Gallagher defends his right to play the way he sees fit
RORY GALLAGHER’S dubious achievement was that he was still shouldering the blame for the misfortune of others when the whistle had long blown on his summer last year.
As Dublin cruised to yet another All-Ireland final in an anti-climatic All-Ireland semi-final, the consensus was that Tyrone were collateral damage and the real prize was the blitzing of the architects of massed defence football.
It was Donegal’s blueprint which got torched; the one drawn up by Jim McGuinness and his one-time assistant Gallagher, and Dublin were lauded for their service to football’s finer sensibilities.
That analysis would have been greeted by nodding heads as Gallagher’s perceived lack of ambition in his game-plan became the stick which was persistently used to beat him with after three trophy-less seasons as manager.
But perception is one thing; reality another. It is easily forgotten that in his final year with Donegal, he took a more emboldened approach at the start of the League but the team leaked so heavily — they conceded 2-17 in an opening-day defeat to Kerry — that he had to find defensive balance to plug holes.
Even so, the notion that they were a team too obsessed by defensive structure for their own good hardly tallies with how they sank last summer against Tyrone and Galway, games in which they conceded 1-21 and 4-17, respectively.
But give a coach a defensive name and it sticks.
Nine months after he walked away from Donegal with a year still left to run, he is back working his own kind of magic with his native Fermanagh.
He has defied waning momentum (they were relegated last year), mutinous chaos (player power forced his predecessor Pete McGrath out) and a lack of resources — they pick from just 20 clubs — to return the team to Division 2.
His stamp, and that of his management team which includes Tyrone legend Ricey McMenamin, is on them too.
In four of their seven regular group games, they conceded less than 10 scores, while their average concession rate was 11 points a game.
Those are the kind of figures not posted at inter-county level since Donegal stirred in 2011, but the notion that he should have to apologise for making his team competitive is something he struggles with.
‘Every management team must look at the resources they have and how best they can work with them.
‘Fifty per cent of your game is about attacking. Stephen Cluxton is a huge part of Dublin’s attacking play because of his restarts, while 50 per cent of the corner forward’s game is defensive.
‘That is the way it has evolved and there is too much talk about systems.
‘I think far too much was made of that semi-final between Dublin and Tyrone.
‘Look, Dublin have the best players and are lauded correctly for playing a very attacking game but they don’t kick long, high or diagonal ball, they kick very measured ball.
‘They rarely give it away and their average kick-pass is a 20/25 metre pass. They are playing a very effective game which is centred on ball retention, albeit they spread the play because they have that wee bit more quality.
‘Every county has to make the best of what they have, Look at Carlow, they took a different approach last year and look at how competitive they were then and are now.
‘This is not about systems, it is about making the most of what you have,’ he insists.
And with Fermanagh that will always be the bottom line. He is picking form an active adult playing population of 300, which in effect means that if you are a footballer in Fermanagh, you have a one in ten shot at making the county panel.
Against that backdrop, even though they have never won a provincial title, they qualify as one of the game’s great over achievers.
One of the reasons the wheels came off under McGrath is because, inside 24 months, he lost 20 of the panel which he had guided to a place in the 2015 AllIreland quarter-final.
One of Fermanagh’s problems is that not only have they a small pick, but it has been further diminished by the absence of key players, but Gallagher believes they have stopped the bleeding.
‘You need all the best players playing and I really appreciate the fact that they have all made themselves available including Ryan McCluskey, while Eamon Maguire has come back after he had been away working.
‘We have had lads as young as 19 come into the panel and that has created a bit of competition.’
While the ultimate test awaits with a first round clash against Armagh next month — who they lost to narrowly in last month’s Division 2 decider — Gallagher has done enough to justify the
decision to bounce straight back into management this season, when the easy thing might have been to hide.
While he was adamant that he ignored the vitriol directed at him on social media in the last few months of his tenure with Donegal, it was of such a vicious nature that it prompted the then chairman of the Tír Chonaill Board Sean Dunnion to publicly condemn it, labelling it ‘disgusting.’
But perspective comes easier in Fermanagh, while Gallagher is no longer literally having to live with the pressure 24/7 that came with being Donegal manager.
‘It is a very different dynamic. I am living in Donegal and with the shop in Killybegs, you are meeting the public every day. There is no switching off from it whereas with Fermanagh I am in and out so that has made it fairly different.’
But he has no regrets about the six years he spent in a Donegal bib, insisting he would happily do it all over again. ‘Not at all, I have no regrets. ‘If anyone asked me to sign up to be involved in a journey where we reached five Ulster finals, competed regularly at the business end of the Championship I would happily do so.
‘I really, really enjoyed it and I have great admiration for those players. There were some tough days for sure but then you have to go through a lot of tough days to get to a good one.’