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The new days can be just as good as the old ones
Mickey Harte

In recent years, Kerry and Tyrone have provided the benchmark for excellence in gaelic football.

A trip to the Ulster Council website gave me the lead for this week's column.

Earlier in the summer, Ulster Council secretary Danny Murphy enlisted the skills of Jerome Quinn to cover gaelic games in our province in a previously untapped way. The Ulster Council have been very much to the fore in branding the 125 celebrations and this initiative certainly enhanced that objective. Jerome has captured some unique sideline footage from the Ulster Championship games and has interviewed many significant personalities, often not before the camera to this extent previously.

Footage of the primary schools half-time exhibition games, along with coverage of the ladies' football and camogie finals, have ensured that all GAA activities are receiving appropriate attention this special year. My browsing took me to a link covering interviews and reflections from individuals involved in the historic breakthrough by Down in the 1960s. While the Ulster Council footage was celebrating innovation and embracing the current advances surrounding our games, such sentiments were not reflected by these now elder statesmen of the GAA.

I think it's a pity that many of these great players of previous eras have difficulty accepting the excellence that prevails today. I have always acknowledged the standards set by Down in the '60s and the confidence that gave to Ulster players. Likewise, I marvelled at the new heights Kerry and Dublin brought to the '70s and early '80s.

In the late '80s, Meath and Cork were the dominant forces who gave us the highest standards of the day. Down gave Ulster the lead again in the '90s, which contributed to Donegal (1992) and Derry (1993), having breakthrough years as they won their first All-Irelands at senior level. The current decade brought breakthroughs for Armagh and Tyrone, with Kerry ever-present to ensure only the best would be good enough.

However, I found the general views, coming from these innovators of their day, somewhat narrow. We are invariably reminded of the perceived death of high fielding and long kicking. As I have stated before, the initial flaw in this myth is that, because of the current nature of the game, it is impossible to compare like with like. Isn't it only natural that if the predominant style of that era was to kick the ball as far as high and as long as you could there would be more opportunity for high fielding?

Secondly, does the fact that these long kicks invariably resulted in a lottery for retaining possession make them a lost attribute? I think not. Other negative vibes prevalent in the interviews suggested tactics were all about being destructive and solely about stopping others playing football.

A glance at some of the high-scoring games in this year's Championship negates that argument. In the case of Tyrone, we have been fortunate enough to have been involved in 23 games (League and Championship) at Croke Park since 2003 and have averaged 17.6 points per game – hardly the return of negative footballers.

Other interpretations suggested that coaches have tried to take the risk out of football and, as a result, diminished the product. The first part of this inference contains a certain truth insofar as any competent coach will certainly want to work towards improved odds, but this does not necessarily imply that uniqueness and flair should not be allowed to prevail. Yet another contributor declared that, in the current game, it is too easy to retain possession.

Quite the opposite is the case, as never before has there been so much emphasis placed on disciplined individual and collective tackling. In previous eras, your direct opponent was the only one likely to challenge for your possession. In the modern game, tackles can come from any angle and from players wearing any number. Does that make possession easier to retain?

As I see it, accepting the greatness of the past is right and proper. The best in any given era is exactly that – the best. We will always appreciate great feats of the past, but we also need to acknowledge that innovation and progress is a fact of life and that current best practise deserves similar recognition.

A motoring analogy can help put some perspective on this view.

There was a time when a Vauxhall Victor or a Ford Cortina were the last word in driving comfort. They had the latest technology with regard to ease of starting, better springs (as it was in those days) and more elaborate instrument gauges. Engines ran smoother than previous models and fourth was top gear.

Fast forward to the present era and the instrument dash is more akin to that which would have served an aircraft pilot in the past. We have air conditioning, digital read-outs to tell us distance travelled on each trip, average speed in mph or kph as the case might be, fuel consumption details and cruise control functions.Top gear has moved through fifth and is sixth in many models. Hydraulic systems have become much more sophisticated, as have safety features.

Quiet diesel engines have become almost as prolific as petrol vehicles. And, of course, there is satnav. Were the Victors and Cortinas great in their own era? Yes they were. Would you still want to be driving around in one today? I think not. I rest my case.

Great days at Campa Chormaic

Campa Chormaic continues to go from strength to strength as over 230 young people from both Armagh and Tyrone converged on the Brantry Bard Centre and Eglish playing fields to enhance their command of Gaeilge and improve their playing skills in football, hurling and camogie. In week one, over 110 8-12 year-olds took part, while in week two there were over 125 12-16 year-olds participating.

Monday and Wednesday afternoons were given over to hurling and camogie, while Tuesdays and Thursdays were devoted to football skills. Friday's sporting activities were devoted to blitzes, which proved to be the highlight of the sporting week.

During the course of the camp, Tipperary hurling star Eoin Kelly made a guest appearance, as did Tyrone's Joe McMahon, Armagh's Charlie Vernon and members of the Lory Meagher Cup-winning Tyrone hurling team. I was delighted to assist with prize-giving on the final day of the camp and the atmosphere generated through Campa Chormaic was a fitting legacy of Cormac's example as a sporting gentleman.

This year, the camp extended to Castlewellan, Co Down, and plans are afoot to extend to Co Antrim next year.

Comhgairdeas to all concerned.


Well said Mickey. Tyrone are odds on for the 2-in-row and where are Down ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVQaiZXBY8o

  dubs are pumped up

Uneasy will lie any head the Kingdom crowns

TOM HUMPHRIES


With Kerry on the cusp of ignominy if they don't perform next year, who would be their coach?

FOR LOVERS of intrigue there is nothing like Kerry football. And for lovers of Kerry football there is no place better to be next Sunday than in Tralee for the county semi-finals.

The most compelling bout on the short bill pits Kerins O'Rahillys of Tralee against South Kerry.

O'Rahillys - or Strand Road, as they are known locally - are managed by Jack O'Connor, the man who has done more than most to identify south Kerry as a nature reserve with a fauna composed mainly of outsiders.

South Kerry are led onto the field by Declan O'Sullivan.

What is extraordinary about these two extraordinary men is their friendship. They would take a bullet for each other.

Not next Sunday, though. In any given year Jack facing down Declan would be a spectacle for the masses. This year is different, though. It is Jack's first year on Strand Road. The Kerry manager's job is vacant.

When it comes to football, be it with Dromid Pearses or at schools, underage or senior county level, Jack doesn't really do failure. His record is extraordinary.

So it was a fantastic plot twist to put him at this time against his native South Kerry.

The cognoscenti will be watching with narrowed eyes.

If Strand Road win, pushing themselves into a county final in Jack's first year in charge, there will be a small clamour for him to get back into the bainisteoir bibs. If Strand Road lose, the clamour will be more modest but just as understandable

Would Jack take it all on if asked, though? Would anybody hoist all that weight of expectation on to their own shoulders, having felt the crushing burden of it before?

Tommy Lasorda, one of the most quotable of baseball managers, once noted that pressure is the thing you feel once you start to think about failure. In that respect, most inter-county football managers can think about failure without any detrimental effect on their pulse rate. Their county history is inevitably one of failure punctuated by the odd manic outbreak of success. Who would want to manage Kerry, though?

First there is that daunting mound of statistics, a testament to the county's unfamiliarity with failure. You can't look down. You can't think about failure in Kerry. You know once Mickey Ned O'Sullivan, one of the wisest and best of Kerryman, started out on his tenure as Kerry manager by expressing the thought that even if his players didn't have All-Ireland medals at the end of the period he hoped they would have grown as people.

Mickey Ned was excoriated.

Then there is the existence around the county of the golden-age players, their presence as ghostly and intimidating as the monumental statues of Easter Island.

Here in Dublin there tends to be little storm in all our teacups when ex-cathedra pronouncements on the state of Dublin football are made in the media by alumni like Keith Barr, Paul Curran or Charlie Redmond, a trinity whose aggregate haul of All-Ireland senior medals comes to, well, three. The 70s team have settled into a benign sort of silence.

I'm not sure Dublin football could cope if there was the constant threat of denunciation from players who have six, seven or eight All-Ireland football medals.

Then there is the county's unusual integration of football into daily culture. Pat Gilroy may be untried as a senior inter-county manager but most of us in Dublin are happy to believe that Pat knows more about managing an inter-county team than we do.

In Kerry, you never know more about football than the next man does, and if you do, you are cute enough not to let on.

Rough f***ing animals, as Páidí put it so impetuously.

And there is the dressing-room. At the heart of the Kerry dressing-room are a group of men who have been playing in All-Ireland finals every year for half a decade. They know the routine so well, the game so well, the metabolism of their team so well they could almost run the business themselves. They see through phonies and bluffers and beaten dockets. Close your eyes and picture it. Is there any football team in the country you would less like to be walking in on and facing for the first time? Imagine yourself standing there telling that team you have a little plan to make them better.

Dublin can afford to take a risk on Pat Gilroy's intelligence and class. Kerry can't really afford a punt on anyone. Tyrone can't be let away like Down were in the 1960s.

Finally, there is the current state of play in the Kingdom. Each of Kerry's last three managers has won at least one All-Ireland title. Páidí Ó Sé was cut loose. Jack O'Connor and Pat O'Shea left without much demur after brief tenures that in any other county would have been deemed wildly successful.

In three years Jack reached three finals, winning two. In two years, Pat reached two finals, winning one. When they got up to leave they got a handshake and a "Thank you" as the "Smart boy wanted sign" was being stuck back in the window.

In Dublin, where we believe our manager to be under inhuman pressure, we talk about getting to an All-Ireland final as being the next step. In Kerry, not reaching the All-Ireland final will be an intolerable blow after such a run.

In Kerry, for the next few years even winning an an All-Ireland or two in a row or three in a row will not be enough. Beating Mickey Harte's Tyrone team in a major championship game in Croke Park is all that matters. Doing it playing fine football would be a bonus. Doing that playing fine football in an All-Ireland final would be preferable.

Throw in all the regional politics and speeches made with forked tongues and you have a managerial situation more fascinating that those of the 31 other counties combined.

Never before have Kerry been on the cusp of abject failure if they don't perform. There are special needs associate with Gaelic football in Kerry.

No space more interesting to watch.

© 2008 The Irish Times