A dull, boring match that pretty much summed up the 2024 championship in Gaelic football. When great All-Ireland finals are being talked of in years to come, this one won’t get a mention.
It was modern-day Gaelic football at its very worst, Gaelic basketball I call it – without the shooting and the scores.
And just to back up my argument, here is the damning evidence of how brutal it was and how far removed we are from what the game is supposed to be all about.
There were 14 kicks in the entire game that went into the forward line – in the 77 minutes played – and eight of those went astray. Does anyone wonder why this game is called football? There was a reason why, but it seems to have been forgotten.
We had the lowest number of turnovers in a final, a mere 20, ten on either side. Why? For the very simple reason that there was no contact, no physicality, no man-on-man challenges.
The two original objectives or fundamental principles of the game were catch and kick and the contest for possession. They seem to have forgotten those two aims.
And it gets worse. I took note. After one minute, 29 players were in one half of the field. By the second minute all 15 Armagh players had retreated inside the 45 and that was replicated for the entire game.
The first kick at goal came from Paul Conroy after two minutes and nine seconds. This was after a long period of Galway possession which involved 37 passes, 32 by hand, and they went over and back, and over and back, until eventually Conroy shot over the bar.
And spare a thought for the endangered species otherwise known as those long-suffering players in the inside forward line. You would get more space in the middle of the dance floor in Coppers on a Saturday night.
The stats say it all. The six players who started in the full forward lines scored one point between them. Hand on heart, I think I paid more attention to a seagull during the first half than the game; it was that mind-numbing and boring.
I actually googled ‘Are seagulls intelligent?’ and according to studies carried out by the University of Sussex, seagulls are remarkably intelligent. And this seagull – who appeared to be slightly injured – had figured out that half the field in Croke Park was empty, a safe haven, probably the only empty green space in Dublin, and he decided to make hay while the sun shone.
Isn’t it a sad reality that the number one trending item in Ireland at that time was the seagull during the All-Ireland final? Not the match.
In defence of the game, it improved slightly in the second half and in the last 20 minutes a football match actually broke out. And believe it or not, for the last six minutes the excitement had us on the edge of our seats, not because of the quality but because of the closeness of the exchanges.
All-Ireland finals define teams, define players. There are heroes after last weekend and sadly a lot of fellas painted as villains, particularly in maroon. But the winners get to write the history. And in years to come when you look at the results it will say Armagh won. It will not say anything about it being a bad match or Galway being unlucky losers.
I tip my hat to Armagh on winning a second All-Ireland. Nobody would begrudge them a second title. Well done.
Let’s have a closer look at the winning and losing.
If someone told you that that Armagh would win an All-Ireland scoring 1-11, create one goal chance, that their starting six forwards would score four points from play and that in the last 30 minutes they would score only two points, it would be hard to imagine Sam Maguire heading North.
But I suppose the half-time stats said it all; they had 34 per cent possession and it was a drawn game at six points all. That speaks volumes.
Ok, we can talk about the team’s resilience, we know that is there, we have seen it all year. I must focus on how great their defence was. It was a hard watch, parking 15 inside the 45, but they all knew their roles.
That’s 14 clean sheets in 17 league and championship games. Their defence was impressively disciplined. Only in one game this year have they conceded four scored frees. In the final they gave up two scored frees.
They set up defensively and played the game from start to finish on their own terms.
There are other elements. The McGeeney factor, an inspirational figure in charge. A very talented backroom team made better by adding Conleth Gilligan this year which was probably the missing piece of the jigsaw because their transition play, in contrast to Galway’s, was so good and quick. They mined 1-8 out of 1-11 from kick-outs. The individual heroics that often define All-Ireland success were there in abundance.
Joe McElroy’s block down on Conroy, and Ben Crealey’s turn-over on Cillian McDaid, were two examples. Their impact from the bench was also evident, and certainly better than Galway’s, notably Soupy Campbell’s assist for the goal and Oisín O’Neill’s point.
Their counter-attacking threat from defence was also telling. Barry McCambridge had already scored 2-4 in this championship, and he added a point, while Aidan Forker kicked a point, and full-back Aaron McKay got the goal. Most amazingly, when we look at the attack, they won without scoring a free. That must be a rarity.
The two stats that stand out are that Armagh in the third quarter had a 100 per cent conversion rate, and out of nine shots in the second half they scored six.
That is the reason why they are the winners, in marked contrast to their opponents’ inefficiency.
And that brings me to Galway. This will hurt. Because this was a game that was there for the taking. This was, sadly for them, a game that they blew.
It is in their attack where they fell down, their Achilles heel. With 64 per cent possession in the first half they went in level at the interval.
They had just a 52 per cent scoring efficiency – which is one out of two. They had 26 shots at goal, seven more than Armagh. They converted just 33 per cent of their frees – that is junior B standard – and they scored 0-13, that is woeful, with nine wides and three shots into the goalie. And in their last nine shots they scored just two of them. They had 16 shots at goal in the second half, scoring seven.
Why so bad? First of all there was no penetration to their attack, the build-up play was too slow. Too much lateral short passing, all played in front of a packed Armagh defence. Not asking any questions of Armagh, no running at them, no getting into pockets of space. The Armagh defenders got an easy ride, they were never troubled or asked serious questions.
We already quoted the long passage of play before Conroy’s first shot and that pattern continued to the very end, right up to Dylan McHugh’s shot off the upright. That came after 27 passes when time was running out, when you would expect they would have a set play to get their best shooter on the ball, like all great teams.
Instead, the ball ended up with the wing back who kicked off balance with the outside of this foot.
Perhaps we should have seen this coming. The London game aside, they averaged less than 16 points a game in the championship this year and in five of the seven games they got no goal. In the All-Ireland final, they didn’t even look like scoring a goal.
Armagh must have been laughing all the way back to Crossmaglen because Galway got sucked into playing the game on their terms.
The expected big game we thought would come from their star forwards never arrived, with Damien Comer and Shane Walsh subdued. Ok, maybe they had injuries, but Comer has gone three championship games without getting a score. In an All-Ireland final an All Star forward had one shot at goal. Walsh had seven shots at goal and got 0-1 in return.
Galway’s Shane Walsh had a tough day at the office and didn’t deserve the despicable abuse he received on social media. Photo: Seb Daly/Sportsfile
As an aside, the abuse Walsh got on social media was despicable – no amateur player deserves that. We seem to forget these are amateur players. The abuse he got over last few days was savage and unforgivable.
Now to Galway’s game management, which had been so good, I even mentioned it last week; this time it deserted Galway. This is what the pressure of an All-Ireland final brings, it is an entirely different pressure. Some rise to the top, but the expectation swamps many players and it swamped Galway last week, especially in the closing stages.
Look at Shane Walsh’s attempted score from a mark. This is what pressure does to you. This was bread and butter for Walsh and he dropped it into the goalie’s hands, the pressure translating into a lack of conviction. A second example would be where Connor Gleeson, who came up to kick the winner in the Connacht final, was never brought up to try any of those frees at any stage.
Their last four shots showed fear and lack of conviction. Three were short and one was blocked. That wasn’t a skill execution issue, that was lack of composure.
Finally, it is going to be a hard one to take for Galway. Sport is cruel. There is a thin line between winning and losing. There is a thin line between a hero and a villain.
In the final at Croke Park, Galway fell on the wrong side of that thin line. They probably shouldn’t have. They have nobody to blame but themselves. It is awful to lose a close game because you can point to an individual error, a refereeing mistake etc. A hammering means everyone is to blame. This will be a hard two weeks for Galway footballers.
They can take some heart by looking at the victory by Armagh and the resilience they’ve shown to come back from so many setbacks. But it is a long road ahead for Galway football. There will be a lot of mental scars to heal. And there is no quick fix.
My best wishes to Jim Gavin and his committee – they have a lot of sorting out to do.