Errigal Ciaran’s quandary is how much they bend to Kilcoo’s will

AIB Ulster Club SFC final: Kilcoo v Errigal Ciaran (Sunday, 3.30pm, Box-It Athletic Grounds, live on TG4)

LET’S do brass tacks here.

Errigal Ciaran took 19 shots against Clann Eireann.

17 of them were taken by a Canavan.

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Ten by Ruairi, four by Tommy, three by Darragh.

We’ll get to how Kilcoo contain Ruairi and Darragh, but first: does Tommy start this final? Different horses suit different courses.

He was missed in the first half against the Armagh champions because the game’s shape allowed space and opportunity for kick-passing, in which he thrives.

Tommy will play but how much of the game will depend how they see Kilcoo setting up.

You have to expect Karl Lacey to do as anyone would against Errigal’s attack and lean towards pragmatism.

It’s all strategy. Better to go for a shootout and take your chances on scoring more goals than the Tyrone champions would?

Or do you sit off, drag them into the mud, make it 0-11 to 0-10?

In those games, the team with the best forwards will win.

Paul Devlin didn’t start the Scotstown game with a bang, having been back in the team for the wins over Burren and Crosserlough.

He, like Tommy Canavan, is a horse suited to the course on which an Ulster final is run.

Of the last 15 Ulster finals, 13 have been contests that you wouldn’t have been able to call with five minutes to go.

There has been a growing trend in finals across the board of referees going full hurling on it. The rules are different. Nothing is a free.

Sean Hurson did it in the Tyrone final.

The reason it worked spectacularly well that night is because Sean Hurson knew how to do it.

Two All-Ireland finals under him, he drew the line miles up the sand from where it would normally be, but crucially he still had a line and he understood where it was.

There is almost an expectation now on the officials that they will be more lenient than normal.

Noel Mooney is the man in charge here, an experienced inter-county official himself. He’s more of a forward’s referee.

There could be frees.

In Ulster finals, you cannot miss frees.

Tommy Canavan doesn’t miss frees.

Paul Devlin doesn’t miss frees.

The key to Errigal Ciaran being here is that they’ve been positive.

Scotstown had been the same. That had lulled them into a false sense of security.

A semi-final expected to go along the lines of last year’s arm-wrestle quickly turned to mush for the Monaghan champions.

Kilcoo’s blistering pace from deep is far from a secret but Scotstown underestimated it.

They thought they could handle it, that fronting up would allow them to turn the ball over inside the Kilcoo half, pen them in, hurt them. Instead they were nailed to the cross out the back.

Enda McGinley is forewarned.

When it came to the Tyrone final, he had a decision to make.

It has been by Trillick that everyone else’s watch has been set since 2015. Their ability to control games, to play to ‘the system’ has set them apart.

Errigal hadn’t really laid a glove on them in 2019 and were second best last year.

“If you stand off Trillick, you allow them to dictate the entire game and it becomes a very slow, methodical, controlled game then. We felt our best chance was to man up,” McGinley said after this year’s victory.

It was high-risk stuff that was rewarded that night in Omagh.

Whether it will be rewarded against Kilcoo is another matter.

They are the ultimate goalscoring team.

In ten Ulster club games since Covid, they’ve scored 21 goals.

They’ve only failed to find the net in Ulster three times in their last eight campaigns.

Daryl Branagan, Eugene Branagan, Miceal Rooney, Ceilum Doherty, they’re all black-spot runners. There’s a lack of concern for oneself in being like that.

Shealan Johnston has grown into a serious operator, stepping from the shadows of Ryan and Jerome to become arguably the marked man in the family now.

Ceilum Doherty has played everywhere, as he has the ability to. There’s a near-certainty that he will pick up Darragh Canavan here.

That battle will be worth watching.

Goalscoring teams like Kilcoo rely on men that are willing to run at the middle knowing they’ll get hit and they’ll get hurt, but that the rewards for it are exponential.

But Errigal will be hyper-sensitive to that threat now.

It’s always been there but when you rip a good team to pieces and score five goals in an Ulster semi-final, it sets off the fire alarm in Dunmoyle.

If they don’t score goals, can they kick enough points to win it?

Their average score in Ulster the last few years is 2-11.

Take the two away, winning big games becomes an ask.

Easier said than done.

Errigal’s quandary is how much they bend to Kilcoo’s will. Too little, they end up like Scotstown. Too much, they become a pale shadow of themselves and what has brought them here.

Getting that right more often than they get it wrong is why Enda McGinley and Karl Lacey are on the sideline and we’re all up in the seats telling them what they’re doing wrong.

Kilcoo will play the way Kilcoo play. They will reshape themselves to suit the Canavans because it’s the only logical thing to do. That ought to leave them worries about Peter Harte, Joe Oguz, Peter Óg McCartan, the in-form Ben McDonnell.

The Down champions fired out a warning but Errigal have ignored previous warnings from others, gone their own way about it and won their way here.

The brass tacks will be the brass tacks.

If Kilcoo quell the Canavans, they win the game.

If Kilcoo get in the back door often enough, they win the game.

But all year, Errigal Ciaran have found the right balance between one and the other.

There’s a surprise rumbling beneath the surface.