MOSTLY FOOTBALL: This wasn’t a classic but Castlerahan won’t care

Workmanlike champions got the job done, writes Michael Hannon.

The Senior Championship final wasn’t the classic that 2018 served up but Castlerahan will care little about that as they became back to back county champions with this two-point victory over Ramor. 
Donal Keogan’s side made three changes prior to throw-in, one of which was dictated by injury as midfielder David Wright was replaced by Fergal Flanagan. 
Wright’s loss was evident on the kick-out battle that ensued as the Ballyjamesduff side never really got their claustrophobic pressing game in full swing. Part of that was also down to the execution of Ramor goalkeeper Liam Brady on his restarts, which were excellent throughout.
The opening 22 or 23 minutes of this final were extremely cagey. On one side we had Ramor, conceding all the kick-outs to Castlerahan and then looking to press man-to-man high up the field. 
As the ball got worked up the field, Ramor would find themselves dropping deeper and deeper so that at times they ended up with more or less everyone back inside their own half. So they were hard to break down, but they were also left with no option but to run the ball whenever they won a turnover. 
But then how many turnovers were we actually seeing? Very few. That’s because Castlerahan were determined to keep the ball out of contact. However, with every Castlerahan run made being tracked, there seemed to be endless passages of play where the ball went round and round and round and nowhere at all. 
Players just popped the ball from one to the other as they kept it away from a Ramor tackler. What the game needed was line-breakers and from Castlerahan's perspective, they can thank Cian Mackey, Cormac Daly, and their corner-backs Stephen Cooney and Enda O’Connell for providing most of that in the first half. 
Outside of that quartet there seemed to be a safety-first approach from most of the team with regard to possession. Keeping the ball out of contact is great but a team adopting that principle of play needs runners coming off the shoulder. 
Castlerahan didn’t offer enough of that for long periods of this game. Ramor's good defensive play was being somewhat undone by poor shooting at the other end. They really should have been in front by the 15th minute but instead found themselves 1-0 to 0-2 behind after Oisin O’Connell had earlier walked the ball into an empty net after he had forced a turnover high up the field. 
Ramor would end up shooting 13 wides to Castlerahan's three and in a two-point loss it would be easy to point to this failing as the reason for why they didn’t get the job done. 
But some of those were poor shots to take on, so was it bad execution or bad decision-making? Well, a few of them were wild efforts from people in good positions but who chose to take on shots on the turn, with their backs to goal, which are difficult to get right when under pressure. 
A few of them were from poor positions out wide and would be low percentage shots for anyone to attempt. That right there reflected for me the key difference between the sides on the day. It was a question of composure, which is probably a result of past experience. 
Castlerahan, who have that little bit more experience, showed that little bit more composure, always recycling the ball until a better opportunity became available and while they ended up taking less shots than Ramor, they were taking on easier chances. 

It was mentioned in the press box before that the average age of the Ramor team was four years younger than Castlerahan so perhaps we were seeing the impact of that in terms of the decision-making by both sides when it came to shot selection. In such a low-scoring game, every single shot taken was going to carry significance at the final whistle. 
From Castlerahan's point of view, why was it such a low-scoring game? In my preview last week, I mentioned how Ronan Flanagan has been having a superb year for Keogan's side and that his ball-winning in the full-forward line and ability to bring others into the game allows players around him flourish. 
Mark Magee did an excellent job in marking him and his display went a long way to stopping Castlerahan from getting any level of attacking fluidity going. When the ball sticks in your full-forward line then everyone wants to make a run off the shoulder. 
But if you’re struggling to either get the ball in there, because for example you take every kick out short and the ball is slow being transferred up the field as Castlerahan did, or you are struggling to get it to stick when it is sent in then, you won’t have near as much penetration with your attacks. 
That’s why the performance of Cormac Daly was so important to Castlerahan on the day. With their attacking game plan somewhat blunted thanks to Magee, they needed some other way to bring a bit of creativity to their attacking play. 
Daly was always looking to come off the shoulder of someone in possession and his hard running was critical to Castlerahan getting the line breaks which resulted in some of their key scores. Daly played the game at both ends of the field, working hard in both directions. It was the sort of game where nobody was exceptional but a few players elevated themselves slightly above the rest. 
Mark Magee, Brian O’Connell, and Liam Brady all put in good shifts for Ramor while the aforementioned Daly, Stephen Cooney, Enda and Oisin O’Connell, and Cian Mackey in the first half in particular were all decent for the champions. All in all it was a very workmanlike performance from Castlerahan devoid of any sprinkling of magic dust, but they didn’t need it last Sunday. 
It would’ve been interesting to see how they would’ve reacted had Ramor converted more of their chances. We know that the Ballyjamesduff men can play better than last Sunday, so it would’ve been good to see if they can play better when their best is required of them. 
Who knows, if they knuckle down and focus on their Ulster campaign we might just get to see them answer that question yet.

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