Good players make great things look so easy.
Ryan O’Donoghue is a young man with a bright future and, whilst he has to live with the pain of an All-Ireland final defeat, he should rest easy in the knowledge that he performed on the biggest stage on the holy soil.
Some players take to Croke Park and you can see instantly that they’re in the zone. They’re in that flow state that Jim McGuinness would talk about, where everything outside of winning the next ball ceases to exist. They’re just dutifully and masterfully performing tasks like it’s only second nature.
When O’Donoghue latched onto a ball just inside the Kildare 45′ on Sunday, most players would stop to think. They’d hesitate. They’d see they’re about to be hit with a tackle and divert. They’d look for the first bit of space so they could scan their next risk-free option but O’Donoghue has that innate ballsiness in him that the best attackers have. That sort of arrogance where it’s okay to think goal when you’re outside even the point-scoring zone.
So he picks the ball up from a break and, without even thinking about what he’s doing, he cuts sharply inside to break a tackle and BANG… he goes.
Direct, full-flight, conviction. He bears straight down on the Kildare goals, he sells one Owen Mulligan dummy and he finishes with deadly accuracy.
Wonderful goal for Mayo from Ryan O'Donoghue. pic.twitter.com/OD8XwVWdaY
— The GAA (@officialgaa) August 5, 2018
As it was though, it wasn’t enough to deliver the title back to Mayo after they last won it in 2016.
Aaron O’Neill produced a cracking save to deny Egan towards the end and Brian McLoughlin struck a thumping goal of his own earlier in the game to set the Lilywhites on their way.
O’Donoghue might not leave Croke Park as an All-Ireland champion but he should leave in the knowledge that he graced the hallowed turf with a little bit of magic of his own – a play so fitting of the place it could sit alongside all the other great moments of the past.
