TOMAS Ó SÉ – THE KIERAN DONAGHY I KN0W
Many tried to copy him but there was only one ‘Starryboy’
WELL, it seems it’s almost the end of civilisation as we know it after Dublin’s predictable completion of a four-in-a-row.
That, at least, is the impression you’d get from some of this week’s coverage. The Dubs’ excellence is almost being used as a stick to beat them with. I don’t get that. Trust me, soon enough there’ll be someone ready to take their place at the top of the mountain.
My suspicion would be that Kerry are best-placed to be that someone. But next season? No matter who takes over from Eamonn Fitz, that might just be a year too soon.
Anyway, my end-of-season analysis:
‘SUPER 8S’
A lot of people have been critical of the new system saying that, but for David Clifford banging in that last-second goal in Clones, it would have been a bit of a dead duck. Maybe a few tweaks are required but, to me, the doom and gloom is unjustified.
I think football might have a general issue at the moment in terms of philosophy, but that’s changing. Certainly, the early games in Croke Park just didn’t capture the imagination.
What I will say is, if you qualify for the Super 8s through the back door, you should be happy to travel. There must be some advantage for the team winning their provincial championship; in other words, they should play two of their three games at home.
I thought Tyrone-Dublin was a great occasion, as was Tyrone-Donegal. Likewise, I thought the Kerry-Monaghan game had Clones absolutely rocking.
I’d been particularly looking forward to Kerry-Galway, but it was a massive disappointment because Kerry proved so poor. And, as we all know, they lived to seriously regret that non-performance.
There was a broader issue at play here that, in my opinion, had little enough to do with the new structure. To me, the Super 8s were the first step towards a two-tier championship. And, like it or not, that has to be a good thing. Because the sooner we see the end of games like Monaghan beating Waterford by 27 points, the better.
Who benefits from that kind of mismatch?
Just look at the teams Monaghan drew after being evicted from Ulster – Waterford, Leitrim and Laois, all sides that played their league football in Division 4.
Fair enough, Laois avoided a hammering, but they were never going to beat them.
We all know that the provincial championships are sacrosanct to those who run them but, in my view, they should be completed far quicker than they are.
All provincial winners and finalists should then go through to round-robin, with a second group of eight also getting through on the basis of National League positions.
This would mean that you have 16 counties in the fight for Sam Maguire.
Bear in mind that Laois and Fermanagh were provincial finalists this year, so so-called lower-ranked teams wouldn’t necessarily be excluded.
After that, a secondary competition should also be created, again with two groups of eight. The reason the league has been so competitive is because of the evenness of the teams. This would mirror that.
Of course, none of this will resolve the most fundamental issue for the GAA, that of the club player. Hand on heart, I don’t have the answer to this. But I do believe that something really radical is required.
STATE OF FOOTBALL
It isn’t exactly the best entertainment in the world right now, is it?
And that’s not strictly a consequence of so-called defensive football either. I mean, when I think back to some of the games we played against Tyrone and Armagh, they were absolutely incredible. They were like prize-fights, both sides just coming out swinging.
The purists mightn’t have particularly liked the way those Ulster teams set up, but they were every bit as good as Kerry. And that made for hugely intense games.
The difference now is that, accepting last year’s Dublin-Mayo final was a game for the ages, by and large we have a possession game unspooling between the two 45s.
You need patience to watch football today because you need patience to play it. That will change. All sports evolve and Gaelic football will be no different.
This isn’t something that can be resolved by a rule change, in my opinion. People imagined that the ‘mark’ would have a profound effect on kick-outs and that hasn’t come to pass.
I mean, how many teams go looking for the ‘mark’ as a first option? Nobody’s really running the risk of a 50/50 ball anymore.
So I don’t think an offensive ‘mark’, limiting the number of hand-passes or turning it into a 13-a-side game is going to dramatically re-draw the rules of engagement in football.
They can all help, but change needs to come from within dressing-rooms.
You know something, though? I’m convinced we’re in the middle of a quiet revolution here.
Just as the Tyrone (‘03, ‘05 and ‘08) and Donegal (‘12) teams of the past made everybody change how they thought about football – I suppose spawning the Carlows and Fermanaghs of today – something’s changing again.
I believe that ultra-defensive system is being slowly flushed out of the game. Now I know that Carlow beat Kildare and Fermanagh beat Monaghan using variations of it, but a penny’s dropping with the serious teams that that style, ultimately, is too limiting. In other words, if you’ve designs on the bigger prizes, you need to think again.
Mickey Harte is clearly recognising that with Tyrone as we saw last Sunday. He knew that the only way to worry Dublin was to press high on them and ask a few attacking questions.
Yes, it’s a gamble. Yes, against a team with better players (as is the case for anybody facing Dublin), you run the risk of being cut open at the back.
I thought it was interesting what Harte said about their reluctance to put high ball in to Colm Cavanagh on the edge of the square when they were chasing the game last Sunday.
It just went against the grain for them philosophically. So, even though it was the only card left open to them, they really struggled to allow themselves to go direct.
To me, the next step for Tyrone has got to be a National League campaign where they remove the shackles. Where they decide it’s immaterial whether or not they make the closing stages while they try to rewrite their philosophy.
In other words, do what Donegal have been doing under Declan Bonner.
Don’t get me wrong. Bonner will know they didn’t get the balance right this year either (albeit they weren’t helped by Paddy McBrearty’s injury).
No more than Kerry, Donegal have to make themselves harder to score against in 2019, but not at the cost of their attacking threat.
The point is that Donegal are a year down that road now and I think that’ll stand to them next season.
To me, one of the most revealing games of the year was Laois’s defeat of Carlow. I honestly believe that was a statement for the future in that the team trying to create beat the team trying to suffocate.
In an ideal world, the majority would follow that template. And, in that scenario, then the introduction of something like the offensive ‘mark’ could be a revelation. Just imagine what it would have brought to last year’s Dublin-Mayo final?
Look, we’ll probably never have a game to consistently match the glories of hurling, but I do believe that the next couple of years will present something much easier on the eye.
Tyrone and Donegal used be the poster-boys for defensive football. To me, both showed a change in personality this year. In doing so, they pretty much declared that winning an Ulster Championship wasn’t the limit of their ambitions – they want an All-Ireland.
That doesn’t mean you won’t see forwards tracking back. It means you will have more multi-dimensional players, like the Paul Mannions, who can do that and still carry a huge attacking threat.
In other words, they don’t start a game just planted in the defence, but they do cover every blade of grass.
Believe me, football isn’t in crisis. If it was, how on earth did we get that classic final in 2017? When two teams genuinely go at one another, it can be as good as anything you’ll see.
DUBLIN’S DOMINANCE
There’s been a big focus this week on funding discrepancies between the Dubs and everybody else.
The figures certainly seem extraordinary, but my own suspicion is that Dublin’s strength right now is a cyclical thing based on an extraordinary generation of players and the coaching brilliance of Pat Gilroy, Dessie Farrell and, particularly, Jim Gavin.
Put it this way, Dublin’s numbers have always dwarfed everybody around them, yet they’ve won just a single All-Ireland minor title since 1984. What Dublin have today is a really well-oiled machine, but is it better oiled than Kerry’s which has just produced five All-Ireland minor titles in a row?
If Dublin have all the advantages, why aren’t they dominant at underage too? And why, with all their money and strength of club, have they not made an impact on the big stage with hurling, accepting the ageold crux of the dual player?
They have the population. They have, as we are constantly being told, the money.
Look, I’m not going to get into an argument about that money because, frankly, I don’t know enough to be in any way categorical. If the figures broadly quoted this week are valid, they certainly look in need of attention.
But I’d hate to go down the road of, somehow, diminishing what this Dublin team has achieved. it seems to me there’s always some kind of over-reaction when a single team dominate.
The Dublin I see today are a group getting the absolute maximum from themselves, which certainly wasn’t always the case with football in the city.
And I’m blue in the face from saying that the most important part of any coaching/training model is having the right people in positions of authority.
I’m really struck by how often Gavin name-checks the legacy of Kevin Heffernan.
There’s a spirit in Dublin football right now that, I believe, can be traced all the way back to ‘Heffo’.
In many ways, that’s why it made so much sense for Gavin and his players to make that recent presentation to Anton O’Toole. These men are so respectful of their history and lineage, you could actually sense them take energy from that kind of event. You may scoff at this, but how many other teams in the country play with the Dubs’ profound sense of place?
When you think about it, this has been a once-in-a-lifetime group: Stephen Cluxton, Alan and Bernard Brogan, Paul Flynn, Ciaran Kilkenny, Brian Fenton, James McCarthy, Jonny Cooper and Michael Darragh Macauley.
I’ve said it before that I consider Cluxton to be the most important GAA player of the last half-century.
It strikes me that Dublin do everything quicker and more effectively than any other team today. And I do believe that the GAA need to focus more intently on helping the so-called smaller counties financially.
But you know something? Money will never manufacture a Stephen Cluxton. If it could, JP McManus would surely have Limerick’s footballers dining at the top table by now.
I get the impression that the bloated funding of Dublin dates back to a time when they were struggling.
If that’s the case, it needs to be looked at again now because the circumstances of 15 years ago plainly aren’t the circumstances of today.
But let’s be clear on something. There should be no guilt attached to the Dubs because of their modern success.
Their commercial model may be the envy of everybody else, but it’s not rocket science to see why the biggest sponsorship deals fall their way.
I don’t remember the same appetite for recrimination coming Kerry’s way when they won those eight All-Irelands in 12 seasons between ’75 and ’86.
Bear in mind they’d have won the fivein-a-row only for the most famous goal in GAA history in ’82 and, then, got caught on the hop in Munster the following year. Even after that, they won again in ’84, ’85 and ’86.
So, with a bit of luck, that Kerry team might easily have won 10 All-Irelands through that stretch and, dare I say, even nine-in-a-row.
Did they have to put up with the same belly-aching? Not that I remember.
Even consider the Kerry team I played on. Between ’00 and ’11, we played in nine All-Ireland finals, winning five. What if Tyrone hadn’t emerged at the same time?
Given they beat us in ’03 (semi-final), ’05 and ’08, it’s not inconceivable that we might have won eight All-Irelands in that stretch.
So Dublin’s one All-Ireland minor title in 33 years should tell us this isn’t some kind of modern Aryan race being created. Trust me, their days of plenty will dry up.