[QUOTE=“Dirty Hands Walter, post: 991299, member: 9”]The post-defeat “now is not the time to make decisions on my future” stuff mentioned by @The Scouse Cafu earlier on this thread was used by Anthony Daly on Sunday.
Also the interchangeable positive momentum/ too tired to compete talk mentioned by @Julio Geordio in reference to teams with heavy schedules has been talked about a lot over the last few weeks. As mentioned, it varies depending on whether the team wins or loses. Because Wexford lost the other day, “it was inevitable that playing 4 weeks in a row would catch up with them.” But when we won against Waterford, “Wexford had built up incredible momentum after the two games against Clare.”
Not cliches per se. But a few things about GAA general chat and media coverage bug and amuse me in equal measure:
The battle not to be favourites for a game. Why do players, managers, columnists and pundits from the competing counties almost invariably tell broadcasters and journalists that they’re not favourites to win? What does it achieve? Do they all think they’ll lull the opposition into overconfidence and a false sense of belief? It’s a never-ending circle of guff.
The importance of staying out of the limelight and not talking to the media. Some of the Limerick chaps were pleased there were few media appearances before last Sunday’s game and players didn’t get distracted by it. Yet David Breen was the main feature on the RTE Friday night preview show and played brilliantly. I saw numerous other interviews in the press by Limerick players and management last week. But because they won, a certain school of thought reckoned it was down to staying out of the media and being focused on the job at hand. The point being you can give an interview AND STILL be primed and focused to perform well.
Twisting form lines, usually post match, to “prove” that the beaten team wasn’t actually very good. The outcome of Limerick v Kilkenny will be interesting. Kilkenny might be a very old team and who got no test in Leinster. Sure Dublin have reached the end of the road with Daly, they took two games to overcome Galway and they’re gone back and don’t even mention Offaly. Limerick might be no better than they were last year. Sure Tipperary were way off the pace when they beat them back in June and you can’t read anything into that Wexford game because 4 games in 4 weeks caught up with them and sure they lost the Munster Final too.[/QUOTE]
It’s probably fair to say that media coverage of our games has never been greater but never more bland or cliche-ridden. There’s hardly a decent pundit out there. Paul Kimmage in the Rough Rider documentary last night called it spot on. He said that most journalists have a sheep-like mentality and need reassurance from their colleagues that their opinions are valid, hence a lot of them come out spouting the same lines as the rest of the herd.
Regarding your points - 1. I think bigging up the opposition is a mechanism to deal with failure. If you’re beaten, how many times does the “we knew coming in here today that we’d be up against it as (insert whoever) are a top-class team” line get trotted out. In reality, it achieves nothing other than possibly creating motivation amongst a squad by telling them they’re being written off although I’d be very sceptical about the value of same.
If you look at the cast of One Flew The Cuckoos Nest posting over on Hoganstand, you’d think that giving an interview was the equivalent of going out and making a shit in the small square during the National Anthem. Any quality interview I’ve ever seen with a player or manager has been in the off-season. During the championship, they’re simply a succession of repeated and recycled platitudes that could actually be applied to any game in a campaign. People here in Limerick are already having convulsions about over-hyping the semi-final and think that the team should be exiled to Lough Derg for the next fortnight. Hype is driven by supporters and usually local media. I don’t think it affects players one bit to be honest. They know the score and, in fact, I spoke to one of our players after the Munster Final and he was laughing at the bullshit coming out of the “once a year brigade” as he called them.
Again, people are trying to anticipate the outcome and have a line read for it. The media analysis of Wexford was laughable and actually quite insulting to the team. When they lost it was because they were tired. Had they won, it would have been the momentum that carried them. I just think in modern championship hurling that momentum, where it exists, needs rest periods to be truly effective. Clare, last year, were a prime example in that they were winning games but weren’t playing every week. I’m hoping the same will apply to us this year. If those quarter-finals were to be played next weekend I guarantee you’d see a different Wexford.
Players are not media trained - witness the furore when Joe Canning gave the interview in 2012 and mentioned Kilkenny and Sheflin
It is easier to say very little than be honest and then be picked up out of context or out of proportion and give the other team ammunition to get fired up. If you listen to interviews with players on the radio you do pick up things by what they say and what they don’t say
Dowling from Limerick was on last night on Off the Ball and gave a very good interview but even then they tried to pick up on things he was saying and in fairness to him he was intelligent enough to deal with that. Not all players would be.
I was driving back from Thurles the other night and I was thinking to myself when was the last time I got the train back from Thurles and the answer was the night of the Munster final replay in 1998. And the reason I never get the train to and from matches anymore was that myself and my companion for the day were stalked the whole way back by 1990s Dublin Hurling Man (Dhm). Dhm started out to be reasonably pleasant although I didn’t care for the intrusion. It had been a long and emotional day and neither my companion nor I were in the mood for much in the way of chat
Nothing would do your man though but to keep blathering on about how much he loved the hurling and how many games he went to every year and how he went to every Dublin hurling game at every level, but not the football. He hated the football. It was a dark joyless world this obsessive inhabited. He was kitted out in grey and black as one would imagine.
Anyway at some point things turned from the merely tiresome to the dark and threatening. Perhaps we had not paid him enough homage, maybe we had uttered a disrespectful remark about Dublin hurling, but next minute your man was haranguing us about what a shower of cunts Waterford were and how great Clare were. As the train pulled into Kingsbridge we tried to give him the slip, but to no avail. When we got to Ned Reas on Parkgate St there he was still following us abusing us under his breath. We supped a pint and left for Ryan’s in Parkgate St, only for your man to follow us in there as well. I can still see the baldy cunt in my minds eye.
We gave up and left having to get a taxi because your man would have followed us if we’d taken the bus.
I’ve never taken public transport to a match since.
[QUOTE=“Fagan ODowd, post: 991351, member: 706”]I was driving back from Thurles the other night and I was thinking to myself when was the last time I got the train back from Thurles and the answer was the night of the Munster final replay in 1998. And the reason I never get the train to and from matches anymore was that myself and my companion for the day were stalked the whole way back by 1990s Dublin Hurling Man (Dhm). Dhm started out to be reasonably pleasant although I didn’t care for the intrusion. It had been a long and emotional day and neither my companion nor I were in the mood for much in the way of chat
Nothing would do your man though but to keep blathering on about how much he loved the hurling and how many games he went to every year and how he went to every Dublin hurling game at every level, but not the football. He hated the football. It was a dark joyless world this obsessive inhabited. He was kitted out in grey and black as one would imagine.
Anyway at some point things turned from the merely tiresome to the dark and threatening. Perhaps we had not paid him enough homage, maybe we had uttered a disrespectful remark about Dublin hurling, but next minute your man was haranguing us about what a shower of cunts Waterford were and how great Clare were. As the train pulled into Kingsbridge we tried to give him the slip, but to no avail. When we got to Ned Reas on Parkgate St there he was still following us abusing us under his breath. We supped a pint and left for Ryan’s in Parkgate St, only for your man to follow us in there as well. I can still see the baldy cunt in my minds eye.
We gave up and left having to get a taxi because your man would have followed us if we’d taken the bus.
I’ve never taken public transport to a match since.[/QUOTE]
You’d miss that utter fucking weirdo @dubliner 2 all the same.
[QUOTE=“Fagan ODowd, post: 991351, member: 706”]I was driving back from Thurles the other night and I was thinking to myself when was the last time I got the train back from Thurles and the answer was the night of the Munster final replay in 1998. And the reason I never get the train to and from matches anymore was that myself and my companion for the day were stalked the whole way back by 1990s Dublin Hurling Man (Dhm). Dhm started out to be reasonably pleasant although I didn’t care for the intrusion. It had been a long and emotional day and neither my companion nor I were in the mood for much in the way of chat
Nothing would do your man though but to keep blathering on about how much he loved the hurling and how many games he went to every year and how he went to every Dublin hurling game at every level, but not the football. He hated the football. It was a dark joyless world this obsessive inhabited. He was kitted out in grey and black as one would imagine.
Anyway at some point things turned from the merely tiresome to the dark and threatening. Perhaps we had not paid him enough homage, maybe we had uttered a disrespectful remark about Dublin hurling, but next minute your man was haranguing us about what a shower of cunts Waterford were and how great Clare were. As the train pulled into Kingsbridge we tried to give him the slip, but to no avail. When we got to Ned Reas on Parkgate St there he was still following us abusing us under his breath. We supped a pint and left for Ryan’s in Parkgate St, only for your man to follow us in there as well. I can still see the baldy cunt in my minds eye.
We gave up and left having to get a taxi because your man would have followed us if we’d taken the bus.
I’ve never taken public transport to a match since.[/QUOTE]
He began posting as “dubliner2” on internet forums not long afterwards.
While the stalking part of the story may lead others to suspect that it was somebody from my family, I can confirm that I was watching two live matches on television with my father that day - Derry v Donegal in the Ulster football final and Galway v Roscommon in the Connacht football final, to be precise, so he can be ruled out.
Again, not a cliche but another thing that crops up in the GAA when reviewing/previewing games:
The focus on whether a team was tested or had a close game in their run to date.
Does it matter if you’ve been hammering teams? Do you necessarily need to have a game where you play relatively shit and win narrowly? Does any other sport hone in on this to the same extent?
Carlo Ancellotti: “Yeah, 'tis a great place to be…winning a semi-final in a penalty shoot-out like that. We got a severe test out there, it’s great to come through it and that’ll definitely stand to us. We know we’ll need to improve an awful lot and Bayern will be favourites in the final no doubt. But we’ll get back to training on Tuesday morning and sure 'tis great to have the final to look forward to.”
[QUOTE=“Bartosz Bereszynskiego, post: 999582, member: 9”]Again, not a cliche but another thing that crops up in the GAA when reviewing/previewing games:
The focus on whether a team was tested or had a close game in their run to date.
Does it matter if you’ve been hammering teams? Do you necessarily need to have a game where you play relatively shit and win narrowly? Does any other sport hone in on this to the same extent?
Carlo Ancellotti: “Yeah, 'tis a great place to be…winning a semi-final in a penalty shoot-out like that. We got a severe test out there, it’s great to come through it and that’ll definitely stand to us. We know we’ll need to improve an awful lot and Bayern will be favourites in the final no doubt. But we’ll get back to training on Tuesday morning and sure 'tis great to have the final to look forward to.”[/QUOTE]
it is just expressed differently. Focus on performance and not result and then results all that matter - sign of champions “playing badly and winning”
In football the teams are more easily stratified - Big 4, top half, Premier League so the descriptions rely on that
In world cup because teams are less easily stratified you will hear pundits referring to teams not being tested yet, haven’t learned much about themselves from a performance or hammering a team
Difference in GAA seems to be that hammering a team is always regarded as a bad thing.
[QUOTE=“Bartosz Bereszynskiego, post: 999582, member: 9”]Again, not a cliche but another thing that crops up in the GAA when reviewing/previewing games:
The focus on whether a team was tested or had a close game in their run to date.
Does it matter if you’ve been hammering teams? Do you necessarily need to have a game where you play relatively shit and win narrowly? Does any other sport hone in on this to the same extent?
Carlo Ancellotti: “Yeah, 'tis a great place to be…winning a semi-final in a penalty shoot-out like that. We got a severe test out there, it’s great to come through it and that’ll definitely stand to us. We know we’ll need to improve an awful lot and Bayern will be favourites in the final no doubt. But we’ll get back to training on Tuesday morning and sure 'tis great to have the final to look forward to.”[/QUOTE]
You only really know the weaknesses in a team when they are run close/beaten.
Carlo’s teams will have played 40+ domestic & European games at that stage so he’ll know them well enough.
[QUOTE=“Bartosz Bereszynskiego, post: 999582, member: 9”]Again, not a cliche but another thing that crops up in the GAA when reviewing/previewing games:
The focus on whether a team was tested or had a close game in their run to date.
Does it matter if you’ve been hammering teams? Do you necessarily need to have a game where you play relatively shit and win narrowly? Does any other sport hone in on this to the same extent?
Carlo Ancellotti: “Yeah, 'tis a great place to be…winning a semi-final in a penalty shoot-out like that. We got a severe test out there, it’s great to come through it and that’ll definitely stand to us. We know we’ll need to improve an awful lot and Bayern will be favourites in the final no doubt. But we’ll get back to training on Tuesday morning and sure 'tis great to have the final to look forward to.”[/QUOTE]
surely its better to come out the right side of a tight game than hammering a team where the intensity is gone out of the game by the start of second half … for a start match fitness is the hardest fitness to get and you only get that from coming through tight games and having to go full tilt for full game…