Football

Monaghan will prove too good for Leitrim

Conor McCarthy took his chance in Waterford last week. Picture by Philip Walsh.
Conor McCarthy took his chance in Waterford last week. Picture by Philip Walsh. Conor McCarthy took his chance in Waterford last week. Picture by Philip Walsh.

All-Ireland SFC qualifiers round three: Leitrim v Monaghan (today, Pairc Sean MacDiarmada, 2.30pm)

IF there’s one virtue that Monaghan are not lacking in, it’s patience.

On occasions, it can be to their detriment. No better example of that than the Ulster semi-final, where the common post-match argument was that they should have pushed right up on Fermanagh and blown them out of the water before they had a chance to get their paddles set.

However, on other more numerous outings, it has been a source of strength. They’ve won Ulster titles off it, most notably boring Donegal half to death at stages in 2013 and 2015, switching the ball wing-to-wing, waiting for that half gap to open up.

It’s hard to know which camp that patience would fall into tomorrow. Monaghan took Waterford with a bit of urgency and the result spoke for itself as they found the reset button.

A mixture of the two may be required tomorrow. If you watched Leitrim’s win over Louth, you’d think Malachy O’Rourke’s side shouldn’t have much bother despite how that game panned out.

Up until the wee county had corner-back James Craven sent off needlessly not long before half-time, Louth had been the better side. For 20 minutes they found their inside forwards with an ease that Brendan Guckian cannot afford to see repeated this afternoon.

The red card swung the game on its head, with Leitrim hitting two precious scores just before half-time to cut the arrears to one. They’d already taken control of midfield but it became a total wipeout in the second half, with the powerful Dónal Wrynn particularly prominent.

With the spare man, they were able to press up and dominate, and Louth’s chins were slumped at their chests within 10 minutes.

It was a completely different style to how they’d played against Roscommon. On that occasion, they loaded the defence with huge numbers and set about trying to frustrate the then-reigning Connacht champions.

To an extent it worked, in that they restricted Kevin McStay’s side fairly well in the opening half. Only three of Roscommon’s nine scores came from inside the scoring zone in that spell, with their ability to kick from range creating the gap.

With the possibility that Kieran Hughes will again miss out because of a hamstring injury, and the likelihood that Conor McManus will stay inside, they will lack the shooters from distance to create a gap quite as comfortably as Roscommon did.

After the disappointment of the Fermanagh game, Monaghan set about tearing into Waterford early on. It wasn’t flawless, but it was at least ruthless.

They showed signs of their early season work in the way that they looked to kick the ball early and often, with Jack McCarron and Conor McCarthy showing well.

There were too many attacks that broke down with the lack of quality in the pass to the next runner, but enough of them stuck to comfortably make it the biggest win of Malachy O’Rourke’s time in charge.

He shook up his defence, with Kieran Duffy, Ryan Wylie and Dessie Mone all dropped, while Dessie Ward lost his place in attack. The impact of the changes is hard to gauge given the strength of the opposition, but they certainly didn’t seem to do any harm.

The big problem Leitrim have in terms of making this a game is that, if they play in that ultra-defensive fashion again, they lack badly for penetration on the counter-attack.

While they kept Roscommon to 0-9 in the first half, they scored just two points themselves, so the game was over by then anyway.

They were much more orthodox in their approach against Louth and that paid dividends for Damien Moran, who finished with 0-6, while Emlyn Mulligan ran the game from centre-forward.

Their three-man midfield of Adrian Flynn, Jack Heslin and Dónal Wrynn did their best work on Louth’s restarts after half-time, but that was largely down to having a spare man and being able to press up full-time.

You can’t imagine Monaghan kicking much 50-50 ball and you can’t imagine them having that much trouble defensively if Leitrim drop men back again.

And you’d think that they will do that, looking at Monaghan having put 5-21 past their fellow Division Four side seven days ago. Leitrim do have a bit of momentum but, whether it takes 15 minutes or 50 minutes to cut them apart, the Farney men will march on at their comfort.