GRUDGE MATCH
Both Glen and Kilmacud look to set the record straight today after last year’s ‘16th man’ chaos
IN A GAA calendar where the hurling and football senior All-Irelands took place back in July, this week felt like the new year had really started in earnest. At the Connacht GAA Air Dome on Monday, five brothers lined out for the Sligo hurlers in a provincial league fixture against Roscommon, a special family achievement. Take a bow, the O’Kelly Lynch clan.
At Austin Stack Park on Tuesday, the Kerry hurlers entertained Davy Fitzgerald’s Waterford and put up a respectable showing against their illustrious Munster opponents. On Wednesday evening it was the turn of the senior footballers of Kerry as Jack O’Connor’s squad took the first step to putting to bed the ghost of last summer’s All-Ireland final.
New York travelled across the Atlantic to play Leitrim while the Jim McGuinness era officially kicked off up in Ballybofey with a first round Dr McKenna Cup game. Leinster too saw plenty of action with every county out from Colm O’Rourke’s Tailteann Cup champions Meath to Derek Lyng’s Leinster hurling champions Kilkenny.
A neat total of 32 scheduled inter-county matches that pretty much covered this island and beyond.
And yet one game stands above all. A club football match. Kilmacud Crokes versus Glen in the AIB All-Ireland senior semifinal.
Arguably, what will transpire at Páirc Esler in Newry this afternoon will be up there – or perhaps a cut above – so much inter-county fare that will feature around the country, particularly as managers test the depth of their panel, try out new players, or allow some old stagers a rest.
What happened in last year’s All-Ireland club final and the whole appeal/no appeal to Crokes winning amidst chaotic scenes that included a 16th player on the pitch only adds another layer to it all. The Dublin champions are looking to use this as a platform to win back-to-back All-Irelands after a historic hat-trick of Leinster crowns. Glen are looking to win a first All-Ireland after their own unprecedented run of three Derry titles and back-toback Ulster crowns.
If this has been billed as its own type of grudge match, who really has the right to feel more aggrieved?
Crokes won the match on the field of play. The reaction of Glen manager Malachy O’Rourke afterwards was instructive. This, remember, was his gut reaction: ‘I can’t speak for the club or anything else but I don’t think that’s how the club operates. We had our chances, we gave it our best shot. Look, that shouldn’t happen. I can’t speak for the club but I just think we’ll accept we got beat on the day.’
That captured the sense of those in the press room – and anyone in the stadium watching on in real time. It was only really after, via television replay and social media outcry, that the question of a 16th player on the field and infringing the rulebook became a thing.
I later asked Jerry Grogan, the voice of Croke Park. He was the one actually calling out the substitutions over the PA system, as he has done for an age.
In the very real tension and chaos of the closing plays, he said there was no sense of the controversy that would unfold. Dara Mullin and Paul Mannion were both part of a double substitution in the last of three added minutes but hadn’t left the field, Mullin was on the line when the ball came in.
Ultimately, the whole controversy boiled down to an officiating error and allowing the dramatic late 45 to be taken while that was the case.
And the whole controversy around the final being replayed – or not – would have been avoided had a late, late goal attempt by Glen gone in. A year earlier, Crokes goalkeeper Conor Ferris had been painted by some as the villain of the piece after his turnover set in train the passage of play that culminated in Kilcoo’s winning goal into Hill 16 in that year’s final. This time he got down smartly to make a crucial reaction save from Conor Glass that led on to the controversial 45 and final Crokes clearance.
The goalkeeper himself recalled the save from Glass 12 months after that unfortunate turnover and its aftermath.
In the process he gave an insight into how a defeat can fuel motivation, saying: ‘Last year was one of the toughest days I’ve had ever. I said to [manager Robbie Brennan], I think it was a couple of months later, “Where is my silver medal? I want to keep that and put it on the mantelpiece so I see it every day and have the motivation to come back and go one further than last year.”
‘If you were talking to anyone, they’ll say the last five minutes of last year was in our minds coming up to the end. Two points up, it’s a dangerous lead. I’m still coming back down to earth. I’m over the moon. It’s a very hard thing to come back and win one.’
But that’s what Glen are now trying to do, like Crokes before them. Ferris’ words show how players find the motivation where they can.
The TG4 cameras are set up for this one for good reason.