[QUOTE=“Rocko, post: 959748, member: 1”]Kevin,
We’ve always had a very cordial and productive e-relationship. I’m disappointed you personalised the attack with derogotary adjectives and the traditional PM slur. I don’t recall ever questioning your motives or integrity.
Nevertheless I feel it would be remiss of me not to point out one or two grievances I have with the substance of your reply.
The purpose of highlighting your comments on McGuinness around the time of the All Ireland win, was not to expose your hypocrisy or, more benignly, the maturation of your views. It was to directly address your comment that you told everyone McGuinness needed to change things 2 years ago. The reality is that you said almost the exact opposite of that. With hindsight it is perfectly reasonable to say that the views you had then were either right or wrong and who cares. But hindsight doesn’t give you the opportunity to change what you actually said and claim orcale status as a result.
To avoid going around in circles on this issue, let’s just agree that when you said “you’d only be tweaking and moving on with Donegal” you have changed your mind since.
You will doubtless be aware that the All Ireland Championship is an unforgiving tournament that doesn’t afford participants much chance to recover if they have an off day. Donegal were very poor on exiting the Championship last year but your assertion at the time that McGuinness should step down was absurd. Likewise your insistence now that Donegal “cleraly were not” using a scientific approach before now is utterly at odds with everything you wrote at the time, everything that was in the media at the time, and the general acceptance that a core component in Donegal’s All Ireland win was their scientific approach to training.
You were not “privvy to all this info at the time” and you’re not privvy to it now. You’re guessing as you readily admit. Some of it is informed guesswork, some of it is based on your studies, some of it is based on misreading newspaper articles, some of it is based on people Kev knows. All of it contributes to an opinion you form and then declare that selfsame opinion to be unimpeachable, indisputable and how dare anyone challenge it ever and this is the fucking truth goddammit and what anyone else know who isn’t close to the Donegal community in Perth?
I agree with most of what you’re written about Dublin there. Again, the cause of debate was that you were so vehement and absolute in your views last year that Dublin would be found out because of the weaknesses (that became strengths). And you are equally determined this year to say that Dublin don’t have a strong group of forwards on the bench because you’re palpably unfamiliar with one of them and the rest you believe are undermined because Dublin are so good in other areas and because of something about Brian Hurley.
TFK would be nothing without opinions and it would be a dull place without your contributions. But arguing that Dublin don’t have a historically strong group of forwards on the bench appeared contrary more than anything.[/QUOTE]
You are wrong, like I said already, I would have changed things 2 year ago. And I would have change them last year and this year as well. I have not changed my min at all.
While Donegal were using some scientific methods, I now believe they were a little cruder than I expected in their running and conditioning, I probably did give them too much credit there. It seemed to stack up from the year before that they were building slowly and methodically, and while they did that football wise it looks like they
didn’t Conditioing wise. I had been told as we’ll they were using infra red technology, and this appears to be bollix as well.
When you see someone has a degree in sports science and psychology I would have expecte that. However, and nothing to do with Donegal, I have come to see that a lot of sports science qualified people have no idea what to do with a team and don’t always make good conditioning coaches. Now of course he did a great job with them as he won the AI, end Of story. However to go back an do the exact same thing again the following year was but silly and surprising. He has seen the error and either on advice or on reflection has changed it. I really don’t get why you cannot see this series of events. And also how I would have seen it. My point on him leaving last year was, thinking back, that he seemed to have lost the team and they looked very over trained. He has more or less confirmed they over trained, but the list and type of injuries indicated that last year anyway. He stayed on and look to have got them back to a reasonable level again, although I don’t see, yet, how they can reproduce 2012 without McHugh an the fact a couple of teams will now match them physically.
You see what you are missing, badly, is that you can change training without changing how you play too much. There is no logic to your accusations. I had information back then like we all had, I judged it then the way I saw it. I have more info now, I have an adjuste view. I realise that’s hard for the mathimathical intelligent accountant type to get their head around, but they’d the way people like me can think.
I have already explained in very detailed fashion why I think the strength of the Dublin bench is being over rated. Of course they are good, Mannion would start on any team in the country, but you were over blowing them, end of story. Everyone get carried away with exciting teams, but it must be remembered Dublin have a few close game last year, and are definitely beatable.
All you are doing is re-hashing and twisting everything to save face. It’s embarrassing. Most people here got exactly what I was saying.
