Dublin closed out a thrilling All-Ireland football quarterfinal weekend with a massive and penalty-aided comeback to beat Galway Sunday afternoon in Croke Park, 1-25 to 1-21.
Galway was up by six points with just 15 minutes left on the clock. But the game turned Dublin’s way when Galway defender Liam Silke was assessed a black card for fouling on a goal-scoring opportunity. Veteran Dublin forward Con O’Callaghan banged home the penalty shot to knot the score, and his team never looked back. Galway, forced to play a man down for the game’s final 10 minutes, never scored again.
The win could be seen as sweet revenge for Dublin manager Ger Brennan. He’d been handed a stout 12-week suspension in March following a donnybrook between Dublin and Galway during a National League match in which Brennan was red-carded for shoving Galway’s strength and conditioning coach Cian Breathnach McGinn. The squad was spiraling downward in the preliminary rounds of the county tournament with Brennan shelved and Dean Rock, a mainstay player on the dynastic Dubs teams of the last decade, forced to serve as interim manager. Brennan was back on the sidelines earlier this month for Dublin's overtime upset of pre-tournament favorite Donegal to reach the quarterfinals. And now they played avengers for him against Galway.
Dublin goes on to face defending All-Ireland champs and historic overdogs Kerry in the semis. The Kingdom overcame pesky Tyrone and their supersub Darren McCurry on Saturday evening at Croker in a cracker of a match, 2-25 to 0-27. The scoreboard distorts just how nip and tuck the proceedings were, all because of McCurry, who hit 0-10 while playing only the last 25 minutes of the game.
Tyrone had a chance to come all the way back, after McCurry was awarded a free kick down two points with a minute left. Yet McCurry for some reason opted to just take a single point instead of attempting a tying two-pointer from behind the arc. He made his free to bring Tyrone within a point, but was quickly made to regret that decision to not go for two as Kerry won the subsequent kick out and got a last-second but meaningless goal from Armin Heinrich for the final margin. Kerry will be going for their 40th All-Ireland Senior Football Championship, a mark none of the other 31 counties comes close to.
The sentimental favorite of the semifinal squads is surely Mayo, which punched its semis ticket on Saturday by outworking Cork, 0-23 to 0-18. This year’s green-and-red squad is indeed green, featuring Can’t Miss Kid Kobe McDonald. The 18-year-old forward, a son of Mayo’s long-haired legend Ciarán McDonald, has lived up to billing in his first year with the senior football squad. But the drama surrounding McDonald centers on his decision to sign with the St Kilda Saints of the Australian Football League. See, while Gaelic football stars are as popular and beloved as anybody in Ireland, by rule they must stay amateurs and can't get paid. David Clifford, the legendary Kerry forward and LeBron James of the sport, teaches phys ed to pay the bills. If McDonald stands by his decision to move Down Under, his Gaelic career could end as soon as Mayo’s next loss.
Mayo has not won an All-Ireland title since 1951. According to a legend that every man, woman and child in Mayo can recite, a priest put a curse on the team that year because its players disrupted a funeral on their way back from Dublin while celebrating the last championship. Whether the curse is hokum or not, the losing skid is very real.
The hopes and dreams of the entire county are now riding on McDonald and his mates.
To even make the final, Mayo will have to get past Louth. Turns out playing shorthanded is not always the death sentence. In the other quarterfinal played earlier on Sunday at Croker, Louth was a man down for nearly the entire match but stunned Monaghan, 0-27 to 2-18. The team from the Wee County had earned its first All-Ireland semifinal berth since 1957.
Louth midfielder Seán Callaghan earned a red card just over six minutes in for KO’ing Monaghan's Oisín McGorman with a heavy shoulder to the face. Monaghan was itself a bit undermanned, with goalie and inarguable squad leader (and NFL kicker wannabe) Rory Beggan ruled out at gametime with an unspecified injury, forcing youngster Jamie Mooney, a captain of the county’s Under-20 Monaghan squad, into his first All-Ireland senior start.
The game ended when a last-gasp attempt at a tying goal from Monaghan was cradled by Louth goalie Niall McDonnell and the hooter sounded. McDonnell was identified during the GAA broadcast as “the milkman from St Fechin’s.” That’s not a nickname. He’s really a milkman.
The All-Ireland football semis will be played July 11th and 12th at Croke Park.
