A bizarre day at Croke Park. I’d love to be able to say I put a tenner on a treble draw today but good things don’t come in threes in Dublin, well maybe Rory O’Carroll. To put that tenner into the extra admission fee to the stand would have been a wise investment on a day like this but the Hill it was, and a very sparsely populated Hill for the opening match before our resident scumdogs arrived to break down the gate on the concourse of the terrace.
While there was some value to be had for anybody who paid the 15 quid to stand from 2:00 until after 6:00, it probably would have lost from the cost of the Lemsip or Uniflu needed to alleviate the effects of the soaking that the frequent monsoon conditions would have caused. During the extra time there was the threat of adding sunburn to the misery mix as summer briefly arrived.
Dublin fans certainly can’t afford to belittle the first match considering what was to come. A frankly abominable first half performance. In fact I might as well leave out the “first half” bit. A really poor performance overall.
Dublin had 12 men n their own half for most of the first 50 minutes and yet there was very little support play. Players weren’t making themselves available for a handpass and the man in possession would invariably kick the ball to a Wexford man. Players simply looked lost and without any idea of how to move the ball forward. The marking was poor, the tackling was poor, the shape was poor. Wexford constantly found space down Barry Cahill’s wing.
The idea of isolating a two man forward line (not full forwards, all forwards) is lovely in theory but awful in practice. Any system that leaves out Alan Brogan in favour of Niall Corkery is deeply flawed. A spare defender can easily be moved back. Dublin are also easy to press against high up the pitch as Gman mentioned in his review. We struggled to get out of our own half at times.
Midfield at the moment is a disaster zone. Fennell is a talented footballer but he simply is way off the standard of fitness required. I had about six or seven cigarettes during the two matches today and I’d probably be fitter than him. Ross McConnell has done nothing in the last three years to suggest he’s up to the standard. He’s not a full back. He’s not a midfielder. What exactly is he then? Corkery looks a workhorse and nothing more. McAuley made a good impact but hard to know if he’ll cut it from the start. Not sure what the story with Darren Magee was today but in my opinion he should have an important role to play as an impact sub. Denis Bastick’s time in blue is over.
Dublin have excellent footballers available to them, not the best in Ireland but certainly Top 4. Indeed most of the players out there today are good if not excellent footballers. Gilroy has done some good things and the league campaign wasn’t a total waste. The new full back line is evidence of that. But there’s no way this is the best 15 in Dublin. If you’re relying on an athlete like Eoghan O’Gara to win you matches the signs aren’t good. In fairness I don’t want to be picking on him because he did well enough – but I just can’t see it.
There was a Shane Ryan shaped hole in the midfield today, and unfortunately it’s still all too obvious and it isn’t the first time I’ve said it, that Ryan and Ciaran Whelan are still the two best midfielders in Dublin. Along with Jason Sherlock’s absence, it has contributed to a leadership void in the squad which only Bernard Brogan at the moment seems willing to fill.
Anybody who watched Dublin in the league campaign won’t have been especially surprised by what happened in the first 50 minutes. Dublin in retrospect can probably put the first four wins in a row down to superior fitness and motivation allied to a bit of luck. The second half against Cork and the last 50 minutes or so against Galway at Parnell Park rang real warning bells as to the weakness of this tactical game and unfortunately it doesn’t look like they’ve been heeded.
In both of those matches Dublin struggled to get out of their own half and this now looks to have been a much truer barometer of our league form. The win over Tyrone in Omagh was in many ways a bad result for Dublin football. It completely papered over the cracks in the game plan and lulled this management into thinking the tactics could work on a bigger pitch. If it doesn’t work against Wexford well it sure ain’t gonna work against Galway or Monaghan, never mind Kerry or Cork.
Pat Gilroy and Mickey Whelan have in their own minds invented a caricature of what they think the Tyrone style of play is and have totally missed the point. This is not the way Tyrone play. Tyrone are fluid. They are adaptable, composed and comfortable in possession. And above all they play as a unit. Dublin on the other hand are rigid, uncertain in possession and all playing off different hymn sheets to each other.
Tyrone have been playing their type of game for years, going back to the minor teams under Mickey Harte and now down through the grades. Gilroy and Whelan have imposed a completely alien yellow pack version of the Tyrone game plan that would confuse even Tyrone themselves. The individual talents are now slaves to this system and if they flourish, as Bernard Brogan continues to do, it is in spite of it rather than because of it. It’s clear to me that the players do not buy into this system.
Year on year, we moan about how the emphasis is on strength and fitness, on athletes over footballers. Unfortunately this management team have taken this emphasis to a new level. This isn’t football and it isn’t going to get us anywhere. In this championship the emphasis so far has been very much on football. Down, Sligo, Louth and Monaghan have all had great success with real, honest attacking football. I’d nearly prefer to see us lose playing like that than to win playing in the horrible style we’ve played this year. And believe me, that isn’t going to happen.
There are times when it’s best to stick to your guns, but sometimes there are times when it’s best to write something off as a bad debt and to cut your losses. Now is that time for the Dublin management team.