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The Donegal players, led by Martin McHugh, agreeing, in a post-match clear-the-air meeting, that McEniff and his staff had to seriously increase the intensity of Donegal's preparations in the aftermath of what was a fairly pedestrian Donegal performance against Fermanagh in the Ulster semi-final in 1992. They hammered Fermanagh off the pitch in the end, but only after a very poor Fermanagh side had stayed with them and been arguably the better team for 40 minutes. The nervous display, as favourites, in the first 50 minutes of the AI semi against Mayo notwithstanding, it was a far different team in the subsequent matches, particularly against Derry and Dublin.

The return of Manus Boyle was also vital that season, although it was hard on Tommy Ryan, who lost his place for the AI Final after being the best player in the Ulster Championship.

Whatever about Dooher ( ), Donegal will miss the services of Damien Diver. One of the most consistent Donegal players over the past ten years, and capable of playing just about anywhere on the team.

Legend!

Delighted for Karl Lacey. Richly deserved award, as he was superb all season (and last year, in what was a poor season for the team), even popping up from corner back to get two points against Derry.

I'll have to see if I can find it, but O'Mhuireartaigh (sp???) did one on Noel Hegarty in the middle of a game, telling how he was up in Falcarragh during the week selling sheep or something!

The newer ones are fine. Anyone who's gone to UCD will be aware of how bad they can be with the sandy one they had beside the national hockey pitch, but you don't get too many of those types any more. I left before Brian Mullins installed the new five-a-side pitches behind the sports centre. Anyone played on them?

In fairness to Bellion, I don't think United paid very much for him.

Another club in Down deserving praise for suceeding despite the odds is St Paul's.  In the not too distant past they had to operate on a 'keep-your-heads-down-and-hope-the loyalist-hoods don't notice-us basis.  Having their pitch 'glassed' and posts cut down was a regular occurance.  Their recruitment rate was badly affected by this eventhough they are located in perhaps the heaviest populated region.  This in turn lead to weak teams that invariably suffered plenty hammerings.  Despite all this, today this year they won promotion and the furure looks good.

That's a type of story that we from the south don't always appreciate. I'm sure its been repeated all over the north.

Overall, would have to be Canavan. Doesn't mean the likes of Blaney and McHugh weren't tremendously gifted players though, or that Canavan didn't practice relentlessly to sharpen and improve his skills (I'm assuming he did - maybe he didn't need to!).

JHE, I'd assumed you were a Eunan's man, given your name! Laghey area or Ballintra? I wore the St Naul's colours in my long-lost teenage years, so I came up against your boys a few times! Fair play to youse! Can't be easy sitting right between Aodh Rua and Four Masters! The Donegal Town boys certainly don't let us forget our relative lack of success!

Refereeing mistake:

2003 All Ireland semi final - the referee's inexplicable failure to send off John McEntee for his forearm smash on Barry Monaghan with less than ten minutes to go, the game on a knife edge and the ref standing a couple of feet away. McEntee contributed to Armagh's two injury-time scores that won the game. In the same match, Ray Sweeney was sent off early in the second half, while Kieran McGeeney stayed on despite persistant fouling.

Don't worry J70 - the persistant fouling was well highlighted in the post match analysis, to the extent that at the handshake in Armagh's next match, the first words by Brian to Geezer were, "You watch the fouling'. It seemed to play on Brian's mind in the first half of that game! 

You have me at a bit of a loss here: I don't remember the details of Brian McGuigan's performance against McGeeney in the final!

Or are we talking about some other "Brian"?  Did Brian White ref the final?

Refereeing mistake:

2003 All Ireland semi final - the referee's inexplicable failure to send off John McEntee for his forearm smash on Barry Monaghan with less than ten minutes to go, the game on a knife edge and the ref standing a couple of feet away. McEntee contributed to Armagh's two injury-time scores that won the game. In the same match, Ray Sweeney was sent off early in the second half, while Kieran McGeeney stayed on despite persistant fouling.

"This shite is as bad as those who were doubting Wayne Rooney a few weeks back - typical fickle press-led bullshit. All players lose their form at some stage"

There's little comparison between the two. Rooney is genuinely a great player and even when he had a dip in output in terms of goals/assists his workrate was superb. The reason for the dip in form was a reaction to his rushed comeback for the World Cup and was therefore largely physical. A run of games would sort him out and it did.

Gerrard is standing up and letting players run away from him when Liverpool/England lose possession which is a huge no-no.

God forbid someone mention a Liverpool player in the same sentence as the great Wayne!

My point was that Gerrard is off-form and needs to be allowed to work through it, like Rooney was, whether the cause is burn-out or stress or friction with Benitez or whatever.

[WHEN SQUARE PEGS FIT ROUND HOLESPaul Tomkins 15 November 2006]

From the LFC official site:

WHEN SQUARE PEGS FIT ROUND HOLES
Paul Tomkins
15 November 2006

It's easy to pigeonhole players. It's easy to get into the mindset that they can only perform one particular role. But it's also often wrong. Talent should come hand-in-hand with versatility.

I've never been of the opinion that players have one set, defined position, and that that is therefore the end of the matter. While you wouldn't want too many goalies deciding they'd rather be left wingers (especially 15 minutes into a game), good players should be adaptable.

Players will always have a position that suits them best, where they are at their most effective. But if it's a question of getting only 90% from a player in order to get more from the team (in that the alternative would be to play someone whose very best is only 75% of the other player), then that's what counts.

Providing they have the physical attributes for the role, they should be able to at the very least do a job elsewhere. If Denis Bergkamp could play left-back for the Ajax youth team (albeit only as part of his education as a footballer), then it's something all players, and fans, should be open-minded to.

There are a select few Liverpool players in recent years who have had two distinct careers at the club: a number of seasons spent being one type of player, only to then be switched to a new role.

I began going to Anfield in 1990, when John Barnes was still the most exciting talent in the game: a sublime left-winger. But of course, it was also around the time when he'd had a very successful spell as a striker, having topped the league scoring charts and finished with 28 goals in all competitions. But it was also shortly before a serious Achilles tendon injury robbed him of his pace.

I grew up fairly obsessed with Liverpool, like any football-mad kid who supports a club. But it was only in 1987, when I was 16, that I really fell head over heels in love – and it was following the arrival of Barnes, Peter Beardsley, John Aldridge and Ray Houghton. Kenny Dalglish's side sparked my imagination in a way I'd never previously experienced. They played a kind of football that really was like watching Brazil. And at the heart of it was John Barnes, the man who'd scored arguably the best goal Brazil had ever witnessed three years earlier.

One game shortly after his arrival sticks out in my mind. QPR visited Anfield as the surprise early league leaders in 1987. They weren't so much beaten 4-0 as well and truly dismantled. At one point it looked as if Amnesty International would have to intervene (not to mention the RSPCA, given one Rangers' defender was made to look like a lame cart horse time and time again.)

One moment stands out to this day. 'Digger' won the ball on the halfway line and sprinted forward towards the edge of the area, drifting to his left past one defender before almost defying the laws of physics with a turn to his right which took him past England international Paul Parker. It would have been easy to blast a shot at goal, but he had the coolness and presence of mind to slip the ball under a young David Seaman – who premiered his look of bemusement mixed with dejection which he would later reprise for Nayim, Ronaldinho, and of course, most delightfully, Michael Owen at Cardiff.

By the time 2nd-placed Nottingham Forest arrived at Anfield in April 1988, and were beaten 5-0 in what was widely regarded as the finest-ever display on these shores, we pretty much knew that anything was possible. After all, by then Steve Nicol (another supremely versatile player) had scored a hat-trick from left-back away at St James' Park. Teams had been routinely thumped for nine months by that stage. Barnes was the star of a special show.

In 1991 Graeme Souness inherited an ageing squad from Dalglish. Souness then sold some of its better players (Beardsley, Houghton) and replaced them with inferior ones. Alan Hansen had to retire as age, and dodgy knees, caught up with him. But perhaps the biggest factor was Barnes losing his ability to ghost past people and leave them for dead.

Barnes would later be reborn in a midfield role under Roy Evans. His waistline may have expanded to mirror Jan Molby's, but his game started to resemble the great Dane's, too: he hardly got around the pitch, but for three or four years he simply never gave the ball away.

While Barnes is only regarded as a legend on the basis of his salad days, when he took wingplay to new breathtaking heights, he remained a class act even during his later, erm, hamburger days.

Of the current team we know Steven Gerrard has the ability to play anywhere. And of course, his position on the pitch comes with a raging debate, and ludicrous suggestions that Benítez chooses to play him on the right merely to prove a point. And there was me thinking it was so he could have a free role to ghost infield (admittedly something he didn't really do at Arsenal), in the way top-class "central" players of the calibre of Ronaldinho, Zidane and Figo have over recent years.

But it is Jamie Carragher who is enjoying a new career, now remade as a centre-back after the first half of his playing days were spent at full-back.

But in Carra's case it was a question of returning to the role he'd already been earmarked for. In 1999 Gérard Houllier said that one day Carragher would be Liverpool's Marcel Dessaily; he just wasn't ready at that stage. He had grown up as a kid in central midfield and central defence, but couldn't grow up quickly enough in those roles in senior football. It was a struggle.

Having been steady for years on either the left or right full-back slot, he spent the first two seasons of Benítez's reign excelling at the heart of the defence. While he's not been as his best this season, it's a timely (if unpleasant) reminder that he's not superhuman after all.

Perhaps the greatest transformation ever seen at the club was made by Ray Kennedy. When he arrived at Liverpool from Arsenal, as a battering ram of a centre-forward, it was obviously in this role in which Bill Shankly intended him to play. Things didn't exactly go as planned. Kennedy failed to make a spot in the side his own, and found himself in the reserves.

The transformation under Bob Paisley from a big and burly centre forward to an artful left-sided midfielder in 1975 is still seen by some as the greatest-ever manager's long-term tactical masterstroke. Of course, the main credit should go to Kennedy, as he was the man who took to the field and adapted so wonderfully.

Kennedy was a tall, upright kind of player. Watching him run, there seemed no way he could be a footballer; he was in the same club as Patrick Vieira and Chris Waddle in that he simply didn't look the part, didn't move naturally.

Put a ball at Ray's feet, however, and suddenly it was the most natural sight in the world. It stayed close to his side like an obedient sheepdog. He was suddenly a master, in control, calling the shots. Some players are busy, but busy themselves in going nowhere; Ray took his time, but always got there, always arrived.

In being upright, it meant he also played with his head up –– the sign of a good player. You need time on the ball to be able to lift your head, and only good players get time on the ball. You also need to know your control is perfect to take your eyes from the ball and survey the field. He had such quality he could look completely natural in the role.

But the debate of where certain players should be deployed will always come back to Steven Gerrard. Momo Sissoko's injury might seem the obvious cue to move Gerrard back into the middle, and that may happen in the coming months.

But it's also true that on the right he has the ability to put in dangerous crosses, as well as the licence to get into advanced central positions in a way that can make him harder to pick up. Another bonus is that leaving gaps down the right is less immediately dangerous than leaving gaps in the centre, and that's why so many great central talents (such as those mentioned earlier) start from wide positions when drifting around the pitch. It's not like Benítez is doing anything other top managers haven't done in recent years with the best attacking midfielders in the world.

Of course, Arsenal was a game where this ploy didn't really work. And yet at Chelsea, starting on the left (an even more outrageous misuse if his talent to some!), Gerrard ghosted into some great goalscoring positions and really should have won the game for the Reds. Had his aim been just a few inches better on a couple of occasions, the decision would have been seen as a tactical masterstroke.

Maybe the time is right to move him back into a central starting position, to try something different in the absence of Sissoko. That's up to the manager to decide. But it was only a little over a year ago that the Reds were struggling in the league, and the problem was remedied to a large degree by switching Gerrard to a regular role on the right wing.

But hey, playing Gerrard out wide never works, does it?

Paul Tomkins is the author of The Red Review, Red Revival and Golden Past, Red Future.

Gerrard will score a screamer and find his form over the next few weeks, and suddenly he'll be the best midfielder in the Premiership again!

This shite is as bad as those who were doubting Wayne Rooney a few weeks back - typical fickle press-led bullshit. All players lose their form at some stage, and with Gerrard's alleged off- and on-field difficulties, its no big surprise that he's a bit off colour at the moment. Its just unfortunate that its come at a time when the likes of Carragher and Alonso are not playing great either.

Don't have any sources at hand to check the details, but they still talk in Donegal about a league semi-final in the late 60s (against Longford, I think) where Donegal were awarded a penalty, the wind blew the ball off the spot, and the referee awarded a free-out! I think it cost Donegal the game.

Gary Walsh was adjudged (harshly, in my view ) to have stepped over the line in an Ulster Championship game against Down in '96. I think we lost by a point!

I think it was Paddy Campbell who let a long hopeful ball drop between his legs in Brewster Park in 2001, when Donegal were 2 points ahead in the last minute against Fermanagh in an Ulster first round replay. The ball dribbled through to a Fermanagh forward about six yards out (O'Donnell?) and he made no mistake, scoring the goal. We hammered them two weeks later in the qualifiers, but it just wasn't the same.

Going back a while again, but a lot of Donegal men maintain that the free that brought Tyrone an injury time equalizer in the 1989 Ulster Final was a dive, bought by the referee! The 12 point replay hammering should never have had the opportunity to come to pass!