Inability to think on their feet will hurt Tribesmen
Treaty primed to exploit weakness in Galway armour and Flanagan is the man to make hay
PREPARATION and analysis are peculiar things in the build-up to big games because you can plan for the smallest details and think you have every opposition base covered. But what happens when a spanner is thrown in the works?
Limerick boss John Kiely knows that Galway are meticulously organised under Micheál Donoghue, completing their homework in great detail and tailoring their style of play depending on who and what is in front of them.
There were several chinks of light for Kiely in their semifinal struggles against Clare, however, which suggested that the Tribe have difficulties with solving a puzzle mid-game.
Kiely will have noted the success which the Banner had in this respect and when they utilised the sweeper, it totally frazzled Galway and they didn’t know what to do or how to work around it.
By the time they dropped a sweeper back for the second half, Clare were back in contention, while they continued to bombard Johnny Glynn with high ball despite the majority of it being lapped up by Colm Galvin. Galway were in full control when it was on their terms, but struggled when the rules changed.
They were unable to make alterations to their style mid-match to stem the tide. Suddenly, Clare got a foothold and Galway didn’t know how to kick on and drive their advantage home when presented with a different obstacle, even one they have encountered regularly.
They survived on that occasion and were fully prepared to counteract the extra man in the replay by playing the ball expertly through the lines and negating Galvin’s influence. Gerry O’Connor and Donal Moloney realised the game was slipping away and radically changed tack.
Playing with only John Conlon inside their ’45 – he played on the edge of the square – they pulled everyone else back behind the ball and turned the game on its head with the result being that Galway’s nine-point lead totally evaporated as their scoring stalled.
They had five defenders marking Conlon at one stage and that scenario played into Clare’s hands. If Galway carried possession, there were bodies in the middle third to suffocate them and if they fired ball in long, free players mopped up.
It wasn’t a positive tactic, but it helped them get a foothold. Conor Whelan and Johnny Glynn had been winning balls and terrorising the defence but all of a sudden, they were bottled up and the space and channels were clogged. Joe Canning’s scoring threat diminished as he was forced to drop from right-half forward to right half-back trying to collect possession. Don’t get me wrong, dealing with these radical tactics mid-game is not easy.
That’s where your leaders must come to the fore and rather than letting the opposition control the terms of engagement, you must take the bull by the horns and solve the riddle quickly as it happens by communicating and developing a solution. That’s game intelligence.
It’s an insight into how Limerick should approach Sunday. Galway will have them analysed into the ground and they’ll be a step ahead because they both play a similar style with half-forwards and midfielders dropping deep.
If Limerick can’t beat them at their own game, they must have a Plan B and I expect them to. When Paul Kinnerk was coach with Clare in 2013, they had played a sweeper all year, but abandoned it in the final and totally confused Cork.
When you’ve prepared for one thing, something else can be a shock to the system and if Kiely sees that Galway are getting on top – especially in the middle third – they must have a back-up plan capable of changing the game.
One tactic that could bear fruit for the Treaty is if Seamus Flanagan reverts to the role he played against Cork in Páirc Uí Chaoimh when they were reduced to 14 men.
While everybody raves about the 2010 All-Ireland final where he bagged 3-1, Lar Corbett’s best final performance for Tipperary was the year before when he came to midfield and had a huge influence on the game, as well as firing 0-4.
If Flanagan switches with Gearóid Hegarty at various stages and comes out to left half-forward, he can be a
potent weapon. By placing him there with some regularity and running at the Galway defence, that could cause the champions serious trouble.
If Limerick’s half-backs and midfielders pick him out, he can do the rest. He’ll predominantly be at No 14, but there’ll be a handful of instances – maybe ten minutes in total – where he’ll be at half-forward and they need to make hay during those periods.
Rather than having him battle with Dáithí Burke all day and feeding off scraps, let him out and stretch his legs. That will help to eliminate any nerves and we’ve all seen the damage he can do with ball in hand from a variety of angles.
If you look at the Munster U-21 game against Tipperary when Flanagan was picked up by Brian McGrath, he cut a fairly frustrated figure when he hadn’t felt the weight of the ball in the first 20 minutes and ended up substituted.
For a player with the x-factor that he has, he should be used more often as he can unlock the Galway rearguard in a similar way to his role in the build-up to Cian Lynch’s goal against Cork. When he’s finished running Galway defenders around the place, then the cavalry arrives.
It’s said Flanagan covered over 12 kilometres in the 64 minutes he was on the pitch in their provincial clash with Cork and if he does likewise on Sunday, he’ll leave his side in a winning position for Shane Dowling, Peter Casey, Pat Ryan and Co to finish the job.
The impact off the bench is something we spoke about in 2010 and that’s why Liam Sheedy talked to the subs before throw-in and left Eamon O’Shea with the starting 15. He knew that they had gotten us this far and that their contributions could see us over the line.
They were going to help us over the line and they did – Seamie Callanan, Benny Dunne and Seamus Hennessy all got on the scoresheet, while David Young’s first action was to turn Eoin Larkin upside down and lay a marker.
There would never have been an ego saying, ‘I’m only a sub, I’ll do my best when I come in’. They would have said, ‘I’m going to go on and finish the job but the fella I replace must have nothing left’.
Numbers 23 to 30 win you All-Irelands because they’re putting the heat on the lads that are seen as the regulars. They drive things on. The question for Galway is: have their subs really had the boot down?
If you’re an unused sub and you’re looking at Conor and Joseph Cooney going back on against Clare and Joseph Cooney switching to wingback from attack, they could be thinking, ‘I’d love to be involved in history, but I’m not getting on’.
FRUSTRATION
You start to wonder as a player where you’re going and Brian Concannon’s sending-off in their U-21 All-Ireland semi-final against Tipp – which sees him suspended for the senior final – may have been borne out of that frustration.
Declan Hannon’s role is key to Limerick’s success as his direct opponent Canning is going to drift back to his own ’65.
This is the conundrum that Clare took a long time to solve: do you follow him or not? I’d leave him off.
Instead, I’d assign a midfielder (probably Darragh O’Donovan) to pick him up and leave Johnny Coen free. Pass Coen onto a wing-forward, he’s not going to kill you with longrange scores while Hannon can sit back and control.
Limerick are the real deal. They have a structure, ball-winners, a goal threat, a bench and they’re not carrying any baggage.
They don’t care about their past and they can’t see themselves losing.
If they’re in it coming down the home straight, they should have the legs off the bench to get across the line.
Other teams have had Galway on the rack but they haven’t been able to finish the job; Limerick are ready to land the knockout blow.