Semi-final Sunday: Monaghan's best kept secret

Maitiú Monaghan

Clammy overcast October Sundays are the perfect conditions for ‘Super Sunday’ in St. Tiernach’s Park.

Far from the most prestigious weekend of the year in Clones, semi-final Sunday is, by some distance, my favourite day of the footballing calendar.

The Ulster final is the biggest occasion, and the best spectacle. Fermanagh Street flooded with colour, fields filled with yellow reg cars, and the pubs overflowing with people.

Clones has a ‘look’ on UIster Final day, but it is a day when the club, the town, and the county are on ceremony.

You can’t fully sit back and take in the spectacle when you’re busy selling programmes, or pulling pints, or the countless other behind-the-scenes tasks that take away from the game.

Likewise, the County Final is a great advertisement for football in Monaghan, but the county is still on display. The big wigs from the national papers, RTÉ and the like will all be in town. It’s like micro-dosing the Ulster final, with a lot less fuss.

The final can also be a nervy affair, with teams playing on the edge, and sometimes can be more worried about losing than winning.

Semi-final Sunday is more like day two of a wedding. A proper celebration of Monaghan football, when only the truly faithful are there to see it.

As convoluted as the Championship structures can be at the times (five rounds of games to eliminate four teams), the cream generally does rise to the top.

And so, it did last Sunday, when the best that Monaghan had to offer was on display. Inniskeen were the sole representative from south of the county, Truagh and Scotstown are, of course, north Monaghan through and through, while Clontibret - well, opinions vary.

After last year’s game went to extra-time, there was a lot of interest in Scotstown vs Inniskeen. I suppose that’s why TG4 were in town.

The executives in the box must have been baffled when, with the players lined up and ready for throw-in, referee Niall McKenna darted off down the tunnel, seemingly with urgent business to attend to.

McKenna emerged back a minute later, holding up his whistle in celebration to the crowd. Never before has a St. Tiernach’s Park crowd cheered so warmly for a referee.

Still, the TV coverage took away from the atmosphere a small bit; there was a noticeably smaller neutral contingent than normal.

Some, I suspect, also wrote Inniskeen off before a ball was kicked. The Grattans weren’t great in their quarter-final win against Blayney and had previously lost to Scotstown in the group stages.

There’s also the small matter of Scotstown’s record in semi-finals. Since 2013, they’ve featured in all 14 semi-final Sundays, and won 14 times. I’m considering copyrighting the phrase ‘Scotstown Sunday’.

Andrew Woods very nearly made a mockery of my hypothetical business ventures. The Grattans man, closely marshalled at all times by Ryan O’Toole, was by far the best player across both games last weekend.

Missing his sidekick Seán Jones for most of the game, Woods carried the fight to Scotstown. His two goals barely scratch the surface of what impact he had on the game.

It is a testament to the quality of David McCague’s side that Woods, once again, ended up on the losing side. It does beg the question whether he is the best Monaghan club player to never win a Senior Championship.

The quality on display in the first semi-final was akin to watching two grandmasters play a game of chess.

Shane Hanratty (Inniskeen) has had some titanic clashes with Conor McCarthy down through the years and lined up alongside one another once more. Except that McCarthy clearly isn’t fully fit, and Hanratty was left shackled to a player who had a limited impact on the game.

The kick-outs were a fascinating battle, with Rory Beggan playing both the untouchable roadrunner and the Wile E. Coyote. The Scotstown man would thread his own kick-out into the tiniest gap in the Inniskeen press and then take up crucial space when it was Inniskeen’s turn to play out.

We got a flavour of what could have been when the Jones brothers came off the bench late in the second-half. Inniskeen looked down and out by that stage, before Conor smashed home a goal to set up a nervy finish.

But then Beggan boomed a kick-out to the opposite 65 where Jack McCarron was waiting. McCarron wouldn’t be known for his high fielding, but coming in clutch? Game over, see you in a few weeks' time.

Blitz

If the first semi-final was like watching Kasparov play Topalov, the second was a game of blitz, played on instinct at a million miles an hour.

Truagh and Clontibret finished with the six goals between them, although there easily could have been more.

As predicted by the Celt, Clontibret’s talented wing-backs Jack Brady and Charlie Mone were both brilliant, kicking three two-pointers between them into the Rosela Road end in the first half.

Elsewhere, Monaghan team-mates Ronan Boyle and Aaron Carey had a brilliant one-to-one battle, Truagh defender Boyle coming out on top in that one.

The most entertaining match-up was between Gary Mohan and Dessie Mone. Mone kept close tabs on Mohan for most of the first-half, but lost him once from a kick-out, and pulled the Truagh man back to prevent a goal-scoring opportunity.

Poor Gary was very upset looking. Clearly, he’d never seen the like of it before, and offered a butter-wouldn’t-melt look that, moments later, saw the boul Dessie booked.

Clontibret took Dessie off at the beginning of the second-half, and their defence parted like the Red Sea.

Gary, usually full of jokes in an interview, was all business when he spoke to the Celt at full-time.

It is no secret that he and Andrew Woods are very good friends. I wonder does he sense that this is his chance?

Sundays like that don’t come around too often.