There’s no hiding place above in Croke Park. That’s what we always used to say.
You’d be half-messing, throwing it out there – you’d be off doing laps or something, some bit of grunt work that nobody liked doing. And to break the silence or kill the monotony, some fellah would take off the manager: “Remember now lads, there’s no hiding place above in Croke Park.”
And for all our sneering and blackguarding, it’s true. Croke Park on a big day is a merciless place. Nobody is going through the motions. Everybody is bringing it their full attention. You have two choices: either be the one who does his job or be the one who has a job done on you.
Dessie Farrell could tell you all about it after Sunday. The Dublin manager was standing on the sideline seeing his players make mistake after mistake and you were looking at him as he was thinking, “Christ, there really is no hiding place out there.” He must have been watching some of what was going on and nearly wondering who was in charge of this fiasco.
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Dublin broke the three-players-up rule three times and you could see that Dessie and Darren Daly were tearing their hair out on the sideline trying to get the players to be more mindful of it.
But you could also see that the Armagh players were policing it themselves. If you want to know the difference between a team that’s in a good spot and one that’s not where it wants to be then that’s it.
For the reality is that Dessie – or Kieran McGeeney or Pádraic Joyce or Jack O’Connor – can only do so much. Players have to take control of the thing on the pitch.
There’s little enough between the top teams in terms of skills, ability or conditioning – that definitely seems to be the case this season anyway. So in vital moments, it comes down to decision-making.
That’s why there are certain players whom managers want on the pitch. Jim McGuinness wants Michael Murphy there. Dessie wants Con O’Callaghan. Jack wants David Clifford. It became more obvious as the game on Sunday went along that Rory Grugan is that player for McGeeney.
Obviously, you want all you players to be good decision-makers. But when it comes down to it, certain fellahs carry that bit more credibility.
You have plenty of players who will go and kick a point then run back to their position happy that their job is done. Yet watch the likes of Grugan, Murphy and Con the next time there is a break in play. They never switch off. They’re the ones pointing to a fellah taking a sideline ball, telling him where the free player is. They’re the ones slowing the thing down or speeding it up, depending on what the game needs. They’re worth their weight in gold to their managers.
Donegal were 10 points up when Murphy came off against Cavan on Sunday and seven clear when he come off against Down in the Ulster semi-final. But he was on the pitch for every minute of the Tyrone match and stayed on well into extra-time against Armagh. Watch how long he’s on the pitch against Mayo – that will tell you how long McGuinness needs him to be orchestrating things.
Dublin are short on those players now. This happens in all sport when a great team falls away. The first to go are the most experienced guys, yet you’re usually okay for a season or two when that happens because the fellahs that fill in were champing at the bit for years to get their chance.
But the problem is that the wave that comes behind that isn’t as good. Also, because so many people have moved on, there’s a different culture now. Standards slip, no matter how hard everyone tries.
When you watched Dublin’s shooting the other day, that’s what jumped out most of all. They had 18 wides, they dropped a few short and hit the post as well.
What struck me about it was that they were making two mistakes that you never associate with Dublin teams.
The first was they weren’t steadying themselves to take their kick. Not everyone is a Bernard Brogan or a Diarmuid Connolly who could just stroke over a lovely score on the run without thinking about it.
But go back to when Dublin were in their pomp and watch the likes of Paddy Andrews, Dean Rock and these lads – they always took a split-second to get their technique right and to make sure they were balanced when they were kicking.
Some of those wides on Sunday from Dublin were from shots that were rushed or shots that didn’t have enough care taken over them.
These are good players kicking – the likes of Seán Bugler, Cormac Costello, Colm Basquel. But if they’re not making sure of straightforward chances like the ones they missed, it tells you they probably aren’t under huge pressure to keep their place in the team.
The other mistake they were making was rushing to try to kick two-pointers. In fairness, the Dubs aren’t the only team suffering from the two-point trap. Time and again, you see teams going for shots that probably aren’t there because they’ve fooled themselves into thinking that’s the only way back into the game now.
So many teams and players are rushing this stuff. Who is going to stop them? Not Dessie Farrell or Pádraic Joyce going mad 60 yards away on the sideline, that’s for sure. It needs to be someone on the pitch, someone with a clear sense of where they are on the pitch, what sort of time is left on the clock, who is flagging on the opposition side and who is the best choice for the shot on your own side.
That game sense has to come from the players who are deep in the middle of it all. It’s like the scene in Skyfall when James Bond is meeting the new Q in an art gallery. “Every now and then the trigger has to be pulled,” Q says. “Or not pulled,” Bond replies.
When it came right down to it on Sunday, Dublin weren’t that far off Armagh in general play. But the All-Ireland champions had Grugan making them tick, whereas Dublin were without Con O’Callaghan’s leadership and his feel for how to manage a game. And it showed.
