Dubs blind to 20-20 visionof theirrivals

PádraicJoycegambledbystarting both Shane Walsh and Damien Comer. Dessie Farrell weighed up the odds and frontloaded his team with James McCarthy, Paul Mannion and Jack McCaffrey. “You’re a genius when it works out and you’re a clown when it doesn’t,” Joyce remarked.

“There was no point in us having a bench full of Damien Comers and Shane Walshes, and then bringing them on and trying to chase the game from seven or eight points down.”

For the next 12 days at least, the Galway boss will be Pádraic Einstein – even if, when it came to starting strategies, both managers adopted a similar approach to a quarter-final that now threatens to mark the definitive end of a glorious Sky Blue epoch.

You know the drill. History is written by the winners; beaten champions surrender the copyright. Delve a bit deeper, however, and you’ll discover a subtle difference in the selection conundrums facing Joyce and Farrell last Saturday.

Deficit

Galway had depth where and when it mattered. At rio of subs, Cein D’Arcy, Johnny He aney and To mo Cul ha ne, conjured three of their last four points to turn a one-point deficit into a famous one-point triumph.

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. D’Arcy was introduced earlier than expected because of Seán Kelly’s latest setback in a depressing injury cycle. Culhane, who had butchered a great chance to cement victory against Armagh two weeks earlier, came on after 65 minutes when Walsh hobbled off … this time he bulls-eyed what ultimately proved the winning point.

For the gazillionth time this season, Joyce was forced to juggle wounded resources. But as the majority of those injuries heal (cue the spectacular weekend renaissance of Cillian McDaid), there is now a massive dividend for management.

“He’s our leader,” Joyce said of Kelly, “but it’s a pleasing thing for me as [the] manager [is] that we can just make a change, Cein D’Arcy can come in and there’s nothing affected. That’s probably a byproduct of us having injuries at the start of the year, we’ve developed our squad an awful lot … we have 26 lads now and when you look back at the bench behind you, they can all make an impact.”

By contrast, a Dublin dressing room celebrated during the Jim Gavin era for its legendary bench press got a minimal Plan B return amid the unfolding crisis. Instead of introducing a fresh Mannion and flying McCaffrey (as Farrell had done to telling effect in their previous stalemate with Mayo), he had to look elsewhere as both had been called ashore.

The 48th-minute withdrawal of Mannion raised some eyebrows, especially among the 20-20 hindsight brigade when they had no left-footed freetaker for a crucial deadball attempt missed by Cormac Costello’s right boot.

McCaffrey’s initially buzzing influence had long started to wane before his 59th-minute exit – no surprise given his disrupted game-time since coming out of inter-county exile.

All of which meant that Dublin’s ‘finishers’ (a term favoured by Gavin to describe his array of super-subs) weren’t as strong as their starters. Farrell’s bench chipped in with a Ross McGarry point but also a couple of panicked turnovers. Then again, the same luxury of options is no longer available to Farrell; hence the gamble of starting with his strongest team, on paper.

This theme was echoed elsewhere over the weekend. It’s not that Kerry’s subs made all the difference against Derry, but they made more than enough.

The raw talent that is Cillian Burke gambolled to telling effect from the left wing. Killian Spillane sniped a pressure point with his first play. Dylan Geaney followed up with another.

For Derry, a game best forgotten craved fresh impetus off the bench. Their starting 15 looked in oxygen deficit late on, which was no real surprise (whether you blame the extra-time melodrama of Mayo, the residue of a full-throttle league, or all the negative energy expended during a chaotic championship). Mickey Harte brought on four subs. None left any imprint.

And so the stage is set for an intriguing semi-final weekend on July 13-14. The

league final trailblazers – Derry and Dublin – are gone. All four survivors share a trait that wasn’t always so obvious: Kerry, Armagh, Galway and Donegal now possess genuine 20-man squads.

Kieran McGeeney’s Armagh revolution has been a decade-long grind, and the manager admitted after Saturday’s 2-12 to 0-12 win over a misfiring, 14-man Roscommon it was “probably our worst performance in Croke Park”.

But one thing you can’ t deny is Ar mag h’ s capacity to shake things up. Stefan Campbell has been held back as a half-time impact sub in their last two games. This regular starter duly provided amid-game spark against Galway (when he fisted that priceless late equaliser) and Roscommon (with 0-2 when the game was still tight).

Deep options also meant McGeeney could replace talisman Rian O’Neill, after 49 minutes, with his brother Oisín.

As for Donegal, one transformative season into the second coming of Jim McGuinness, it’s hard to reconcile that fans once fretted about how they could possibly cope once Michael Murphy retired.

Murphy, the pundit, must marvel at how his old team has evolved into an amalgam that can punish you from anywhere. They had 11 different scorers against Louth, including two subs.

Curiously, Ger Brennan’s Louth subs chipped in with 0-5, the highest-scoring return of any bench over the weekend. However, two of those five came from Ciarán Byrne deep in injury time – the game was already long lost.

Overall, losing subs contributed 0-9 from play in the four quarter-finals, matching the tally of winning replacements. Dig under the bonnet of that crude metric and you’ll find Armagh, Galway, Donegal and Kerry have panels built to last 70 minutes.

For once, Dublin didn’t.