Quote from: ardtole on Today at 09:53:02 AMI've been going to Down matches since the 80s and yesterday was nothing short of dreadful.
We were 2 points up with approx 15 mins to go v Armagh in an Ulster semi final and my main concern was, I hope this doesn't go to extra time.
If playing like that is what it takes to be competitive, it's not a price worth paying as far as I'm concerned, and judging by the size of the crowd, I'm not alone. Would there have been 2000 Down supporters in Clones yesterday?
I recognise that plenty will take positives from yesterday's performance and to a degree, I can see where they are coming from. Laverty done nothing wrong yesterday, he broke no rules as such but mother of God, the powers that be must take action sooner rather than later because as a spectacle that game yesterday is unacceptable.
And I don't think I'm looking through rose tinted glasses about games from previous era's, plenty of them were poor too. I know Jarlath Burns has put together an impressive looking task force to deal with the predicament football finds itself in, and I'm sure they can use yesterday's game as an indicator of what drastic measures are needed to cure our game.
Down are not alone either, a lot of counties employ similar tactics, at times we have played excellently under Laverty, Cavan away last year in the Tailtain cup was a great performance. But I really do hope there are rule changes made to avoid what happened yesterday repeated. And even if we won yesterday, I'm sure I would be saying the same thing.
Complete overreaction.. It was 1 defensive game out of how many games played so far in Ulster? Or championship in general and apparently the games in a state and needs saving from this "task force". Football is fine and more rule changes isn't going to make it better.
You get bad games in Rugby/Soccer too. Not every side will or can play like 08/09 Barca, All-Blacks 2010-2015 or Dublin 5 in a row.
We needed to play the way we did yesterday to get a result and we almost did - We've a hard running based type of play due to the players we have available and unfortunately that limits how we play. As TheWobbler said we unearth a couple of forwards we challenge for a provincial title