Seems to have gone well. Pundits like Joe Brolly (Derry v Tyrone) and @Monkey Allen (Kildare v Mayo) were lauding the flowing, high scoring games with attacking football and a lack of cynicism. I havenât seen or heard about any controversies with regard to referees application of the cards either. I wasnât enthused about their introduction but I think weâll need to wait another while to be able to make definitive conclusions.
If @Monkey Allen is positive about it, Iâm all for it. The white hot cauldron that is championship football could be a different kettle of fish to the genteel nature of the league however.
Not sure if it was the impact of the black card or just bad defending but there was a lot of goal chances in 2 games I watched this weekend.
There did seem a reluctance to pull down a player going through on goal, so that can only be a good thing. Defenders who are trying to break into a team arenât going to jeopardize their chances by getting black carded. However, In the championship it will be a different story, especially with the better teams who have good squad depth.
[quote=âMonkey Allen, post: 897434, member: 123â]Not sure if it was the impact of the black card or just bad defending but there was a lot of goal chances in 2 games I watched this weekend.
There did seem a reluctance to pull down a player going through on goal, so that can only be a good thing. Defenders who are trying to break into a team arenât going to jeopardize their chances by getting black carded. However, In the championship it will be a different story, especially with the better teams who have good squad depth.[/quote]
Agreed, its difficult to read too much into it when its anything but do or die at this stage, but in the two games Iâve seen over the weekend (as Iâd completely ignore any of the Byrne, FBD, McKenna comps) there was very little off the ball stuff and what I noticed very clearly was no blocking off of the runner after heâd passed the ball. Its reassuring so far, but this really is shadow boxing still. But as weâve said on this forum before, the issues with these rules wonât be at intercounty level, itâll be the club game that will suffer, once again.
Not if the refs were better, there would be no issue
Bang on, I think this could have a bigger impact on better play than the pulling down of lads. I was at the game in Newbridge yesterday and it was very noticeable that whenever either team attacked, there was plenty of support runners and it was much easier to work a scoring chance. Cribben and OâSĂ© were rightly black carded, there was one or two others who couldâve been, but I think Hickey got it right overall.
No black cards issued at all in Portlaoise, but that may have been as much down to Laois being so far off the mark more than anything, but what did stand out, was indeed the support runs. The sheer volume of support runners Donegal had was terrifying. Even in the old rules they placed huge emphasis support runners from deep, but can yo imagine how many a side like them playing in their style will have if there are no runs being blocked? Its potentially great for the game, but as stated, its still very early days.
Forwards just have to become better 60-80M runner dandies their heads to deter runs as opposed to blocking. Tracking a runner and getting ball side of him will render him either useless, need a spectacular and dangerous kick across the field or will halt him.
It would be good and add great clean physicality if you were allowed shoulder a guy off the ball, properly that is. But then the linesmen would have to concentrate and it would be hard for club refs.
[SIZE=4]Anatomy of a close run thing[/SIZE]
Monday, January 27, 2014
IT was 2013âs craziest, most dramatic four minutes in Irish sport.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/media/images/e/EamonnFitzmauriceKerryFootballManager_large.jpg
http://media.tcm.ie/media/house/ieauthors/tonyleen.jpgBy Tony Leen
Sports Editor
[I]But while the Dubs drove onto All-Ireland success last September, Kerry went home to lick their wounds after losing a football classic for the ages. Ahead of the new Allianz League season, Kerry manager Eamonn Fitzmaurice reflects on those losing minutes, the small things that change history. And how the Kingdom intend to learn their lessons and come back stronger.
Sixty six minutes gone. Breathless, head-melting stuff, a downhill slalom with no brake and no break for 35 minutes.
Pause, then, for snipers to reload.
With four minutes left between Dublin and Kerry in the All-Ireland football semi-final last Sept 1st in Croke Park, everyone in the stadium and at home placed themselves in the brace position.
Ding ding, final round. Gentlemen, please touch gloves.
JACK SHERWOOD
Four minutes from the end of the game, Eamonn Fitzmaurice sent for Jack Sherwood from the Firies club. Sherwood had been tagged from the beginning of the year as one of two or three freshmen ready to earn a low numbered jersey for the Championship. But successive, unlucky injuries pockmarked his season. However, the Kerry coach always knew the left-footer from Farranfore would be coming on against the Dubs, despite missing most of the season. He had told the callow defender, but no-one else, as much the week before. When Kevin McManamon was sent for by Jim Gavin, Kerry readied their counter-measure.
âWhat Dublin tend to do with McManamon is get him on someone with tired legs, giving him the best chance to do damage. So we were ready to introduce a player to mark him, and that player was Jack Sherwood, because he was playing out of his skin in training.â
Things didnât work out that day for Sherwood. He was blinded by the Broadway lights of a scalding semi-final in front of 80,000 rabid spectators with everything on the line as the game moved into its final acts. Who wouldnât be? He never got into his game stride. How could he? Sherwood wasnât the reason Kerry lost that memorable match, but when the forensic lab that is Kingdom football opinion went searching for cause, it got mentioned. Were management hasty in picking him, not least when they drafted a readymade replacement defender into the squad the morning of the semi-final?
âWe were picking all year on training form,â Fitzmaurice says in his first extended interview since. âHindsight says Brian McGuire was an experienced campaigner⊠should we have put him in at that stage? I donât know, but we discussed it. Jack was flying, and I had told him the week of the game that when McManamon came on, he was the player to mark him. He knew, he was the only one who knew.â
Only those who have sampled the white-line fever at that level can properly understand the microscopic detail that goes into such situations. And the plethora of mini-moments that make or break a dream. After a year of planning â something Fitzmaurice prides his charge on â could Kerryâs chagrin come down to a late substitution? Hardly.
âI had a chat with him afterwards,â Fitzmaurice says of Sherwood, who has also started 2014 well. âHe was disappointed. Heâs a tough character, thatâll stand to him. These things probably take you by surprise â the noise, the speed of the whole thing, when you come in as a sub, itâs very hard to get your second wind. Youâre everywhere.â
McManamon grabbed the goal that sunk Kerry, a looping Seamus Darby-like topspin into the Hill 16 goal. No-one but Kevin knows the true intent of that ball. Sherwood was nowhere near him. Nor were any of his colleagues.
âHe wasnât on Kevin McManamon for the goal,â smiles the Kerry coach, âand afterwards I wanted to know why. There had been a swap and he hadnât stayed with McManamon. We switched for a kick-out. It was Marc (O SĂ©) who was on him, but Marc got caught under the kick-out and was out of the play. But Marc shouldnât have been on him. McGuireâs form was very good coming into the game. But he hadnât been factored in prior to the morning of the game, because the way we discussed our subs, we felt it should be biased towards midfielders and forwards who could win a close game for us.â
Fitzmauriceâs logic is beguiling: âWe didnât think weâd have to put three backs on. If we were putting on that amount, weâd be in trouble because if youâre in the shake-up and going after a game, itâs midfielders and forwards youâre putting on. Brian (Maguire) had dipped during the summer and didnât make the Cavan (quarter-final) panel. He was very disappointed, but reacted massively after that, and was seriously unfortunate not to be in the 26 for the Dublin game. That was a hard conversation. The morning of the Dublin game, Paul Geaneyâs back spasmed, so Brian was back in. I told him he could play. And he nearly did.â
DECLAN OâSULLIVAN
A minute or so after Sherwood was introduced for Peter Crowley and was searching for his bearings, Kerryâs Declan OâSullivan stepped inside onto his favoured left foot to pop the decisive score into the Davin End. One point behind with less than a minute remaining of normal time meant Dublin were in panic mode. Kick-out strategy goes out the window in those scenarios. Itâs mayhem. Kerry could press on and squeeze out the game.
But Declan missed, tugging the effort wide. OâSullivan is one of the top three footballers in Ireland and has been for the best part of a decade. He gives more of himself than almost anyone for his county but has suffered a disproportionate number of injustices wearing the green and gold in recent years. Nobody could imagine Colm Cooper being booed by his own people or being blamed â despite being in a semi-concussed state â for throwing away the pass that led to Dublinâs winning goal in the All-Ireland final of 2011. But these things have happened to Declan OâSullivan.
âIâd give (Dublinâs) Cian OâSullivan a lot of credit for that (miss),â says Fitzmaurice now. âHe threw himself at Declan, and rather than having a proper kick through it, he had to chip it a bit more. But if youâre a leader, you keep putting yourself in the position to take that shot. Thatâs what Michael Jordan always said, you miss more than you get. Off the field, heâs a massive leader in the dressing room as well. Heâs 30 and weâll mind him early in the year.â
Last year that didnât happen. For a reason. âHe came back earlier than I had planned. I had pictured him coming back in March, but he came back at the end of January. In training the week after the Mayo defeat, we were very flat, and down bodies for the following weekend at home to Dublin. Declan came to me at training on the Tuesday and said he wanted to be togged off for the Dublin game. âI canât be inside here training and then going away at the weekend, I feel like a fraudâ.
âSo he came on, got a right false (dirty) blow, a right false blow, that put him out for six weeks. But thatâs Declan summed up for you. Heâs a very honourable kind of guy.â
THE DUBS
Fitzmaurice and trainer Cian OâNeill took themselves up to Ennis last June for the low-key Munster football semi-final between strong favourites Cork and Clare. Duty dictated their presence. They were playing the winners in the provincial final, after all. They took up station across from the main stand at Cusack Park. Away from most everybody. Except the resources of the Dublin footballers.
âDublinâs resources are phenomenal. And I mean phenomenal. In Ennis, there was a member of the backroom team up from us â not a member of management team, mind you â with an iPad doing a statistical analysis of a Munster semi-final between Cork and Clare. Now, that was opposition well down the road for them. It shows the level they are at.
âTo have the time and resources to do that is a massive help. And the Croke Park thing is a big, big factor. Weâre playing there Saturday night in the first round of the League and we want to go there, not Parnell Park. But if youâre Dublin, thatâs your back garden. The same dressing room, warning up at the same end of the pitch. In that semi-final, you can see the likes of Connolly and Brogan donât even have to look at the posts.
âThere are other factors â an interesting thing to watch out for is the ballboys: if Dublin are behind, there is one fella rolls (the ball back to the keeper) from one side and another from the other. Letâs say a Kerry back kicks it back to him to slow the game down, another ball comes straight in from the other side. Magic! If Dublin are ahead, you wonât see any ball, you have to go looking for it.
âItâs interesting too that Kilkennyâs problems started in 2013 when they were moved out of Croke Park. They played Offaly in Tullamore, Dublin in Portlaoise, beat Tipp in Nowlan Park and then lost to Cork in Thurles. When you take Kilkenny out of familiar surroundings, itâs different. They found it. Dublin wonât have to leave Croke Park this year and they have four home League games again â weâre on the road four times for the second successive season.â
This is less a moan than a hat-tip by Fitzmaurice â and most of all to their head coach.
â(Jim) Gavin is very measured, calm and analytical. He said this time last year he was going to go for it, and thatâs what he did. But in the second year itâs tougher, you donât get the same breaks off referees, everyoneâs up for you. But they are a step ahead of everyone else at the moment, they are the team to beat in 2014. When you come short, like we did last year, and youâre so close, and have got so much right, how do you reconcile it? Well, Dublin were the best team in the country last year, and when you step back, you have to be impressed with their mental fortitude. In the second half that day, there was no panic, they just kept going even when we threw everything at them.
âThere were small things for sure. Paul Mannionâs (first half) goal was a huge moment. We had them on the ropes after two early goals. We won possession from a kick-out and got turned over. Diarmuid Connolly was shooting for a point, next thing itâs in the net. They believed again. We were two up at half-time but the way we played, we should have been more.
âYou analyse your own performance on the line and think, âcould we have done different thingsâ? I think we could. But you have to trust the players. Iâd be harder on myself than on them. When the management spoke this time last year, we reckoned we had a massive chance, and that our biggest threat was Dublin. They have a serious manager. He wasnât visible until he got the Phillips manager of the year award, wasnât seen anywhere high up or low down. He stuck his head above the parapet to accept his award and disappeared again. A serious guy.â
The plaudits cascading down on the quality of the semi-final were cold comfort to the Kerry set-up. Fitzmaurice takes losing badly anyway â often going underground for weeks â so losing a semi-final in what he sensed was âan All-Ireland yearâ cut deep.
âI just wanted the final to be played and done with. I didnât go to the (Dublin-Mayo) game, and the lead into it was tough. A lot of the Kerry set-up found it tough. There was massive disappointment there, and it hung around. Itâs bad for management. I always go back to the day we were hammered by Meath in the 2001 semi-final, probably the lowest day in the history of Kerry football. And the week after, I played a North Kerry League final in Listowel. As a player you move on, even if youâre reminded of it every now and then. But from a managerâs point of view â it was the first year I wasnât playing club football â so there is a space there. You do a lot of thinking, and evaluating.
âThere was a lot of talk outside that we were gone, but we knew we were very much there, and had a serious chance of winning the whole thing. The only thing that went against us repeatedly were injuries to players in good form. You had Aidan OâMahony, David Moran, Bryan Sheehan, Jonathan Lyne, Paul Geaney, Jack Sherwood all out for lengthy periods of the season. A squad like Dublin can absorb that kind of thing, and maybe we could ten years ago, but we needed everyone. At no stage in the season did we have everyone until the A v B game at Fota Island in Cork eight days before we played Dublin â and that was the day Killian Young broke his leg.
HALF RIGHT, HALF WRONG
Itâs hard to think of a logical reason why Kerry consistently de-powered in the second half of games last year, but they did. Tony McEntee, on these pages, felt they changed tack, to a less ambitious gameplan in the second half of the semi-final, but at no stage last year did Fitzmauriceâs side hand out lessons in how to close out a game. Au contraire.
âItâs something weâve discussed a lot,â the manager says. âThere was various circumstances in different games. Against Tyrone (in the final League game), fatigue was a factor above in Omagh. We had a fantastic training camp in Portugal, came home on the Tuesday, travelled north on the Saturday. We played fabulous football in the first half, but fell away. That seems to be the pattern up there every time.
âAgainst Cork (in the Munster final), CiarĂĄn Sheehan and Alan OâConnor made a huge difference to them when they were introduced. We were too slow on the line to make changes that day, we were reactive, not proactive. Also, we had a good few chances in the second half to keep the scoreboard moving, and kill the ball, but we failed to do so.â
The All-Ireland quarter-final against Cavan was an odd affair. âWe trained too hard coming into it game,â Fitzmaurice reveals now. âThere was a lot of handling errors, but thatâs not all. There was a lot of things that weekendâŠ
âThe morning of the game we changed the routine â habitually Kerry go straight to Croke Park, but we did our warm-up in St Patâs, Drumcondra. There was a soccer match on the pitch we were meant to be using. They were having a few pops at our lads coming off, Iâd say it was an over 40âs game or something. The footballs werenât there when they should have been, water was slow coming out, the bus was parked in a way that it had to reverse out when it should have been straight for the roadâŠa lot of logistical little bits and pieces we didnât get right.â
Saipan!
âWe were actually late getting to Croke Park too. The Kerry minors had drawn with Tyrone and it had gone to extra-time. Only for that, we would have been tight.
âBut all told, we came out of the weekend under the radar. Dublin had beaten Cork and they were all the talk. Cian tapered the training big time for the Dublin game. The lads were ready[/I]
fookin bizarre articleâŠsurprised it didnât get more attentionâŠIpads , ballboys and bus routes among other things is why the dubs bet Kerry last summerâŠ
a junior soccer match got the pitch ahead of Kerry GGA & then the players intimidated the kerry team
Some odd bits in there, more a reflection of the journalist than the piece as a whole. Actually quite a lot of interesting bits in it though once you look past what you chose to highlight.
o_O
that post is more bizarre than the article palâŠhow are Fitzmauriceâs quotes a reflection of the journalist??..
[quote=âscumpot, post: 897756, member: 182â]o_O
that post is more bizarre than the article palâŠhow are Fitzmauriceâs quotes a reflection of the journalist??..[/quote]
Its how the journalist chose to write the piece, Given whatâs there you have an interesting insight into Fitzâs thinking leading up to the Dublin game last year. Youâre choosing to see it as making excuses because thats how you view it, I view it as an interesting look behind how a manager prepared his team to take on Dublin in their back yard. The mistakes he made are clear to see as well. Like I said, interesting. In other hands that sort of access could have yielded a damn fine piece but once you look beyond the journalism the nuts and bolts make for interesting reading.
blaming ball boys FFSâŠ
Interesting insight. Itâs rare to see a manager giving an interview like that these days with them seemingly obsessed about giving something away or inadvertently offending an opponent and providing them with extra motivation. Still, seems odd to me that heâd publicly mention the young player who failed to shackle McManamon.
this guy seems to be an easy target to blame in KerryâŠi actually thought he was on paddy Andrews as I remember him swinging out of Andrews under the cusack stand and Connolly put over the resultant free with his left footâŠhow did Fitzmaurice and his selectors not notice that Sherwood picked up the wrong man?..
Thatâs a fucking dreadful article. And awfully long, Leen is dreadful.
But Kerry were never winning that game. Itâs overblown how close it was. Once Dublin woke up after 25 they dominated.
[quote=âcaoimhaoin, post: 897820, member: 273â]Thatâs a fucking dreadful article. And awfully long, Leen is dreadful.
But Kerry were never winning that game. Itâs overblown how close it was. Once Dublin woke up after 25 they dominated.[/quote]
They were not much more than the width of post away from going into the lead again with a minute of normal time left.
I would say they went bloody close to winning it.
Youâre still not looking past your own angle, which is fair enough, youâre entitled to do so.
Dont think he blamed him, again I refer to the shoddy nature of the article. I still maintain its a very fine insight given by Fitzmaurice, credit to him. I think he was in fact referring to their failure to notice the change that allowed Kevin Mc get away from him. All a learning experience.
[quote=âSidney, post: 897825, member: 183â]They were not much more than the width of post away from going into the lead again with a minute of normal time left.
I would say they went bloody close to winning it.[/quote]
As would anyone without an axe to grind. It was that close.
[quote=âmyboyblue, post: 897826, member: 180â]Youâre still not looking past your own angle, which is fair enough, youâre entitled to do so.
Dont think he blamed him, again I refer to the shoddy nature of the article. I still maintain its a very fine insight given by Fitzmaurice, credit to him. I think he was in fact referring to their failure to notice the change that allowed Kevin Mc get away from him. All a learning experience.
As would anyone without an axe to grind. It was that close.[/quote]
Canât be arsed reading it again. But does it not mention Sherwood being off the pace and not playing well when he came on? Looked to me like a manager using the media to respond to criticism of his changes and (perhaps unwittingly) transferring the blame to a rookie player.
In other words, Kerry people were wondering why he was used and thereâs probably been plenty of debate about it in the aftermath. Fitzmaurice in turn saying he was âflying in trainingâ, their plans had identified him as the man to introduce to mark McManamon when Dublin sprung him but that he played shitâŠbasically using the interview to justify his decision while highlighting the young player performing inadequately. Donât really see the need for it but interesting insight alright, even if speaking in general terms would probably have been appreciated by the player in question.