over matter can still make the difference
THE LAST POINT
A long, long time ago, when I was still fleet of foot and covering long distances at varying degrees of speed, an old coach of mine used to say the difference between winning and losing was 90% mental and 10% physical. That supposed that everyone in the race was operating off something approaching a level playing field but you get the drift – the power of the mind often overcomes limitations and drives one to previously impossible feats.
No prizes for guessing what’s on my mind this week – I imagine the thought is rattling around the brain of all Leitrim GAA fans right now as how does one, in the parlance of the State Exams, compare and contrast what the Leitrim Men’s team produced in two wildly fluctuating halves of football last Saturday in Heartland Credit Union Pairc Sean Mac Diarmada. Lest anyone think I’m forgetting the women this week, the same conundrum applies to the County Senior Ladies footballers who booked their place in the TG4 LGFA All-Ireland IFC Quarter Finals; but not without performing their mental gymnastics in Ederney St Joseph’s in Fermanagh.
‘Mind over Matter’ we all know – most of us understand that as using the power of the mind to overcome a seemingly impossible situation but the official description of the concept is illuminating and maybe offers an insight into us Leitrim folk. According to Google, ‘Mind over Matter’ is the psychological and philosophical concept that the human mind and willpower can overcome physical obstacles, pain or limitations. It emphasises using mental focus and discipline to control or alter physical reality. I don’t know if that is quite what happened in Pairc Sean and Ederney but I’m sure sports psychologists would have a field day analysing just what occurred in both venues.
The dichotomy between Leitrim’s first and second half displays in Pairc Sean is the ultimate example of what I’ve come to call the “Leitrim Mission Impossible” effect, the miraculous fightback from an impossible position that you should never have been in the first place. Unfortunately, the ‘Leitrim Mission Impossible’ doesn’t end with Tom Cruise smiling ruefully at how close we’ve all come to disaster but rather with Leitrim players and fans wondering what the hell happened!
Cast your mind back to Salthill 2008 or Tuam Stadium 1996, Leitrim in an impossible position in both games and suddenly a team falling apart throws caution to the wind and tears into Galway, leaving one wondering what might have been. Five years later, 2013, a year seared into the county’s Hall of Infamy and Leitrim trail London 2-10 to 0-2 at halftime only to launch a furious fightback that hauls the Green & Gold within a point.
But, and we saw this in 2017 when the County U21 trailed Galway by 18 points at the break only to lose by four points, once we got within touching distance of victory, on slammed the breaks and with it came wides, mistakes and hesitancy, second guessing as players who couldn’t miss when we were ten down, couldn’t hit a barn door when an equaliser was on the line.
If you could sum up Leitrim’s awful first half last Sunday – and it was awful – wides, mistakes and hesitancy do a pretty good job. Unfortunately, I’m old enough to remember the last time Leitrim went scoreless in a half of inter county men’s football – back in March 1999, Leitrim and Offaly combined to score a grand total of two points in the first half, both of which were registered by the Faithful County. The second half was a barn-burner compared to the first, the game ending 2-4 to 1-2, but that day was the end of Peter McGinnity’s short reign.
The difference last Saturday was Leitrim restored their honour in the second half, outscoring Wexford 1-12 to 0-5 and leading many to utter those dreaded words - ‘what if’. What if we had scored a few points in the first half ….. what if, what if, what if! I’m sick of what if and if I’m being honest, Leitrim’s fightback was facilitated by the Model men deciding to hold onto what they had rather than drive on.
The harsh truth is had Wexford not built up such an incredible first half lead, they’d have played a different game – the loss of captain Eoghan Nolan hit them badly as he was their ‘Barry McNulty’ but for all of Leitrim’s raging against the dying of the light, and there was much to commend in their stubborn refusal to lie down and die, there was a definite vibe of Wexford managing their way to the final whistle.
My theory is, in that terrible first half, Leitrim didn’t exhibit the same anger or ferocity they’d show in the Carlow game and it took the brutal realisation that they had failed to score in an entire half to jolt them into a furious fightback in the second half.
Making sense of that is almost easier than figuring out the Ladies’ varying form against Fermanagh on Sunday. Clearly up for the task in hand, they had 2-2 on the board inside the first six minutes but only managed two solitary points for the rest of the half. Strangely, it took a yellow card to jolt them into life – once they were down to 14, hey presto, a Leitrim goal and two points! It was almost as if the threat the Erne women posed woke something primal in the Green & Gold and, boy, how they responded.
If that isn’t hard enough to unpack, they did the exact same thing later in the game when Anna Devaney picked up a second yellow. Just over 12 minutes left on the clock, Eimear Smyth tapping over a free to leave just three points between the teams meant momentum fully with Fermanagh. So no surprise then that Leitrim kicked into high gear – literally two minutes after the dismissal, the ball was in the Fermanagh net and, with that, the game was over, Fermanagh broken mentally as they tried to engineer a goal they never looked like getting.
Two different games but with very familiar psychological responses from Leitrim teams; that when their backs were to the wall, when caution had to be thrown to the wind and it really was ‘mind over matter’, they unleashed something primal and almost uniquely Leitrim. If we could bottle that and produce it, without the disasters of failing to score or conceding a mountain of scores, Leitrim will truly be on to something.