He was hailed as Monaghan’s “greatest ever clutch player” by manager Vinny Corey and Conor McManus insisted he always felt there’d be one last play to salvage their quarter-final clash with Armagh.
The Orchard fans inside Croke Park celebrated as though Rian O’Neill’s superb point from over 50 metres was the winning score. With two minutes and 22 seconds of three minutes of injury-time played at the end of extra-time, the odds were stacked against Monaghan pulling this one out of the fire.
Yet, this current Farney team have a habit of making a mockery of post-match predictions and already clinched stoppage-time winners against Tyrone and Kildare earlier in the Championship.
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Their latest houdini act was just another day in the office for the man who won and converted the free to bring the game to penalties before slotting home two spot-kicks past Ethan Rafferty.
“It was two teams who were quite familiar with each other. You knew coming to Croke Park that it was going to be that kind of a game,” stated McManus.
“We had to make sure that we were there at the end of it. We dug in, firstly to get to extra-time, then on penalties. We showed a bit of fight and a bit of character.
“The first thing that went through my mind was ‘we’ll get a chance’ - we will get a chance and it was about getting the ball up the field to do that.
“We engineered a chance and managed to get an equaliser and force penalties, which we were more than delighted to do as it looked like it had slipped away from us.”
McManus also reiterated Corey’s revelation that Monaghan don’t practise penalties as a collective during their training sessions, despite converting eight from nine against Armagh on Saturday evening.
“There is no point in overdoing it. You hit the odd penalty as the training sessions progress, but there’s no point in over-egging it.” added McManus.
“Maybe you miss a couple in training and, when you need to step up, your confidence isn’t right either.
“You don’t know who is going to be on the field at any given time, the games get very hectic and you’ve different players coming in for extra-time.
"You just have to go with men who are in form and guys who’ve kicked penalties before. There’s no major practice that goes into it.”
That being said, McManus admitted he wasn’t a fan of penalties being used to decide Championship games.
The Farney might have come out on the right side of the result, but their minors lost out to Derry in the Ulster final earlier in the season after penalties. They’ll get their chance to avenge that loss when the same two teams clash in the All-Ireland MFC final at the Box-It Athletic Grounds on Sunday afternoon.
“It is a very harsh way to lose a game,” reflected McManus.
“Armagh are on the wrong side of it, we’ve been on the wrong side of it before - it is a tough way to lose an All-Ireland quarter-final.
“I don’t necessarily agree with it to be honest. . . it is what it is. We’re just happy to get through.”
He added: “These are super days for Monaghan football. We were down in Tullamore last weekend and there was a massive crowd down for the minors for their All-Ireland semi-final (against Kerry).
“The Monaghan crowd carried us over the line on a day when we weren’t particularly good and, possibly, deserved to get beaten against Kildare. Again, we dug it out and we found a way to win.
“The minors have given us all a lift in the county and we’ll be out in full force to support them next weekend.”
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