THERE comes a time when you have to stop talking.
There comes a time when words are so futile yet they’re the only currency you have. There comes a time when you can only say the same thing one more time.
No player should have to leave Croke Park the way Hugh McGrillen left last Sunday. His was one of the finest Kildare displays on a day when the team malfunctioned. His pursuit of possession made defending look like a minor art form. He reminded us that there are more beautiful and graceful things on a football field than a goal in the top corner or a point from the outside of the boot. There are ways to play the game that fill the heart with joy and they don’t revolve around the scoreboard.
McGrillen, an unlikely county man having failed to make much of an impact at underage level, has blossomed so much under Kieran McGeeney’s tutelage it’s hard to imagine we ever doubted him. Maybe the problem is that he defies all our preconceptions - never does he look like how we imagined a defender to appear. Long and gangly, he seems too tall to be a back and too light to be a guardian of the square. McGrillen is not an easy man to cast but fulfils his role with style and aplomb. He does not bully or intimidate, pull jerseys or make rash tackles. He plays the game in front of him, he’s honest and he’s fair.
These are skills that should be rewarded and yet the game teaches him that this is no way to play.
He wasn’t involved in the square ball incident that saw Benny Coulter awarded a goal that shouldn’t have been but he must have wondered what the day had in store when such a grave injustice could happen while he was briefly away from the square. For 70 minutes he soldiered for Kildare and he shouldered them too. Like John Doyle in attack and Hugh Lynch in midfield, he kept striving even when the gods told him not to.
For 35 minutes of the second half he was all that stood between Down and the target. In a game of high stakes football, Kildare had to go chasing the game. McGrillen couldn’t afford to blink or even try to bluff - he was left one-onone with the game’s greatest assassin and for 35 minutes, Benny Coulter, only scored once.
That point, when it came with just 11 minutes to go, was another manifestation of Kildare’s utter lack of luck. McGrillen was bravely out to the ball ahead of Coulter, unfazed by his opponent’s chinking movements, but when the leather bounced in front of him it looped over his head - his finger tips almost getting a touch but not quite. Later, in injury time, the finger tips of Down midfielder Kalum King would turn a shot onto the cross bar. In this game, Kildare lost inches everywhere.
Coulter’s 59th minute point was another painful jolt to Kildare’s abdomen. Eamonn Callaghan had just scored a goal and never was the next score so important. It is not only a cardinal sin for a defender to let a ball bounce over his head, it is a grave psychological blow because there is no worse feeling on a sports field than a feeling of embarrassment. The ego is often too weak to recover.
Consider then what it took for McGrillen to forget that Coulter point - one that put Down five points clear - and keep his head so that his teammates might still prosper.
Martin Clarke, another Down menace, was putting the finishing touches on a flawless display of passing when he lost control of the ball for the first time. There were 69 minutes on the clock when Clarke was finally dispossessed by someone with just as much elegance and poise. That player was Hugh McGrillen.
If you looked at the stats it would be hard to tell that McGrillen was Clarke’s equal. Clarke scored 0-3 and enjoyed 23 possessions. McGrillen ended the game on a yellow card, and had been punished for two fouls on Benny Coulter in the second half that led to simple scores from 20 metres. You might presume that Kildare and McGrillen deserved very little from the game. The truth is he deserved much more than he got.
Referee Pat McEnaney showed McGrillen his yellow card in the 49th minute after a race for possession between the Kildare full-back and Benny Coulter ended with both players on the ground after their legs had tangled in the race to win possession.
Four minutes after half-time, McGrillen tracked Benny Coulter to the 20 metre line, doing his best to tackle one hand at a time, careful not to trip his man as he did so. Coulter’s darting run makes it hard for McGrillen to tackle without grabbing his man around the neck and you can see by the way McGrillen keeps removing his hands that he’s conscious of the fact that any second now this could look like a blatant foul. In the end the whistle blows long before it gets that far. Coulter falls to the ground because he can’t keep his balance while running flat out and leaning forward.
It’s a classic forward’s free and yet McGrillen has hardly put a foot wrong. He’s not the sort to stand and bicker with referees but this time he questions the decision. The free is brought nearer the centre of the goals. And now Down, with a questionable five-point lead at half-time, have a six point cushion because of a questionable free.
When McGrillen is wrongly penalised later in the second half, the yellow card appears as soon as he gets to his feet.
All this happens to a player who has done very little wrong. All this happens to a player who still has the resolve to go and tackle the best player on the field in the final minute. It is the only time in the game when Martin Clarke is bamboozled. McGrillen takes the ball away so deftly and so cleanly with his hands that Clarke is left dumbfounded for a moment as to what the hell has just happened. He’s been doing this to Kildare players all afternoon - it’s not supposed to happen to him.
They say there is no sentiment in sport but no one looks for that, especially not Hughie McGrillen. When he was shown every reason to lose heart, he showed everyone else why it’s so vital to keep your head.
He couldn’t inspire a Kildare win and when it all finished, he was the first man to leave the dressing room, firing his bag into the luggage compartment before walking down the empty bus to a lonely seat in the back row.
He must have wondered what this game was all about. A goal that shouldn’t have been, a point that should have, frees that never were and a yellow card after his name when his example was one you’d be proud to match.
Referees don’t make mistakes out of malice but they have a duty to aspire to the same standards as Hugh McGrillen. He’s the reason it’s important to get things right more often than you get things wrong. If you don’t strive to be the best then you have no place on the same field as these players.
It’s not the losing that hurts, it’s the wondering. No one that plays like Hugh McGrillen should be left to feel so alone.