Down want to muscle their way to glory
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TOMORROW in Clones, Darren O’Hagan aims to be the first Down captain to lift the Anglo-Celt Cup since DJ Kane back in 1994.
But he’s more than just the leader of this team. O’Hagan’s spiky man-marking has personified the streak of naked aggression now running through the players.
Their forceful performance against Monaghan seemed to come from a group of players who were making their own personal stand against the cliched view that Down are simply a ‘nice’ football team
‘It probably would have annoyed us,’ O’Hagan admits of that perception. ‘Everybody knows Down for their football, and not their physicality.
‘But we are still nowhere near the most physical team in Ireland. We have upped it in the last two games, but if you look at Tyrone, you can see that their physicality is far more pronounced than us, they are a lot further down that road,’ added the Down star. However, O’Hagan and his Down teammates proved in the Athletic Grounds last month that they are well able to dabble in the dark arts of defence – and Monaghan were clearly shaken by it.
‘At the end of the day, a referee can flash a red card at you pretty quickly! So you can’t step over the line,’ the Clonduff native points out. ‘We play the game as it is played. It is physical and it is hard-hitting.
‘It is the way that Down used to play football, they were physical and in teams’ faces. They hit hard and played ball.
‘I don’t think we were too bad against Monaghan. They probably hit us as hard as we hit them. It’s probably something that has been lacking in Down the last few years, a bit of physicality.
‘I think we brought it to the table against Armagh aswell. It helps the team. A good hit or a good tackle is as good as a score at the other end.’
The 26-year-old O’Hagan was part of the panel when James McCartan led Down to an All-Ireland final in 2010. Now, he is established as the team’s main man-marker.
His remit for tomorrow’s showdown is simple. Shut down the opposition danger-man. So far this summer, he has managed to nullify Jamie Clarke and Conor McManus.
However, the thing about Tyrone is they don’t have one goto forward, in the mould of McManus. ‘It will be different,’ O’Hagan acknowledges. ‘The way they play, they get a lot of boys back and anybody can be a forward.
‘I have watched a couple of games with them this year and you can see Peter Harte standing at the edge of the square as the front man.
‘It all depends on what I am asked to do. If you are named to mark a man, you mark him but you have to play it as you see it on the pitch.
‘I will probably stay inside and at the end of the day, my job is to stay in around the full-back line. I wouldn’t have the best feet in the world going up the field!’
His brother Barry is the attacker in the family and it has been his rich vein of form in the full-forward line that helped transform Down’s fortunes in the spring.
He has missed the championship journey, though, after suffering a shoulder injury for Clonduff in a club game a couple of months ago.
‘Yeah, Barry’s gutted but after the Monaghan match, he was the first man onto the pitch to me. He was over the moon,’ revealed O’Hagan.
‘He is a Down man, at the end of the day, and he was thinking of the team, not himself. That’s the way football goes. Everybody gets injuries at some point.’
O’Hagan is a brick-layer by trade but also helps out on his family farm in Clonduff, where he and his father tend to more than 20 livestock.
‘It is something we do in the evenings. It’s a bit of a hobby on the side and something I like doing, to get out to the cows on a Saturday morning and a couple of evenings during the week.’
As if leading Down to their first Ulster final in five years, and tending to all the cattle, wasn’t keeping O’Hagan busy enough, he also has to plan his wedding this October. He is marrying Down camogie captain Paula Gribben, although he tends to avoid games of “show me your medals” with his fiancée. She has won a lot more.
‘Clonduff have won Ulster intermediate title and six club championships in Down. ‘They are a serious outfit. She would have a good medal haul and a couple of junior All-Ireland championships as well.
‘She gets the odd wee dig in about that!’ laughed O’Hagan. ‘I have a long way to go before I catch up with her.’
Darren O’Hagan may never match his fiancée’s medal haul. However, if he does bridge a 23-year gap back to DJ Kane tomorrow and become the 13th Down man to lift the Anglo-Celt Cup, he will at least have something to brag about on their big day this October.