It’ll take Jimprovisation to prise this from Treaty
JIM MCGUINNESS, of all people, got me thinking last weekend in the context of how Limerick’s five-in-a-row bid might be stopped this year.
To my mind, Mcguinness is a genius. It was obvious that the players, during his first stint with Donegal, would do anything for him.
Already there are similar signs in his second coming.
Back in 2011, he introduced a defensive template and whatever you thought of it, you just can’t argue that it wasn’t successful – and that’s the bottom line.
He took Gaelic football to places it had never been before and ultimately reaped the benefits. There was certainly no luck attached to it.
Last weekend, I viewed the highlights of Donegal’s runaway opening League win over Cork and, on that alone, it appeared that he has flipped the other way and made his side exciting to watch.
Of course it’s early days but Donegal seemed to go all out on the attack, squeezing up on Cork and turning them over high up the pitch.
Like what he did more than a decade ago, boy did it work, yet the approach could hardly have been more different.
Mcguinness’ fresh thinking was central to Donegal reaching the top in 2012 and, who knows, it may well see them scale the summit again in the coming years.
I just wonder if there’s that rabbit-out-of-the-hat type of innovation among the hurling fraternity as they bid to deny
Limerick history this year. Because I believe that’s what will be needed if they are to be stopped.
I don’t think that any team has really thrown a curveball at Limerick over the past number of years.
The split season affords managers ample time to weigh up their approach and I wonder what they’ve been doing over the past four or five months to that end?
If it’s more of the same old, same old, then they can forget about it. From the outside looking in at least, changes are afoot. Clare have shaken up their management team, Liam Cahill has added David Herity in Tipperary, Wexford let Darragh Egan go and brought in their own man in Keith Rossiter, Waterford have backed Davy Fitzgerald after a disastrous 2023, Henry Shefflin has acquired Eamon O’shea in Galway and then you have Pat Ryan, Micheal Donoghue and Derek Lyng moving into year two in Cork, Dublin and Kilkenny respectively.
Watching the Laochra Gael profile of Liam Sheedy last year, you could see that he brought something different in order to topple Kilkenny in 2010. He got them ready for war and brought the group tighter.
By training three nights a week, a couple of gym sessions, video analysis etc, it won’t be enough. That only gets you to the starting line because everyone is doing that – it’s a given.
So what are teams doing differently that might give them the edge come the summer?
Ultimately, given the omerta that exists in modern dressing rooms, it may only be in July before we find out, if at all.
Who is going to be brave enough to come up with a new plan in order to beat Limerick, rather than just ape what they’ve been doing and be shown up for not being able to execute it to the same level?
Does hurling have a Jim
Mcguinness?