Dessie Farrell made it official on Saturday night – John Small won’t be returning to the Dublin fold unless there’s an emergency and they have to break glass and go looking for him.
“Yeah, John is unlikely I’d say. The lads are always ... If you had a serious bout of injuries or whatever, I’m sure they wouldn’t see you stuck. From their perspective, I think a lot of those lads are Dublin football, nothing. They’ve considered the situation and decided it’s time to hang up the boots. We wish them well.”
It means that of the vaunted ‘93s’ who were so central to Dublin’s greatest team, only Ciarán Kilkenny remains. Kilkenny, Small, Paul Mannion, Brian Fenton and Jack McCaffrey were all born in 1993 and all came through the ranks playing against each other from an early age. In 2014, the latter four combined with the ‘94s’ – Cormac Costello, Davy Byrne, Niall Scully, Robbie McDaid, Conor McHugh and Eric Lowndes to win the under-21 All-Ireland. Kilkenny missed that year with a cruciate.
Small walks away with seven senior All-Ireland medals, countless leagues and Leinsters and yet, jarringly, only one All Star. He was nominated four times but his only gong came in 2020. Small was exactly the type of player every other county hated but would have adored had he been playing for them and dearly wished they had a few of.
For someone so beloved in the Dublin ranks, one All Star seems a little light. Malachy Clerkin
Harte doing his part
Mickey Harte is at it again. Only a couple of months after taking on the role of joint manager alongside Declan Kelly in Offaly, Harte has the Faithful County on the verge of promotion from Division 3. Offaly’s win over Kildare on Sunday has put them within touching distance of Division 2 football.
But Harte is no stranger to such early-season bumps. In fact, it has become something of a trend. In his first year as Tyrone senior football manager Harte guided his native county to the Division 1 league final in 2003 where they beat Laois to capture the title.
Harte was appointed Louth manager in November 2020. In the Covid-impacted 2021 league, he managed the Wee County to promotion from Division 4 in his first season at the helm.
He then moved to Derry in September 2023 and the following spring Harte led the Oak Leafers to a Division 1 league final win over Dublin.
Offaly now look set to become Harte’s latest league success story. Gordon Manning
Expansion tactics
Limerick checked out of the hurling league on Saturday with a beaten-in-the-fight first-half performance that is against their religion. John Kiely insisted afterwards that they would have been happy to accommodate a league final in a fortnight, but he also said that having only one match in the next month will give them a chance to get “substantive” work done before the championship. In the league, every outcome has more than one emergency exit.
With the championship looming we’ve reached that phase of the competition where we try to work out who used it best. Even before last year’s league final, it was obvious that Clare were in front on that score. This year? Limerick will be thrilled with how they’ve managed their squad and expanded their roster of viable starters.
In the four league games so far, 26 different players have appeared in their starting 15, with another four squad players making an appearance off the bench. When they were in a dogfight against Cork they used six subs, only two of whom were established players.
More importantly, they came up with solutions. Barry Murphy is now an option in the Barry Nash role, if they choose to play Nash at wing back. Colin Coughlan started four consecutive games at wing back for the first time in his Limerick career and, after a very long apprenticeship, he looks to have gained some trust.
Aidan O’Connor has stepped up as first sub for the half-forward line in the absence of Conor Boylan, who has taken a year out to go travelling. Shane O’Brien is nailed on to start in the full-forward line, while Seamus Flanagan struggles for form and Peter Casey continues to recover from injury. Adam English looks a certainty at centrefield too.
It is not inconceivable that Limerick will begin the championship with three or four players who didn’t start in Croke Park last July. Above all else that is what they needed from the league. Denis Walsh
Still on the move
Last Tuesday morning, word filtered through that all six rule adjustments put forward by the Football Review Committee (FRC) were passed by Central Council, essentially coming into immediate effect from Sunday’s sixth and penultimate round of the league. Plenty of high stake games so.
These included the adjustment to the clock/hooter regulation, so the end of each half would only be confirmed once the ball went out of play, thus clearing up a lot of confusion and frustration.
The adjustments also confirmed that four players from each team must now remain in their own half at all times. The goalkeeper would still be able to move out past the halfway line provided there were still four of his team-mates behind him. On a similar note, teams who lost a player to either black or red cards also have to retain three players in the opposition’s half.
This adjustment was essentially viewed as eliminating the 12-on-11 scenario, where the goalkeeper could become an additional attacking player for the team with the ball, and one of the main complaints about the new FRC rules in the first place.
There appeared to be early evidence that teams would no longer be taking any chances with their goalkeeper under this adjustment when Armagh dropped their roaming goalkeeper Ethan Rafferty shortly before their game against Kerry in Tralee on Saturday. It certainly hindered Armagh’s attack as Kerry ran out 2-21 to 0-17 winners.
So to O’Donnell Park in Letterkenny on Sunday, where Tyrone’s Niall Morgan clearly didn’t get the message, frequently roaming out of his goal as if nothing had changed. Tyrone did have to adjust to keeping four men behind him, yet Morgan’s influence on their attacking game was still significant, and he finished with 0-5, including two two-pointers.
After Donegal reduced the gap to just four points with 20 minutes remaining, Morgan chipped in with a free to give Tyrone some breathing space, and further highlighted his role by claiming a high ball out the field, Seanie O’Donnell finishing that move which out them seven in front.
Rory Beggan, incidentally, had a similar role in Monaghan’s convincing win over Meath, further evidence that that roaming goalkeeper will still be an attacking option for teams going forward, even of the attacking advantage has thankfully been eliminated.
No wonder Morgan spoke afterwards about his relief the FRC didn’t rule the goalkeeper had to stay in his own half at all times. Tyrone meanwhile have kept alive their hopes of avoiding relegation, a win over Dublin next Sunday ensuring their top flight status for another year. Ian O’Riordan
Monaghan continue to pack a punch
Monaghan manager Gabriel Bannigan was asked about the impressive win over Meath and whether there was a ‘job done’ sense about the likely imminent return to Division 1. The manager was cautious.
“In my first year as manager, and I genuinely mean this, I didn’t set a target of going back up. My main objective was to get the panel fit and to get them playing well so that’s why we were focused on performances.”
It hung like a spectre over the sentence beginning, ‘my main objective’ – you almost expected him to cite avoiding relegation as the season’s priority,
For more than a few, that must have been on their minds when last year’s manager Vinny Corey left suddenly and unexpectedly – followed by the retirement of Conor McManus, one of the contemporary game’s greatest forwards.
Bannigan, one of Corey’s selectors, stepped up without fuss – a huge contribution to his county, which had been through a virtual hiring fair the last time the position had been vacant.
Just as the top of Division 1 triggers metaphysical debates over what counties ‘want to be’ in the league final, the equivalent angst in Division 2 is whether it’s in a county’s best interests to go up.
Anyone watching them at the weekend would conclude two things about Monaghan: the new rules are suiting them well and their high-end pace, decision making and accuracy may give them no guarantees about surviving at the top but every chance of being competitive.
They have also been gradually reassembling their best panel, as players return form injury. As an attacking force in the top half of the league, they sit second behind Division 1 leaders Galway as top kickers of two-pointers – 24 to 27 so far – and second to the most prolific goal scorers, Kerry – 11 against 13.
Their scoring total to date, 170, is by far the biggest in the whole competition.
The county hardly needs any further tributes about how effectively they manage consistently to situate such a small population, 65,000, at the highest levels of the game, but since the league went hierarchical 18 seasons ago, Monaghan have played in Division 1 for 12 of them; in all probability that will soon be 13 out of 19. Seán Moran
