Harte and Co have zero margin for error
THE World Cup is a distant memory. The Pope has gone back to Rome. The kids are back at school and tomorrow afternoon, the curtain will fall on another GAA season, four months after it all began on the foreign fields of New York and London.
I haven’t known a football final like this one, with so many believing that it’s a foregone conclusion and that Dublin will carve their name in the history books with their four-in-a-row.
I have a bit of experience of what this day entails and there’s no match that surprises you as much as an All-Ireland final. Sometimes, it’s the players you have fretted about, and how they will handle the occasion, that turn out to be the stars of the day. And those expected to have an influence end up being cowed by the experience.
It is the unknown about tomorrow. Some players will step onto the stage and exert an influence on the game that nobody will have foreseen. That tends to be the way in All-Ireland finals. It is why Tyrone have a chance.
But it’s a slim chance. It is Mickey Harte who has to deal with the uncertainty of how his players will handle the occasion — with Cathal McCarron out injured, Colm Cavanagh is the only link to their last final in 2008.
Meanwhile, 11 of the Dublin players will be involved in their seventh All-Ireland final. Rookies like Brian Howard and Eoin Murchan have plenty of team-mates to ask for advice.
If Harte is to pull off the greatest coup of his management career, everything needs to go right for Tyrone and the Dublin machine has to malfunction. All the while, Harte has some big decisions to make before throwin tomorrow afternoon.
He needs to decide how to deploy his most important player: Cavanagh. He is almost like Cian O’Sullivan and Brian Fenton rolled into one. He did superbly in maintaining their tight defensive blanket against Monaghan, with a little help from Mattie Donnelly, but I think he should take Cavanagh away from the sweeping role tomorrow.
He is the Tyrone player bestequipped to neutralise Fenton and midfield is where he should be stationed. But Harte must decide then who he will use in the sweeping role.
And it is vital that Harte doesn’t simply utilise his best players to merely take out Dublin’s top individuals. For Tyrone to stand any chance, they need the likes of Donnelly, Niall Sludden, Peter Harte and Tiernan McCann to go for broke, to get forward and get scores.
Take last year’s final for instance. Lee Keegan was deployed to blot out Ciarán Kilkenny, which he did effectively but he also managed to get for- ward for a crucial goal.
Jim Gavin has the luxury of relying on tight-marking, sticky defenders — Jonny Cooper, Philly McMahon, John Small (who completely neutralised Peter Harte last year) — while his Rolls Royce footballers — Dean Rock, Kilkenny, Con O’Callaghan and Paul Mannion — can do serious damage up front.
Sludden has been a revelation for Tyrone this year, the highest scorer from play with 3-13. But Gavin has options to handle him in both Cooper or Murchan. Harte has to spread his main players more thinly and, in some cases, rob Peter to pay Paul as with Cavanagh,
But Harte has no other option. If Fenton, Kilkenny and James McCarthy — scorer of the vital goal in Omagh — get the freedom of the park, then it will be curtains for Tyrone, who need to find a strategy so that they are in front early on. If they are, they will have a fighting chance, especially if they can absorb Dublin’s usual onslaught after half-time.
If Tyrone are ahead at half-time, the first ten minutes of the second half will be key. Remember Dublin were only two points ahead of Galway at the interval before speeding away with a succession of early points after the restart. And McCarthy’s goal in Omagh came early in the second half.
Jim Gavin has argued that there was little between the teams in Omagh, but I contend that tomorrow is a vastly different setting and, judging by Tyrone’s action in narrowing the Healy Park pitch, Mickey Harte agrees with me.
The Dublin machine are much harder to contain in the wide open spaces of Croke Park. The Dubs will use the full width of the pitch to stretch Tyrone’s defenbustible sive system to breaking point, as they did in last year’s semi-final as they attacked right down the sideline of Cusack Stand at times.
Conor Lane and his officials will have a major bearing on the game, as I don’t expect 30 players to end up on the field at the end, if he does apply the rules to the letter of the law. I am expecting an intemperate, physical, com- and bad-tempered contest. Lane will need to exert his authority from the first whistle.
And it will be important that we don’t see any of the cynicism that marred the end of last year’s final or the final few moments of the semi-final between Tyrone and Monaghan. An early card, especially a red one, could have a major impact on the result.
But even if Jim Gavin’s best-laid plans go awry, he still has a plethora of options on the bench. This creates its own pressure for a manager. If they are spoilt for choice with substitutes, they always have to make the right choice.
He did this last year, when he brought Diarmuid Connolly and Kevin McManamon on at halftime. It’s not hard to envisage Cormac Costello coming off the bench tomorrow and scoring five or six points.
Harte has been judicious in how he has used his squad this summer too, deciding to finish the Super 8s encounter with Donegal with his strongest side, rather than starting with it.
But no matter what plan he has for tomorrow, I think it will come a-cropper. I don’t expect this final to be as one-sided as last year’s semi-final, but it won’t be as close as the match in Omagh. Dublin to cement their place in history by five or six points.
Harte has big decisions to make before tomorrow