Allianz National Football League Division One: Armagh v Donegal (tonight, Box-It Athletic Grounds, 7.30pm)
FOR the last while there have been threatening skies up in Donegal. Off the field, Karl Lacey’s departure as Head of Academy feels more like a tempestuous divorce with each passing day.
On the field, things aren’t much better.
Paddy Carr and Aidan O’Rourke have their hands full up in the north-west. Staying in Division One would be cause for both men to crack open the champagne come the end of the month, especially given the erratic form of the senior footballers to date.
There has been a lot of talk of the new management team trying to introduce more kicking into Donegal’s game.
For a team that has been so absolutely wedded to hand-passing their way up the field, sometimes back again, and definitely always side-wards, this is more than an adjustment or a tweak.
This is a major recalibration. A mental reset.
As a consequence, it has been hard to figure out exactly what Donegal are right now. But these problems just didn’t arrive at Carr and O’Rourke’s door once they were belatedly appointed as successor to Declan Bonner.
If you were able to construct a modern-day Gaelic football team, they’d very much resemble Donegal.
Big. Strong. Mobile. Full of footballers in every sector of the field.
And yet.
For most of Bonner’s tenure they were a team that were always less than the sum of their parts on big Championship occasions – and that was with the totemic Michael Murphy in their ranks before his retirement bombshell in November.
The Donegal faithful were already looking forward to Murphy prowling the edge of the square in 2023, maybe drifting out to the left flank and inflicting great harm to opponents.
To think that the big Glenswilly man is in the past tense is still hard to figure out when there was so much more left in him, albeit in a different role.
Whether it sounds a little mean-spirited or actually true, it does feel Donegal got Kerry at the right time of the year.
A rainy day in Ballybofey – does it do anything else in Ballybofey? – a fattened All-Ireland champion not ready for the winter rigors, Patrick McBrearty making a trademark run and hitting the winner on the opening day.
What followed was pretty bleak stuff as Monaghan and Tyrone swept Donegal aside, both by eight-point margins. Were Donegal as bad as those pair of performances and results?
They’d beg to differ after they decamped to sunny Letterkenny last weekend and eked out a share of the spoils with an off-colour Galway, minus Shane Walsh and Damien Comer, while they are still without McBrearty themselves.
Defensively, they were better and their turnover rate was impressive.
But they’ve a lot of convincing to do and are still relegation candidates alongside Tyrone.
The Division One standings also tells us that Armagh aren’t much better than tonight’s visitors to the Box-It Athletic Grounds.
But within their four performances to date that have yielded a measly three points – an away win over Monaghan and a home draw with Mayo – Armagh have been defensively sound, while at the same time trying to patch together a makeshift midfield in every outing due to absenteeism.
For all of the negativity that followed from their narrow defeat to Kerry in Tralee last Saturday night, Armagh were only a couple of ill-disciplined fouls away from taking at least a point back up the road.
Patrick Burns, ironically one of their most composed defenders in Armagh's ranks, gave away a cheap free on Dara Moynihan in the 59th minute and Ross McQuillan paid the price for a foolish off-the-ball push on Sean O’Shea on 68 minutes.
Burns and McQuillan’s indiscretions were like giving Kerry gulps of oxygen. Both frees were put over by David Clifford and Kerry had wrestled momentum away from the Orchard men and pressed for home.
Armagh’s forward line has failed to fire too. Rory Grugan is likely to remain out with injury and Rian O’Neill fluffed a couple of chances in Tralee that could have swung the game Armagh’s way.
Heading into tonight’s game, both sides have a number of issues that need addressing.
Armagh’s just look more fixable than Donegal’s.
