Munster Championship

[square_ball]

Ger canning 'huge one hit in there' to a 20 yard kick pass straight to the man's chest. 

[RealSpiritof98]

Every Kerry player that falls the ref is blowing the whistle, ruining the game

[Captain Obvious]

Some decent subs for Kerry today.

[Syferus]

Some decent subs for Kerry today.

If you were listening to Canning Barry John Keane would seem like the second coming of Gooch and Mikey Sheehy alright.

[twohands!!!]

Some decent subs for Kerry today.

If you were listening to Canning Barry John Keane would seem like the second coming of Gooch and Mikey Sheehy alright.

More like the second coming of John B Keane....

The Dublin attack would make mincemeat out of that Kerry defence.

[Mayo Border]

Is Shane Enright immune to being shown a black card. Should have walked again today

[tippabu]

Im glad as I was expecting this thread to turn into a munster bashing, we should have A and B championships and tipp were shite thread. Yesterday we saw we are a long way off kerry, as are most teams, very disappointed as i really expected we could give them a scare and really put it up to them. I hope we learned a lesson yesterday too, we pumped loads of aimless hail mary passes into the full forward line at times, on the 3/4 occasions we played good quality low ball in front of quinlivan we created havoc each time. Anyway now its one of Clare/laois, cavan/carlow, sligo, meath/derry i believe in the qualifiers, tbh i wouldnt fancy our chances against cavan but the rest i would

[Gold]

Is it just my tv or is the picture quality on RTE One garbage for these matches (via Sky)?

I have the same problem

[Fuzzman]

Was it not crazy for Tipp to not play with a sweeper today. The damage that Geaney alone did surely would have been good enough reason too. Was funny on TSG that Tomás was reluctant to use the term blanket defense so Des helped him out.

Even the Dubs now play O'Sullivan now as sweeper in games even when you think they don't need to. To face Kerry in their own back yard and allow good ball to go into Geaney, amongst others seemed naive to me.

[Zulu]

I wouldn't agree, Kerry playing all 15 in their own half was the crazy thing IMO. I don't understand why people seem to label teams naive if they don't play a sweeper, you have 6 defenders, 2 midfielders and often your half forwards back in your own half if you can't keep your opponents down to a reasonable score with that then you may as well forget about it.

The thing about the blanket defences now is that they are no longer keeping the score down, they are only making the game less attractive to watch.

[Fuzzman]

I agree a lot of the games are not as attractive to watch if teams don't play the system correctly and don't break forward in large numbers at pace.

A few managers have tried to be stubborn and not play a sweeper but they have badly been found out it doesn't work.
Derry tried it against Tyrone in the first round and got hammered.
Even Gavin from Dublin has had to give in and play that way in the tighter games.

Tipp knew Kerry had better forwards than they had yet they left many of them one on one to get roasted and that's with Gooch off injured.

[Hound]

Even Gavin from Dublin has had to give in and play that way in the tighter games.

But Dublin's version of a sweeper is to use one of the 6 defenders. Everyone else, to my knowledge, uses someone in addition to 6 regulation backs. If opposition play 6 forwards, then Dublin have no sweeper.

[Zulu]

But a sweeper won't make much of a difference if you're up against it anyway, especially if you are just using it against better teams as opposed to a set tactic that you always employ. Both the sweeper and the blanket defences are now redundant insofar as being particularly effective tactics for winning games. The blanket, will, of course, make it more difficult for the opposition to score but it also reduces your own scoring potential. Teams now short kick out and carry the ball to the edge of the blanket and play around it and probe with enough players back and a plan to transition into defending should they get turned over. Football, I'm afraid, is often a poor spectacle when teams get players back in numbers and it seems to be the default setting for all the big teams bar Mayo and Dublin who are playing a sweeper.

[blanketattack]

Good week for Kerry football, 6 Munster titles in the space of 5 days: u14, u15, u16, minor, junior, senior.