Joe Callaghan
IT was harrowing stuff. The Carlton Blues season came to a heart-breaking end at the Olympic Stadium in Sydney last Saturday. Their third-quarter comeback – having long since looked dead and buried in the contest – was as impressive a feat as any that graced the same stadium ten years earlier at the 2000 Games.
Ultimately though, in a classic game that had the 42,000 packed in in raptures, the Swans’ superior experience – with Tadhg Kennelly among those raising their game for the big moment – counted and, having led for so long in the closing stages, Carlton were ambushed.
A measly five points had done them in, 99-94. At the final buzzer Blue bodies lay strewn across the oval, despair dripping from every face.
Setanta O hAilpin, though, spent the weekend in altogether less illustrious, less glamorous surroundings, the North Port Oval in the heart of Melbourne’s industrial district to be exact.
He wasn’t even considered for action in Sydney – the Blues coach Brett Ratten opted to go into battle without his fourth highest scorer of the season for a game that, as it turned out, was surrendered by less than a goal.
As if to emphasise the point, O hAilpin went and grabbed a hat trick in Port Melbourne, starring in red and white, as he had done in the early part of the decade back home.
His goals helped the Northern Bullants – the Blues’ affiliate in the lower-tier VFL - into that competition’s semi-finals. (Laois native Zach Tuohy also turned in a tour de force at half back.)
But surely Setanta’s services would have been better utilised in Sydney’s west, with a season of hard toil on the line.
O hAilpin had been so key to the club’s early-campaign surge that confounded the critics and, eventually, proved crucial to them just scraping over the line into the finals.
Goals poured between the posts as autumn turned to winter. There were four against the Lions at the Gabba in Round 2, five against Collingwood, the team who would go on to finish top of the table.
It proved that the former Young Hurler of the Year was more than just a lucky omen. The Blues won eight of the 14 games he started.
Yet after Round 15 he was discarded. Done for the year. Once he slipped out of the side, the Blues win just three more before season’s end.
Yet Ratten never even hinted at bringing him back into the fold. We don’t know if O hAilpin is a stats man but at the time of his demotion he had amassed 26 goals in his 14 games. That mark equalled Jim Stynes’ all-time record for an Irishman in the AFL, but he was never given the opportunity to set the bar higher and claim the mark in his own name.
An end-of-season squad assessment compiled in the Australian media this week suggested that O hAilpin’s “appetite for the contest gradually trailed off”.
That’s plainly untrue. After so much frustration, and some truly dark times, since his move Down Under in 2005, he was clearly savouring the good times.
And for his part, the 27-year-old kept his head down after his demotion and did everything he could to force his way back in, his goal glut continuing for the Bullants.
But it never came. To add insult he was twice named on the emergency list – the sporting equivalent of an employer saying “we’ll call you”.
And so with the dust settling on the Blues’ campaign after Mad Monday – the players’ day-long post-elimination party – the pressing question is: what now?
If Ratten felt he couldn’t call on his exile in times of need then what use does he see for him next season? Trusted again for the early game but banished once the stakes are raised?
That’s a situation that is no good for any party. The Blues have been mooted as a potential partner for trades but O hAilpin’s name hasn’t arisen in that chatter. One thing is for sure, he will very soon be donning red and white again. This weekend in fact.
With his future very much up in the air, O hAilpin will again turn out for the Bullants as they take on Williamstown on Saturday for a place in the VFL decider.
Another goal feast might just help his case. And it would again prove Ratten’s folly in discarding him from the front line.
