GAA PAYING THE PRICE FOR SLOW RETURN
WE don’t know what we’ve got until it’s gone. In any normal season, the prospect of a League final would have nobody licking their lips in anticipation, so the clamour to see Kerry and Dublin face off in a League final was a little strange. I have played in quite a few Division 1 finals, I remember some of them and don’t remember others. But it was never a match to dwell on. Get it over with and move on to the real business of Championship.
If there had been a Division 1 final this weekend – in Thurles or wherever – the conclusions would have been the same irrespective of the result. It would have been shadow-boxing and nobody would read too much into it.
And I am not entirely sure what benefit it would be to Kerry to play Dublin twice within a few weeks. Maybe, if Peter Keane’s team does get to an All-Ireland final, playing them twice in one year is enough.
Having said that, I do think the absence of a Division 1 final on the GAA calendar has damaged the integrity of the League. If you start a competition, you should finish it.
I know there are exceptional circumstances this year, but there was absolutely no reason why they couldn’t have started the football League on the same weekend as the hurling. That would have given them plenty of time to finish the entire competition.
If the concept of joint-winners is one talking point, it has been overshadowed by another – the extraordinary amount of injuries over the past month. Mayo having to do without Cillian O’Connor for the summer has thrown this into sharper focus, but even before they were hit by that hammer-blow, the number of players on the sidelines was mind-boggling.
I did a quick list the other day, and it is by no means comprehensive. You had Cillian and his brother Diarmuid. Michael Murphy, John Small, Jimmy Hyland, Brendan Rodgers, Killian O’Hanlon, Cathal O’Mahony, Ciarán Sheehan, Darragh Canavan, Ronan McNamee, Aidan Forker, Eoghan Bán Gallagher, Ben Brosnan. Bill Maher, Robbie Kiely and Ciarán Brady.
Maher and Kiely are key to how
Tipperary play and you saw how they struggled without them, dropping into Division 4, as did Cavan who were without Brady.
Have players been pushing themselves too hard in an effort to get up to speed? It’s funny, I am over a club team in Kerry and the amount of injuries we have had in the past few weeks in extraordinary. And I am not flogging them or driving them hard. I am trying to ease them back gradually. That problem is magnified at inter-county level.
The AFL have had a similar injury crisis. I remember reading about six weeks ago that there were 72 different players out injured in one particular week in the AFL. They were blaming the shorter pre-season and condensed calendar that went with the pandemic, and it has played a part over here, too.
The way it is looking now, a team’s luck – or otherwise – with injuries will dictate their summer wellbeing. It is difficult to see Mayo getting back to an All-Ireland final having lost a player of Cillian O’Connor’s calibre. His loss is simply too great. It is the equivalent of Kerry losing David Clifford.
O’Connor is that important to his team and while James Horan has unearthed some quality young forwards, it is asking a bit much for one of them to step into his shoes for the Championship.
I wonder if the GAA should have allowed inter-county players back a little bit earlier, two or three weeks earlier. It is easy to say now, in hindsight, but it is obvious that trying to play catch-up on the training field has taken its toll. On almost every squad.
And because Croke Park insisted on retaining a knock-out Championship for a second year, wrongly in my view, there will be a temptation for players to play through an injury. That’s a risky business.
But imagine you are Michael Murphy and you are carrying a niggle ahead of Donegal’s game with Tyrone. As it is knockout, both player and manager might feel that playing through the injury is a risk worth taking.
Donegal probably benefited from Murphy’s injury in the League, as it allowed others to step up such as Paddy McBrearty and Michael Langan. That was especially the case against Armagh who I feel are
‘THE LOSS OF O’CONNOR IS SIMPLY TOO GREAT FOR MAYO’
one of the more interesting teams around this summer.
Again, the condensed calendar has done Kieran McGeeney and his team no favours. Armagh would have really come on with a full League programme, giving promising young players, like the O’Neill brothers, seven games of Division 1 football. That is what they should get next year after staying up.
But if their luck holds when it comes to injuries, Armagh might be a major player in Ulster this year, although making any predictions about the season ahead is a fraught exercise, given players are continuing to break down.