The ref didnât let a 9 point lead slip nor did he shoot 20 wides. However, watch the last 5 seconds of normal time. He was willing to give time to Clare to score and when Galway won the ball and were about to launch an attack he couldnât blow it up quick enough. Added time was 4 minutes for second half of normal time and the same for 10 minutes extra time. This is inconsistent refereeing. This and his previous with Galway (Leinster Final replay) and you could understand our complaints. Even allowing for bias I still thought OâDwyer was harsher against Cork than Owens was against Galway. We also had the farcical performance in the u21 Leinster Final. Waterford were done against Tipp but didnât whine so we could learn something from them.
Cop on with those â throw â away remarks.
Thought the ref had a solid game in this last week,very even
Both refs were in the main decent last weekend .
99% of people would agree.
Would agree with you entirely.
Weâd a fantastic weekend of hurling and the officiating was of a high quality
Youâd want your head examined to disagree
I donât know was it the Wexford DNA in both Ownes and OâDwyer that had them subconsciously rooting for the inferior team.
Galway and Cork were rode by the refs last weekend. We were rode by Hawkeye too.
Hawk-Eye hasnât a bullâs notion what heâs at.
Anyone claiming the Officials did good jobs last weekend need eye tests ASAP.
PM OâSULLIVAN: More than a sweeper, Colm Galvin the âgatekeeperâ
Friday, August 03, 2018
By PM OâSullivan
Some hurling matches resonate far more than others, with a draw doubly eloquent.
A draw it was between Clare and Galway. Now we must absorb what happened, analysing what the game revealed about these teams and pondering the impact generated by certain kinds of pressure. There is a reason why people see winning in sport as the coordination of a squeeze.
Last weekâs column broached this All-Ireland semi-final as a possible audit on hurling in a broader sense than two countiesâ health. Resonance transpired in a manner way beyond anything anticipatable. Most matches are simply a contest, a result. Yet some matches become a blueprint for future contests, a storehouse of resources.
Think about it. What we witnessed, nestled within the obvious, was a fresh way of dealing with the threat mounted by forwards heading out the way. A serious amount of 21st-century hurling pivots on this gambit, on exploiting the space vacated by forwards hovering around midfield.
Pushing the gambit, Galway squashed Clare in the first quarter of last weekendâs encounter. The 12th minute saw a long Joe Canning delivery from midfield fetched by Jonathan Glynn on squareâs edge. While he did not finish the goal chance, Cathal Mannion pointed for a lead of 0-6 to 0-1.
Commentating for RTĂ, Brendan Cummins observed: âClare have to work out now whether theyâre actually going to follow Galway all over the pitch or whether theyâre going to keep the structure.â
Nominally centre-forward, Canning was operating mostly in midfield, causing massive problems through strength in the tight and skill in the open.
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Cummins caught the dilemma. Should the Clare defenders push out, man on man? But would this decision not inevitably mean more one- on-one chances near goal, such as Glynn had just enjoyed against Patrick OâConnor?
Canning pointed for a lead of 1-7 to 0-1 in the 16th minute. By then, Clareâs management had rejigged and set about staunching the tactical bleed. They got to half-time four points behind and still alive.
But what was the nature of said rejig?
This weekâs narrative settled into Clare resurgence via opting for a sweeper. People liked the supposed ironies, the reversion to a structure quintessentially associated with Davy Fitzgerald. Besides, there are commentators who simply cannot countenance hurling excellence without sweeper presence.
I
reckon this narrative is only a surface skim. Hurling receives an awful lot of superficial analysis. A sweeper, fundamentally, is a figure who stands between two lines of defence. Soccer-wise, he stands between central defenders and the goalkeeper. Hurling wise, he stands between half-back and full-back.
Clare did not deploy Colm Galvin as a sweeper, in that he did not stand between lines. Used in this context, the term lacks nuance. A defender repeatedly gathering possession in space does not necessarily equate to a sweeper.
The truth is that Galvin acted as an unmarked centre-back, a facet with intriguing implications. DĂłnal Moloney and Gerry OâConnor calculated Galvin would do far more damage as a ball-playing unmarked centre-back than would be the case with GearĂłid McInerney, his opposition counterpart. Galvin provided a direct assist for three of Clareâs subsequent eight points in the first half.
Notably, this alteration involved a trio rather than a duo at midfield. Clare wanted Conor Cleary, for reasons of physique, as Joe Canningâs marker. But Cleary could not commit fully, while centre-back, to pursuing him into deep midfield. To do so would have left a prairie of space through the middle.
Meanwhile, Cathal Malone was set as David Burkeâs marker, with Galvin on Johnny Coen. This arrangement disintegrated to the tune of that nine-point deficit, an advantage tied to Canningâs impact.
The Banner brainwave involved getting Galvin more on the ball for finesse and Cleary more on Canning for duress. As Galvin and McInerney stood true at 6, Canning and Tony Kelly both operated as a false 11, a de facto midfielder. The rejig meant Cleary fully marking Canning, Malone concentrating on Burke, and Kelly engaging Coen.
The dynamic tilted once Clare mirrored Galwayâs false 11. Item: Canning shot wide from midfield in the 22nd minute, pressure by Cleary a contributory factor.
Hurling tactics are evolving, a process in want of new vocabulary. What should we call an unmarked centre-back who appears a sweeper, due to space enjoyed and possessions harvested, but who actually performs a subtler role?
I suggest âgatekeeperâ. I suggest a sentence: âClareâs management redeployed Colm Galvin as a gatekeeper.â The attraction lies in applying pressure by sweeper virtues (protection at back) while avoiding sweeper vices (dearth up front).
And yet⌠a touch of common sense never goes amiss. Clareâs rejig goes down as one of the canniest tactical adjustments. Yet Galway amassed six poor wides between that 22nd-minute effort by Canning and an added-time effort by Joseph Cooney. Their half-time lead could easily have been nine or 10 points and the lauded reset at the bottom of a deep maroon sea.
Although GearĂłid McInerneyâs injury is this replayâs headline issue, the crux remains which camp learned more. Last weekend, Jamie Shanahan was given a literal runaround by Cathal Mannion. Shanahan needs to improve or Mannion requires a new marker. SĂŠadna Morey might be better fitted to the task (and Shanahan to Joseph Cooney).
There are tactical traps for Clare, new sources of squeeze. What if Galway start Canning as a true midfielder? Does Conor Cleary again move out? If so, Colm Galvin presumably resumes at centre-back.
Spool the thought. What if Galway, in this scenario, put Jonathan Glynn at centre-forward on Galvin, establishing another physical mismatch? But Clare, keeping Galvin at midfield on Canning, would resume much the same dilemma. Equally, Glynn on Cleary is not an obvious glitch for Western prospects.
Another trap could be David Burke at centre back, a position he is well able to fill. This might simultaneously solve McInerneyâs absence and muster a ball-playing centre back. Burke as gatekeeper would lessen Galvinâs impact as gatekeeper. Burke has much more to his arsenal than a 15-yard handpass.
Niall Burke and Jason Flynn are first subs in attack. Do Galway possess equivalent talents as subs in defence? Not so much. There would be decent logic in starting Burke or Flynn, making Canning a midfielder and dispatching Burke to centre-back.
Sunday will be Galwayâs eighth outing and they might be starting to burn fuel. Even so, they should have learned enough to make their overall unit stronger. Clare return with Aron Shanagher aboard, their source of increased cut. Maybe Limerick, resting up, could end up the real winner. But we have a way to go yet with this celebrated summer, in which hurling, most remarkably of all, has matched heatwave for temperature.
Heâs some gobshite. Fucking gatekeepers 
Is your issue with the substance of what he wrote, or the moniker? Because what he wrote was pretty good in my view, best breakdown Iâve seen of the switches made.
What does it matter what he calls it? Everyone has simplisticly said âClare moved Galvin back as sweeperâ, PM has elaborated much further on it and purposely didnât use the word sweeper to mark the difference. Itâs a really good piece.
Iâd agree with the style of analysis. The sweeper is an easy term to reach for, sometimes.
Having only seen highlights of this game thus far (was travelling at the time) one thing which struck me looking at that stats was that everyone was raving about Galvinâs â19 possessionsâ, yet another stat was I think he gave away 5 of these possessions to the opposition? That strikes me as pretty sloppy, although if itâs counting a few long 50/50 balls into the full forward line that were lost itâs probably not as bad.
I thought it was a very good article and heâs facetious to an extent with the Gatekeeper thing. What I got from it is that modern hurling tactics are fluid and in many cases reactive to the situation, so to call a player a sweeper, gatekeeper, anything other than the traditional positions, is ultimately futile. Total hurling. Given the fitness levels of IC hurlers now, they can be called upon to play in any number of positions, or spaces, throughout a match.
I think the term was a tongue-in-cheek invention used to jibe âcommentatorsâ whose analysis was lacking in depth. Could be wrong but thatâs the impression I got. There was an awful dig to Gearoid Mcâs hurling ability too.
That is true & well spotted. I thought Galvin was excellent watching in real time but after watching it again during the week he was in fact sloppy as fuck at times when he hit it long.
He was excellent in possession when it was a short pass tbf.