RISKY BUSINESS
DERRY v DONEGAL Game has moved on a lot since Jim’s first coming
JIM McGUINNESS says Gaelic football has moved on and people are taking more “high-risk decisions.”
This weekend McGuinness’ Donegal will meet a Derry side that have relentlessly pressed the opposition kick-out all season as an attacking platform.
It culminated in a spectacular shoot-out victory over Dublin in the Division 1 League final at Croke Park, with goal chances galore as Derry emerged winners after extratime and penalties.
But will Derry press as high and often against Shaun Patton, who has one of the longest and most accurate kick-outs in the game?
And how will Donegal look to counter this if they do?
Tactic
In McGuinness’s first spell in charge of Donegal (2011-14) the game was more defensively-orientated, with counter-attacking football the favoured tactic of the vast majority of teams in Ulster.
But better conditioning levels have allowed teams to press up on kickouts and in general play and attack more often and in greater numbers.
“In the context of longer balls, higher pressing, listen, the game has moved on a lot,” said McGuinness, who spent almost a decade coaching soccer teams in Scotland, China and America before taking the Donegal reins again last autumn.
“It is much more complex. People are making high-risk decisions at moments in the game now.
“Not necessarily all the time in the game. There are very few teams who are going all out in every phase of play.
“It is not about going all out in a phase of play knowing that you can get pressure and then becoming very defensive.
“Or becoming very defensive, playing on the break and then when the game is almost gone, then you go and you ask the question.
“Meath came off the (Division 2) game against us.
“We got out with the ball handy.
“When we got a man blackcarded with 10 minutes to go they went man-to-man and pushed up on us.
“These are the kind of things that are going on. “It is risk, reward. “It is a very calculated risk reward in the context of what is actually happening in the game.
“There are not that many teams that are all out, all out, if you know what I mean.
“It is just nuanced.”
McGuinness says it is an evolution rather than a revolution, with teams picking and choosing their moments to go after the opposition. Teams like Galway step off the kickout a lot of the time.
“The game is moving very fast,” continued McGuinness. more (below)
“The kick-outs are a problem in the sense that they are very dangerous now. “And shutting them down is very dangerous. “People become very conservative in that regard.
“One or two can kill you and if you (the opposition) defend well after that, you are not going to win the game.
“So people are coming off them now and setting up on the 45 and trying to get their heat on there and slow you as opposed to take you on because of the dangers.
“All of these things I think feed into it and it will be very interesting to see what comes out of the review process to see what can be done.”
McGuinness says that any changes to the game have to belong to everyone involved and not just the Football Review Committed, chaired by Jim Gavin.
Involved
“I think every stakeholder in the GAA has a part to play in terms of teams going through the field of play should be involved in that conversation,” said McGuinness.
“Managers should be involved in it. Coaches should be involved in that.
“Players should be involved in that and then the people that are running it.
“They seem a very good group of people but I don’t think it can be theirs.
“I think there needs to be a really good sense of consensus in terms of what it would look like moving forward.”
Foley