THE LAST POINT: Killer instinct kills those without it in Croke Park
THE LAST POINT: A day in Croke Park is still a magical experience for reporters as much as players
Heading up the lift to the seventh floor and the press centre in Croke Park around 11.30 am last Sunday, I was a content man – covering Leitrim at GAA headquarters has always been a special treat, almost as much as it is for players to perform on the sacred turf! But to get to see a Leitrim team battle for a national title and then the Dubs face up to Louth in the All- Ireland Senior Championship, well, that made a good day even better!
I’m not sure there is quite the same sense of anticipation walking into Heartland Credit Union Pairc Sean Mac Diarmada or Glennon Brothers Pearse Park as you walk up Clonliffe Road, Jones Road or the NCR and see the imposing, almost sky-scrapping stands of Croke Park rising high above you. But then again, even as a young lad, the sight of Croke Park left me excited, awed, overwhelmed and maybe even a little scared and that was a Croke Park with a much smaller footprint than what the behemoth facility boasts today.
That sense of a special occasion was added to when the mother, in to cheer on the Dubs in spite of her Breffni blue heritage, spotted that in the programme that Michael Verney had quoted my column “Small ball disciples have their day in the sun” extensively to explain just what playing the Lory Meagher Cup Final in Croke Park means to Leitrim’s hurling community – the first, and most probably last, time I ever make a Croke Park match programme but it added an unexpected twist to the entire experience.
Some of the mythology that has built up around Croke Park comes with the history of the place – it wasn’t that long ago the events of Bloody Sunday 1920 were commemorated and many a player has seen their reputation rise or fall purely by how they perform in the cauldron on Dublin’s Northside. Even losing in Croke Park carries a different cache – the notion that you simply qualified to play in Croker bestows upon you some imprimatur of class, ability and achievement.
That’s quite a claim but when you see how Irish rugby stars reacted to playing at GAA headquarters when the Aviva was being rebuilt or the bubbling excitement of track & field stars when the GAA put on some special exhibition races – there is something about Croke Park, even on the days when it is nowhere near full, that adds an extra cache that comes as a result of Croker’s place in the folklore and history of Ireland’s sporting achievements.
Maybe it is the people make the place every bit as much as the imposing structures that soar into the capital sky – stepping into the press suite, I was greeted by three genial volunteers who were mad to chat and the fact that one of the three hailed from Sligo and another from Fermanagh, conversation turned to football in the Yeats County and along the Erne. Truth be told, all the volunteers in Croker came across as people who loved Gaelic games and loved being part of a big day at GAA headquarters.
I’ll be honest – there have been times it wasn’t quiet so harmonious, the lads controlling access to the dressing rooms in years gone by or those guarding the sacred sod have been a little sharp to county board officials or a well-known photographer acquaintance of mine but, all in all, they’re a group trying to do their job and a few of the officials went out of their way to get me out the tunnel and up the stairs to my seat for the Dublin game.
If I said that one team had the better of general play for 40, 45 minutes of their game, that they did so much right and, on the balance of play, were edging proceedings, you’d be hard pressed to know if I was chatting about the Dubs or the Green & Gold small ball disciples but the one thing both teams had in common was that the opposition knew how to exploit those moments that make all the difference
A few hours later, the excitement of Croke Park wasn’t quite the same after a battling Leitrim did everything in their power but just couldn’t match the strength in depth and, most importantly, the killer instincts of our Longford neighbours in the Lory Meagher Cup Final, truisms that were just as evident when the boys in blue fell victim to a more clinical Louth.
If I said that one team had the better of general play for 40, 45 minutes; that they did so much right and, on the balance of play, were edging proceedings, you’d be hard pressed to know if I was chatting about the Dubs or the Green & Gold small ball disciples but the one thing both teams had in common was that the opposition knew how to exploit those moments that make all the difference.
Four goal-saving stops were made by Johnny Maher between the Longford sticks in the first half – some were routine, two definitely weren’t but given the way Mike Wall had his team performing at the time, a single goal might have inspired the Green & Gold to victory in the manner that Reuben Murray’s snap shot did.
I’m not saying Longford didn’t deserve to win – they hung in there when things weren’t going well, they absorbed the loss of key players through injury and when the time came to strike, they displayed a killer instinct that Leitrim couldn’t muster. There wasn’t a hell of a lot between the teams, Joe Murray’s injury time goal perhaps a more accurate reflection of the game than an eight point margin.
One wonders what might have been had Daniel Miller been available – a cruel ACL injury ruptured not only his season but Leitrim’s! The Coolderry man would have been a handful on the wide open swathes of Croker. That’s not to say Leitrim’s players didn’t perform heroically – to a man, they hurled their hearts out, refusing to take a step back and battling to the end but in a contest decided by inches or moments of magic, losing an ace like Miller was a body blow.
The most immediate task now is to build on what Mike Wall and his team have achieved this year – there is a young cohort there and more emerging but ensuring quality game time and not only keeping the current squad together but expanding it is the task at hand. Strength in depth is key and if Leitrim can add a few more gems, it won’t be long before the hurlers are back in Croke Park.
Crucially, the harsh lessons of Sunday were already being absorbed in the minutes after the final whistle, players and management speaking of the need to be icy cool in their technical skills and decision making. That level of self-awareness so soon after the disappointment of losing a national final speaks of an ambition that will only be sated by success. So maybe Sunday wasn’t a bad day after all!