IT’S BURNS NIGHT IN ULSTER
Down boss sees his side put in a high-octane display to stun Monaghan and book a final spot
FOOTBALL’S sedate summer unravelled on a breathless evening at the Athletic Grounds. This result, seismic in terms of how it reduced the form book to a comic in the first instance, is magnified by the distance Down have travelled.
When they lost a second round Allianz League game, it took Éamonn Burns’ losing streak as a manager to 11 straight games – and extended the county’s black run to a 14th loss on the bounce. It all nourished talk that the Down manager might face the indignity of a midseason axing.
Instead, they managed to crawl off their bellies, avoid relegation to the League’s third tier and record a first Championship win over Armagh in 25 years, but even if their graph was on an upward gradient nobody outside their own dressing room saw this coming.
The perceived chasm between Down and last night’s opponents came with a big, ugly number – 19.
That was the difference between the teams when they clashed in last year’s Ulster battle. It was arguably Down’s blackest day – it also counted as a record all-time defeat – in their proud history and to flip that result amounts to one of the most staggering turnarounds that the modern game has witnessed.
Just eight of those players were in from the start last night which may go some way to putting some reason on this mid-summer madness. The pre-match assumption was that when this got down and dirty, it would play into Monaghan’s hands. However, Down played with the kind of abrasive edge that took the breath away.
That hard-nosed edge revealed itself inside three minutes, when Niall McParland – one of two prematch changes which also saw Peter Turley come in – took out Conor McManus with a reckless challenge.
But if they were hard in the tackle – and won the turn-over battle hands down in the first half – they were ice-cool in possession.
This looked set to go to script early on when Kieran Hughes, who took three breath-taking marks in the opening quarter, dominated at midfield and it looked ominous for Down. But Monaghan failed to capitalise with four wides, two apiece from Jack McCarron and McManus, in the opening seven minutes ensuring that it counted for little.
Down drew encouragement from that but even more from Hughes’ fading influence in the second quarter as the contest flipped their way.
They trailed by 0-4 to 0-2 after 16 minute, but bounded in at the shortwhistle leading by 0-10 to 0-8. There were a number of factors behind that resurgence but the main one being that they took control of the restarts, with half of their first-half scores coming directly from that source. Three of those came from their own kick-outs, where their pace – once more underlined by the explosive Caolan Mooney and man of the match Ryan Johnston – was a considerable asset, but it was the two points steered over by Shay Millar and Connaire Harrison which dramatically changed the mood music. It was not just that it gave Down the lead for the first time (0-7 to 0-5) but those points were bled from turning over Rory Beggan’s kick-outs – one of the central pillars of Monaghan’s game-plans.
It sowed such a deep seed of doubt that it would be ultimately decisive.
Playing into the wind, Monaghan needed to make the brighter start but within seven minutes of the restart they trailed by seven.
If goalkeeper Michael Cunningham’s converted 45 and Kevin McKernan’s sublime effort from play thieved a little of Monaghan’s lifeblood, it felt like an artery had been ruptured in the 42nd minute.
Beggan, mindful of those two turned-over restarts, went short but it was picked off by Niall Donnelly who was taken down by Colin Walshe.
Darragh O’Hanlon – who topscored with 1-5 from placed balls retained his composure to fire it hard down the middle past the diving Beggan, putting Down in the dreamland that was a 1-12 to 0-8 lead.
It would prove enough, but just enough as they lived here on shredded nerves against a Monaghan team raging fiercely against the dying light of their Ulster ambitions.
As Down sat deeper, managing just two points in the final 34 minutes of play, Monaghan pressed to gnaw at their nerves by reeling off five unanswered points with inevitably McManus, who kicked six in total, leading the charge as they cut Down’s lead to the minimum (1-13 to 0-15) with four minutes left on the clock.
That Down defied that momentum when they could have been left nursing a sense of grievance after replacement referee Paddy Neilan, who came on at the break for the injured David Coldrick, opted to disallow a scrambled goal after another Beggan error in the 70th minute.
Instead they endured six agonising minutes of additional time and with the final play of the game, they countered for Donal O’Hare to sweep over the insurance score as they set up a night to remember for their supporters and previously underfire manger. DOWN: M Cunningham; N McParland, G McGovern, D O’Hagan; K McKernan; D O’Hanlon, C McGovern (J Murphy 59), C Mooney (D McKibbin 66); P Turley (A Carr 68), N Donnelly; R Johnston (A Poland 68), C Maginn, S Millar; J Johnston, C Harrison (D O’Hare 54). ScOrerS: D O’Hanlon 1-5 (1-0 pen, 0-5 frees), C Harrison 0-3, K McKernan 0-2, C Maginn, S Millar, D O’Hare, M Cunningham (45) 0-1. WiDeS: (3) 6 FreeS: (5) 11 YellOW carDS: N McParland (3), D O’Hagan (32), C Harrison (35) MONaGHaN: R Beggan (C Forde); F Kelly, D Wylie, R Wylie; C Walshe, V Corey, K O’Connell; K Hughes, N McAdam (R McAnespie 41); D Hughes, K Duffy (D Mone 47), O Duffy (D Ward 47); C McCarthy (D Malone 56), J McCarron, C McManus. ScOrerS: C McManus 0-6 (3f), J McCarron 0-3 (2f), D Hughes 0-2, K Hughes, R Wylie, O Duffy, C McCarthy 0-1. WiDeS: (5) 8 FreeS: (5) 19 YellOW carDS: K Duffy (44) reFeree: D Coldrick (Meath, Replaced by P Neilan h-t)
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