The 16th Man

BEING MAGNANIMOUS in defeat is difficult but Kieran McGeeney did it with grace on Sunday evening following Kildare’s loss to Down.

Being magnanimous in victory can sometimes be equally as trying but like most things this year, James McCartan was able to handle it with a perfect air of humility and earnestness.

Asked how he felt in the immediate aftermath of the rollercoaster ride that was Down’s semi-final victory over Kildare McCartan responded with his usual candour.

“Relived,” he said. “With seven or eight minutes to go and we’re six points up we had hoped to close it out from there but typical Aidan O’Rourke and Kieran McGeeney they kept coming and coming and Hugh Lynch stuck over a couple of wonder scores and the goal came. We were hanging on a bit towards the end but obviously the ball hit the crossbar, it could’ve gone anywhere. We were just relieved to see it stay out.”

On further reflection McCartan admitted that he thought Down did just enough to win the game. He said,
“We played poorly for the first quarter. We probably needed Benny’s goal to kick start us. I felt that we won the second quarter and we won the third quarter. We were in the process of winning the fourth but then the last eight minutes it was all basically one-way traffic.”

“But it did feel, similar to the Down teams that I played in, that we were still a scoring threat. When the ball went up we were still creating chances and we missed them. There were a couple of goal opportunities we could have taken points from. ”

“At the end of the day the odd score here and there against the run of play pushed us over the line.”
The frenetic ending to the game meant that one team was going to go home disappointed and while ‘wee James’ may be glad that it was not his side ruing a missed opportunity he admitted that Kildare can feel rightly gutted to fall at the penultimate hurdle.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel for some of those boys in there (the Kildare changing room) but I don’t want to be patronising either. It was a difficult place to go into but it was obviously harder for them. They’re a broken bunch at the minute but they’ve the right men in charge and they’ll show their quality. Johnny Doyle, Dermot Earley and those boys deserve an All-Ireland medal and All-Stars. But we think we’ve a couple of men that deserve them as well,” he added.

McCartan admitted that Down may have been lucky to ride the Kildare storm in the dying seconds as well as getting the benefit of the doubt for a goal that perhaps should have been ruled out as a square ball. He gracefully accepted those little mercies. He said,

“Obviously, we got the rub of the green with the last free-kick. I’ve always said I’d rather be a lucky manager than a good one. “

McCartan may be that but he is also a quality manager as well and he will need all the skills he has honed so far this year to overcome a Cork team hotly tipped to win the All-Ireland title in little under three weeks’ time.
“I’m not sure how many finals Cork have been in over the last number of years but it’s certainly more than us so that’s another uphill task there,” McCartan surmised.

It means that Down must defend a proud record of having never lost in an All-Ireland final but McCartan admits that the weight of history does not hang heavily around his team’s neck. In fact, the Mourne boss maintains that he would rather see Down lose but be back as a force in the coming years than win and fade into obscurity for the foreseeable future. He said,

“I’d gladly lose our record if we knew Down were going to be competing at the top table on a regular basis. If somebody said to me if winning against Kerry would mean it’d take another 16 years to get back here I wouldn’t be too happy about it. We want to be here year in year out. It’s easier said than done. We’re in a final now.”
Finals historically mean victories for Down but parallels with previous Down sides have no bearing for the current Down boss.

“History is meaningless to these bunch of guys. There’s a group of people of a certain age it means a lot more to. We would like to create our own piece of history.”

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