Blood, sweat & CHEERS

IF Monaghan can bottle what Darren Hughes has got, Tyrone won’t know what’s hitting them.

One of the most experienced players in Malachy O’rourke’s panel, the always committed midfielder holds his ground on a series of issues as he contemplates Monaghan football’s biggest day in 30 years.

The Farney men are into the All-ireland semi-finals for the first time since 1988, when they lost by 11 points to Cork – the same summer they beat Tyrone in the Ulster decider. And Hughes is on the front foot as he tackles a number of perceptions he insists are wrong.

First off, the idea that if Conor Mcmanus (below, scoring in Omagh) isn’t firing, Monaghan are in big trouble.

“Let them write away, we know what’s happening inside the camp,” he said. “You look back through the stats, we’ve had 10 or 11 scorers a lot of the days we go out. Lazy journalism again, it is, let them at it, it does us no harm.

“Everybody thinks we’re a one-man team.”

Monaghan did what they needed to do in Galway a week ago and beat the Tribesmen to reach the last four.

Talking to several players afterwards, the coverage of their failure to kill off Kerry the previous week clearly rankled.

“There were a lot of people writing us off but we knew we had enough in us to go to Galway and get a result,” Hughes said. “People say we choked against

Kerry. We had three points on the board, it was in our hands against Galway – if we performed we’d win, if we didn’t we’d be out. At the end of the day, we performed.”

David Clifford’s late goal had secured an unlikely point for Kerry in Clones – and the Farney men’s character was questioned.

Having lost at the All-ireland quarterfinal stage in three of the previous four years, some doubt could have crept into the Monaghan camp when Kerry snatched a late goal and a draw in Clones. Not so, stresses Hughes, who smiled as he recalled the reaction to the David Clifford goal.

“Rory Beggan hitting me a slap on the back of the head and telling me to get up the field, the game is not over yet,” Hughes said. “We’ve been around long enough now to react to those kind of situations. Ah, it didn’t take a flinch out of us, seriously.

“Malachy came in with a big smile on his face, ‘That’s great boys, three points on the board after two games – we’d have took that a couple of months ago, we’ll go to Galway and win’.

“That was it, tunnel vision from there on. We knew Galway might be a bit soft, they’d a game the next week either way.

“We were cock-sure going to Galway we were going to win. We were 100 per cent sure, we had the work done.”