Guest Blog: Observations of a Novel Weekend
By Declan Bogue
WELL, that was fun, wasn't it?
On Saturday afternoon as Fermanagh played Armagh, a thousand middle-aged men in were left wailing at the complications of technology as they begged their children to teach them all about the mysterious Goddess that is the BBC iPlayer.
When they eventually got plugged in and zoned out, what met them was one of the most atypical Ulster Championship matches. Fermanagh played to a rigid system that yielded the right result, aided by; 1) Armagh selector Paddy McKeever earning a red card for a needless shove on Fermanagh manager Rory Gallagher, thereby robbing them of a team 'runner' to pass messages onto the pitch. 2) The inability for Armagh to readjust their defensive shape after watching the home side sail through the middle channel for points from play having kept their wing-forwards hugging the touchline and 3) Armagh not scoring a point from play in almost an hour.
If you were looking for a cast-iron example of 'the modern-game' you couldn't have gone past it. Organised defences - well, one at least - attacking ploys and a small degree of cynicism (formerly known as 'cuteness' in the hands of Kerrymen) into the bargain.
It is said that this type of football is turning people off and attendances are suffering. However, if you take similar games 25 years ago, the raw data is interesting. It took two games to separate Fermanagh and Armagh in 1993, and the crowds in both Irvinestown and the Athletics Grounds on both days was 8,000.
On Saturday night, 8,421 souls made it into Brewster Park.
As a comparable game involving Tyrone, they met Armagh in the next round of that 1993 edition, with attendance reported as 15,000. On Sunday past, Healy Park had 15,029 in attendance.
Maybe it's something we will come back to revisit, but like a lot of the theories advanced by the Boring Old Farts club, it doesn't stand up to scrutiny and evidence.
Onto Sunday then and the rumours swirling around the whisper that Monaghan goalkeeper Rory Beggan had been in Healy Park on Friday evening sizing up the posts and practising his long-range freetaking.
How it came about was a sketch.
Minor manager Seamus 'Banty' McEnaney had put in a request with the Omagh St Enda's club for his goalkeeper Ryan Farrelly to get half an hour on the pitch. Along with Farrelly came the Monaghan minor goalkeeping coach to put him through his paces - one Rory Beggan!
Honest to God. You couldn't be up to them.
In this game and the league game between the two in Castleblayney earlier this year, Beggan has been the difference between the sides.
Allow me to add the detail. That Saturday night in 'Blayney, Monaghan won 0-15 to 0-14. Beggan scored one free in the first half and two in the second. His scoring contribution was decisive.
At Healy Park, he clipped over two frees in the first half and nailed two '45s' in the second half. In a two point win, again Beggan was the man.
The odd thing is however, just how compliant Tyrone were in all of this.
Asked directly if he was happy that a club in his county were facilitating an opposition player get a better picture of his surroundings, Mickey Harte answered afterwards, "I think that's fair enough. It doesn't matter what day he does it and what day he practises it. It's the day of the game that matters.
"He is doing this for a good while now, he is doing it in various grounds around the country and I have no issue with that at all and it is a credit to the capacity he has that he can hit those long frees consistently. It's a serious weapon to have in their team because there's four points that you might normally expect to get one of them if you are lucky, especially the distance you are kicking them from."
Let's set those quotes in some context. In the winter of 2012, Harte convinced Niall Morgan that his sporting future lay with Tyrone rather than Dungannon Swifts. Top of his list of attributes was his ability to kick long-range frees as an outfield player for his club.
But when he unleashed Morgan on the 2013 Championship in Ballybofey, he went through a nightmare. Jim McGuinness stationed three of his biggest players in Michael Murphy, Rory Kavanagh and Neil Gallagher in front of him with their arms vertical in the air to obscure the view of the posts, constantly encroaching on the permitted ten-yards space.
Morgan hit four wides and dropped another short, the confidence ebbing away from him and the team with every miss.
Back to last Sunday and on 42 minutes, Morgan is called forward to take a long-range free and it balloons wide. It is his 25th free in Championship and he has converted eight.
In a game of tight margins, Beggan proved the match-winner.