After the first Carlow SHC Final draw since 2011, who will take top honours this time out in the Replay?
2024 Carlow Senior Hurling Championship Final Replay Preview
By Leo McGough
Another high scoring shootout? Or a cagey tactical affair? Another sporting contest? Or a feisty tempestuous affair?
One suspects that, as often happens in replays, it will be both tactical and tempestuous. You can be certain that Mount Leinster Rangers manager Paul O’Brien and his selectors and St Mullins boss Tommy Buggy and his back-room team have spent much of this week formulating new plans, hoping that a tactical change here, a positional change there might make all the difference.
‘Hammer the hammer’ is bound to have been broached as a ploy in both camps. Last week Mount Leinster Rangers centre half back Kevin McDonald was the choice of KCLR Radio Man of the Match while the man of the match on TG4 went to St Mullins forward-cum-mid-fielder James Doyle. Personally I am not a fan of ‘man of the match’ awards and believe too much conversation after big games is taken up with who is going to win or who was awarded the individual award.
However last Sunday’s awards have done this previewer a favour by identifying each teams hammer! So will St Mullins, who granted him the freedom of the park in the first half last Sunday, deploy someone to play a spoiling game on Kevin McDonald, prevent him from instigating attacks? And will the Rangers prime a ’shadow’ for James Doyle to try deny him the space that saw him score six points from play in he drawn game?
Then you have Chris Nolan and Marty Kavanagh, the county team’s two marquee forwards, two men who by their own very high standards did not perform to the heights expected but who if judged as mere mortals did quite well.
Word was that Chris on his return from America was absolutely flying in a training match in Borris ahead of the final but there is a world of a difference between a training match and a championship match and Chris, remember, was playing his first club championship match in the county final. One expects that championship match will have brought him on and it will be a sharper Nolan we see in the replay.
Rumour has it that Marty Kavanagh was/is carrying an injury that is reason for his lower key than usual performances in semi-finals and final. However, he is, as everyone knows, capable of being a match-winner.
Another St Mullins and county forward recovering from injury is Paddy Boland. He was quiet enough for much of Sunday’s drawn game but two great catches late on yielded points from frees and Paddy too will be sharper from last week’s outing, and expect that he’ll be catching ball and making an impact earlier.
Donagh Murphy picked off four sweet points into the drawn game, have St Mullins a man to shackle him on Sunday? Eddie Byrne was flying at full-forward last Sunday, Paudie Kehoe eventually switched in to mark the veteran. Paudie’s also nursing an injury, will he start full-back this time?
And what about someone who saw no action whatsoever last Sunday having an influence next Sunday? We think in particular of Paul Coady, home from Dubai for a while, a little surprised he didn’t get a run last Sunday. Say maybe he was too. If Paul starts or comes on next week he’ll be mad for action and has proven in the past he can perform on the big day.
If St Mullins have a bolter from the bench it could be Oisin Boland, very impressive at mid-field with the Intermediates, well capable of hurling senior, has an energy about him that St Mullins could do with going down the home straight.
Energy could be a major factor in the St Mullins performance, or rather maybe the lack there of. Remember this will be their fourth weekend in a row playing knock-out hurling, their fifth weekend in a row altogether, one of those knock-out games going to extra-time. That has to take a toll on the body. Then again with a resilient mindset maybe the team can derive extra motivation for braving the ‘pain barrier’, breaching the ‘wall’ marathon runners talk about.
The plotting and planning this week will also take into account possible red cards and how to deal with the loss of a man or the use of an extra body. Paud O’Dwyer let it go last week, Patrick Murphy might plan to do the same this week but early exchanges could dictate that he change that tack and take control of proceedings. In that scenario someone could ‘walk’. And if you ‘walk’ this year and the game goes to extra-time your team don’t get to go back to the full number. So Discipline with a capital D is going to be decisive.
If it does go to extra-time, I hope we have a winner one way or the other. Don’t know if penalties are compulsory next Sunday if it’s level after extra-time but hope not. Winning a county final on the field of play should be about a hurling match not a penalty lottery.
Dare say it will be tight again, very tight, don’t rule out extra-time but Mount Leinster Rangers might just have that extra bit of freshness to bring the Willie O’Connor Cup home to Ballymurphy, Rathanna and Borris for the 12th time.
