WEEKEND TAKEAWAYS
As the Allianz Football League takes a final pause before it hits the business end, Mail Sport casts an eye over the state of affairs...
1 HARTE WINNING THE NUMBERS GAME
After a nine-game winning streak, Mickey Harte’s perfect start came to an end at Celtic Park on Saturday night but he did not have to look too far for consolation.
It can be taken as a measure of Derry’s scorching start to the spring that Harte could afford to pull up the handbrake so early in the campaign without even putting the prospect of his team’s place in the League final in jeopardy — four wins on the bounce will do that for you.
Harte will be happy with the compelling evidence that under his short watch, he has turned a team into a genuine squad.
That was ultimately their Achilles heel under Rory Gallagher and Ciarán Meenagh; when the need was greatest the bench offered far too little, something which was painfully exposed in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final defeat. Back then, they struggled to absorb the loss of Pádraig McGrogan in the opening minutes with his replacement, Pádraig Cassidy, subsequently benched.
The sense is that come the summer, they will be in a better place. Already, Derry hace used more players (26) after five rounds than they did in the entire League last season when they used 25.
More to the point, 24 players have started in those five games and while that figure is inflated by the wholesale changes Harte made on Saturday — starting just eight of the team that defeated Galway the previous weekend — the fact that they were competitive against the All-Ireland champions says so much.
Of course, circumstances had forced Harte’s hand -— not least the injuries picked up by Ódhran Lynch and Gareth McKinless in round two against Tyrone — but they have absorbed those losses in a manner they would not have been able to last year.
Diarmuid Baker has slipped seamlessly into the defence, and has thrived in all the five games he has started, while Cormac Murphy’s direct running has given the attack a dimension they did not previously possess.
Add in the return of the tried and tested Emmett Bradley and Derry now have gone from having the bare 15 to a bench that will offer game-changing options down the road in summer.
2 O’HANLON SET FOR BACK-UP ROLE AGAIN
The sight of Brian Howard making his first start of the year and Paul Mannion on the panel last Saturday night will ensure all eyes are on the Dublin team bus to see if Stephen Cluxton is on board when it pulls into Salthill in a fortnight’s time.
If so, then the only place David
O’Hanlon will be looking is over his shoulder.
The Na Fianna man has started in Dublin’s last 13 League games; the kind of run that ordinarily should make him a shoo-in to be the starting goalkeeper come the Championship.
But right now he is in pretty much the same position as another second-choice goalkeeper, Caoimhín Kelleher across the sea, doing everything that is being asked of him in the knowledge that when the main man comes back, it will not be enough.
And O’Hanlon has been excellent again this spring, providing control off the kicking tee while showing that he can be an option with long distance placed balls — he has scored in four of his five games to date.
He is also a fine shot-stopper, though that is not reflected in the stats which reveal that in his last 15 competitive appearances, he has been beaten 16 times, with just two shut-outs.
That is more a reflection of how Dublin play, pressing high to put pressure on the ball which leaves the kind of space that presents goal opportunities. However, the fact is that on his return last year, Cluxton was beaten just once in eight Championship games.
While Kelleher has the option of moving on, O’Hanlon will have to play the waiting game until 42-year-old Cluxton calls it a day.
3 MONAGHAN HAVE A PATHWAY TO ESCAPE
History informs that the last team you should ever make assumptions about in the spring is Monaghan.
Once more, like so many times over the past 10 years, they look doomed. In the absence of Rory Beggan, they have lacked control and are leaking like a sieve.
They have conceded 11 goals and have the worst defensive record — conceding in excess of 21 points a game — across all four divisions.
That would suggest they have little reason for hope, but they may yet have a chance.
For starters, the returns of Conor McCarthy and Conor McManus at the weekend might just give them the fillip they need to finish strongly and, significantly, they can still see a pathway to survival.
They face a must-win game against Tyrone in Omagh when they return, and while they will go into that game as outsiders, they are hardly no-hopers.
Tyrone could be missing both Peter Harte and Conn Kilpatrick after they limped out of their defeat to Kerry at the weekend, while the Red Hands’ secondhalf performance was so poor that if Monaghan can bring their ‘A’ game, they could repeat their Ulster Championship success in Omagh last summer.
And they will host a Mayo team whose minds are likely to have already drifted to the Championship in the final round.
For anyone else, it would represent a long shot, but in the hands of Monaghan it becomes doable.
4 DOWN AS GOOD AS UP
Down’s visit to Mullingar when the League resumes in a fortnight’s time will be hyped as a defining game in Division 3 between two teams boasting perfect records.
The reality may play out somewhat differently. Down are simply in a league of their own. They have found the net 10 times, and their scoring average is close to 22 points per game, while their average winning margin is running at just under 10 points a game.
Down are a Division 2 team operating in a lower tier, but not for much longer.
5 MORAN UNDER PRESSURE
When Andy Moran took the job as Leitrim manager, it was inevitable his appointment would be viewed in the context of being a prospective Mayo manager at some point in the future.
That is still some way off — autumn of 2026 at the earliest — but it is beginning to feel longer by the day for Moran,
After an encouraging first season, last year’s disappointment was encapsulated by a humiliating defeat to New York in the Connacht SFC, which meant winning promotion from Division 4 is now his only measure of achieving something tangible in what is the final season of his three-year term.
After losing to Longford, his team are now one of four locked together on six points — along with Longford, Wexford and Carlow — and a trip to Portlaoise next up to take on runaway leaders Laois, Moran could be running out of road on all fronts.