All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final

Dublin v Mayo, Croke Park, 3.30pm - RTÉ/SKY SPORTS/GAAGo

By John Harrington

One of the reasons that Sunday’s All-Ireland Senior Football Final holds such fascination is because so many of the key men on either side are destined to go head to head.

If individual battles within the collective one are the sort of thing that floats your boat, then you’ll have plenty of sub-plots to keep you entertained.

Top of the pile is the expected showdown between Dublin’s Diarmuid Connolly and Mayo’s Lee Keegan. There have been sparks whenever these two have collided in the past, and former Mayo manager James Horan expects them to spend the match in one another’s company again.

“Yeah, yeah, I think you'll see it. I think so. Diarmuid Connolly is such a good player. You saw him in the 74th minute against Kerry kicking that score so the conditioning, the skill level, everything is there to do that.

“Lee Keegan, anyone that comes up against Lee, he's faster, stronger, better, and when he goes onto someone it can be intimidating. He's got courage to a fault almost so I think they'll match up.

“If you look at the some of the match ups, Kevin McManamon is doing very well this year, Colm Boyle likewise and the type of players they are, they're very similar, Donie Vaughan/Brian Fenton, Brian Fenton has been so influential and is so mobile, like Donie Vaughan, so there is in this game more than any game a lot of match ups that will be really important.”

Keegan and Connolly went head to head in the 2013 All-Ireland Final and last year’s drawn and replayed All-Ireland Semi-Finals. Connolly has arguably enjoyed his best Championship campaign yet for Dublin this year, but Mayo fans will draw hope from the fact that Keegan has had the better of their tussles in the past.

Over the course of those three previous Championship encounters, not only has Keegan held Connolly to just two points from play, he’s scored four from play himself which is a remarkable statistic.

The Mayo defender is one of the best footballers in the country, and unlike many other specialist man-markers he has the ability to make sallies forward and land crucial scores rather than simply try to negate the influence of the man he’s marking.

He proved that once again when he marked Tyrone’s Sean Cavanagh in the All-Ireland Quarter-Final, a match that also showcased his knack for getting under the skin of the men he marks.

Cavanagh was given a yellow-card for an off-the-ball tangle at the start of the second-half with Keegan that ultimately proved costly because another yellow later in the game saw the Tyrone man sent to the line. 

Connolly, too, came out on the wrong side of a similar incident in the drawn All-Ireland semi-final last year when he was red-carded and Keegan yellow-carded for another off-the-ball incident.

Defenders have always tried to light Connolly’s fuse, often with success, but former Dublin player Ray Cosgrove believes Connolly proved in the All-Ireland semi-final when he was tightly marked by Peter Crowley that he’s not as liable to lose his focus as he one was.

“Yeah, absolutely, I think you notice a difference in his attitude in the semi-final,” says Cosgrove. “There was no silly stuff off the ball. He wasn’t reacting to anything. He was focus on playing ball and I think that’s an aspect of his game that Dermo has to focus on.

“You are going to have tussles that you are going to have to lock horns with a fella for 70 minutes and not react and he’s got to be big enough and strong enough and more experienced and know that you are going to get a little bit of treatment and that’s part and parcel of it. He’s well able to dish it out himself so I think again for Dublin to win Dermo has got to be on the field.

“There is no point being sent off like he was in the first game late on against Mayo. Dublin have got to have him on the field if they are to win the next day.

"You’d like to think with all the experience he’s gained. I definitely think with the management team, the likes of Declan (Darcy) and Deego (Mick Deegan) there, they’d be cute enough and savvy enough to be getting the message across. ‘You are going to be targeted, you are the most talented footballer in Dublin, if not in Ireland, deal with it, move on and let the scoreboard do the talking for you.’

“Because, the other stuff off the ball doesn't do him any favours and he is too good to be getting mixed up with confrontation with Leeroy, so I think there’s a big game still left in Dermo.

“Dermo could, when the lights are shining on the 18th, it would be just like him to put in a performance the next day.”

If Connolly is a clear winner in his tussle with Keegan, then it’s hard to see how Mayo will win the match. A humming Connolly usually means an in-tune Dublin. It’s not the only individual battle that will have major impact on the game though, there are a number of them in all areas of the pitch.

Mayo will probably need Aidan O’Shea to have one of his one-man wrecking-ball performances if they’re to pull off a shock, but that won’t be easily done if, as expected, he starts at centre-forward and is marked by Cian O’Sullivan.

An interesting sub-plot there is that if O’Sullivan does pick up O’Shea, then he probably won’t have the luxury of dropping deep and sweeping across his defence like he usually does, which could have untold consequences for his full-back line.

You can be sure that O’Shea will wander into the full-forward position occasionally too, so O’Sullivan will be left with the decision then whether to pass him on or follow him wherever he goes.

If he follows him then O’Shea’s strength in the air won’t pose as big a threat as it would if Philly McMahon was tasked with marking him, but without O’Sullivan locking down the half-back line a whole new range of threats could present themselves. Whatever way you slice and dice it, O’Shea v O’Sullivan is going to have a big impact on the match.

So too will the clash between Brian Fenton and Donal Vaughan in the centre of the park. Fenton has been one of the best players in the country this year with no midfielder seemingly able to match all-round game.

Vaughan has a better chance than most though because at least he’ll have the engine to follow Fenton wherever he goes, and it’ll be interesting to see how the young Dublin midfielder reacts if the shoe is on the other foot and he’s forced to back-pedal by on of those trade-mark Vaughan charges forward.

When you go through both teams there are a lot of similarities between them and match-ups that could cancel one another out.

Perhaps the real game-breaker could come late in the game when Dublin introduce Eoghan O’Gara off the bench. Mayo are well equipped to handle most of the Dublin danger-men, but they don’t have a natural full-back who would be comfortable dealing with O’Gara’s power on the edge of the square.

That was Dublin’s trump-card when they won the 2013 All-Ireland Final. Mayo supporters will hope history does not repeat itself.