Various football articles

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https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/2025/02/01/paddy-tally-this-is-your-life-new-derry-coach-may-get-deja-vu-as-season-kicks-in/

Paddy Tally, this is your life: New Derry coach may get deja vu as season kicks in
Tyrone man's opening fixtures as Derry manager will stir up some sporting memories
 
Gordon Manning
Sat Feb 01 2025 - 06:00

Paddy Tally could be forgiven if, during these early weeks of the new season, he felt the urge to search the Derry dressingroom to make sure Michael Aspel wasn't preparing to pop out from behind an old white board or a stack of training cones.

Because Tally's opening three fixtures as Derry manager certainly have a fair whiff of This Is Your Life about them. Tyrone, Kerry, Galway – Tally's GAA family of old friends, profound relationships and unforgettable memories.

The fixture makers and script writers have dovetailed just lovely on this one.

Tally's first competitive outing as Derry manager was against his native Tyrone last week, the league encounter taking place in Omagh, just a little over 20 miles from his home, in Galbally.

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In 2003, Tally trained the Tyrone footballers under Mickey Harte when they made history by winning the county's breakthrough All-Ireland. But that success was to be only the prologue of a very singular coaching story.

He has now been to All-Ireland finals with three different counties: Tyrone, Down, Kerry.


The Kerry chapter came to a sharp, unexpected end late last year. Tally was involved with the Kingdom from 2022-24. And when Jack O'Connor announced his management team for 2025, Tally was again included. But in mid-November he was unveiled as the new Derry manager. Inevitably, Tally's second game-day task as Oak-leaf boss is to welcome O'Connor and Kerry to Celtic Park this Sunday.

Kerry's manager Jack O'Connor and Paddy Tally. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
Kerry's manager Jack O'Connor and Paddy Tally. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
After he negotiates that tricky test, his third league fixture will be against Galway, where Tally coached in 2018.

"It has been no surprise that Paddy has moved around over the years – a man of his intelligence and adaptability to the modern way of playing, he's always keen to learn and improve," says Danny Hughes, who played under Tally during his time in Down.

Despite him being a Tyrone man, Tally's appointment in Derry didn't generate the same ferocious pitchfork-wielding backlash directed towards Mickey Harte just over 12 months earlier.

There are several reasons for that. Firstly, Harte is such an iconic figure in Tyrone GAA. For some who had steadfastly followed and supported his teams for almost 20 years, it felt like a form of betrayal for Harte, of all people, to be hopping across the fence to help out the noisy neighbours.

Secondly, Tally – despite his link to that 2003 Tyrone team – has tended to be viewed more as a coaching evangelist; his philosophy has been cultivated and developed in Killarney and Newry as much as it has been in Galbally.

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Thirdly, he also previously coached the Derry footballers during Brian McIver's spell as manager between 2013 and 2015.

But when Tally's CV is cited, his first spell with Down is often the detail most overlooked. In 2010, the unfancied Mourne Men burst from the pack to contest that year's All-Ireland final.

"The one thing that really sets Paddy apart and what allows him to be a brilliant coach is the absence of ego," adds 2010 All-Star Hughes.

Paddy Tally during his time as Down manager in 2021. Photograph: Tommy Dickson/Inpho
Paddy Tally during his time as Down manager in 2021. Photograph: Tommy Dickson/Inpho
"He's very personable and doesn't think he is better or worse than anybody else. He gets on with people – that's a great starting point for any coach. He was huge for us that year in getting to the final.

"Often when managers and coaches come in, on some occasions they bring with them a reputation from their playing days, but management and coaching are very different. That ability of arriving to a dressingroom with no ego, I think that really stands to Paddy."

That's not to say Tally wasn't a decent player himself. He played for Galbally Pearses in the 1997 county senior football final while he was also part of the Tyrone senior football panel when they contested the 1995 All-Ireland decider.


He attended St Mary's where he trained to become a teacher and later completed a master's in sports science. Tally was just 29 when he was invited by Harte to join the Tyrone management team.

Those famous passages of play from the 2003 All-Ireland semi-final when the Tyrone footballers swarmed Kerry players like frenzied bees descending upon an open jar of honey – that was Tally's work, honed in small-sided training games. It is now a part of GAA folklore.

But Tally's relationship with Harte became strained the following season and in September 2004 it was announced that the young coach would not be involved with Tyrone in 2005.

When Tally next emerged on the national stage it was with the Down footballers during that 2010 season.

He later spent three years with Derry while at the time lecturing in St Mary's University Belfast and training the college's football teams. In 2017, his coaching work with The Ranch reached its apex. St Mary's games development officer Gavin McGilly was part of Tally's back room team that year when they caused a shock by winning the Sigerson Cup.

"Paddy knows what it takes to win," says McGilly, who is also the current St Mary's Sigerson manager.


Paddy Tally lifts the Sam Maguire following Kerry's All-Ireland win in July 2022. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
Paddy Tally lifts the Sam Maguire following Kerry's All-Ireland win in July 2022. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
"It was something Paddy would have aspired to and I suppose that was nearly 20 years in the making, so it was great to see him get his just rewards for all that hard work. We have very fond memories of that year."

McGilly has not been surprised to see Tally become one of the most sought-after coaches in the game.

"It comes so naturally to Paddy, he's a brilliant man manager and players want to play for him," he adds. "He's at the cutting edge of coaching and at the very highest level he has proved himself – from 2003 with Tyrone to most recently his time with Kerry, he knows what it takes to get teams up the steps of the Hogan Stand."

That 2017 Sigerson success put Tally back on the intercounty radar. Kevin Walsh persuaded him to link up with Galway for 2018 – a season during which they won the Connacht title and contested the league final.

Later that same year Hughes was part of the committee tasked with finding a new Down manager in advance of the 2019 season. Hughes believed the right man was from Galbally. They appointed Tally for three years.

He remained at the helm for that period but Covid proved a difficult time and despite being offered an extra season, Tally opted to step down in July 2021.


But just as one door closes ...

A series of events conspired to facilitate Tally's most high profile, if unlikely, coaching role. Just two months after Tally's Down departure, Jack O'Connor left Kildare. Peter Keane was the Kerry manager at the time, but the screw was starting to turn in the Kingdom and O'Connor's sudden availability changed everything.

Paddy Tally celebrates with Tyrone manager Mickey Harte in September 2003. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho
Paddy Tally celebrates with Tyrone manager Mickey Harte in September 2003. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho
Before September was out, O'Connor was back as Kerry boss for a third time. In the background, he had been arranging his poker hand – but confirmation Tally was to be part of the Kerry management team wasn't seen by all as a royal flush. It wasn't the first time an outsider had been drafted in – Cian O'Neill had coached Kerry under Eamonn Fitzmaurice – but bringing Tally down weighed heavily on some traditionalists in Kerry.

And the undertone to much of the criticism was that Kerry didn't need or want an Ulster coach, a Tyrone coach. There were some who would rather lose football matches the Kerry way than win them on the back of some guidance from elsewhere.

[ Joy unconfined as Kerry faithful welcome home Sam MaguireOpens in new window ]

Tally arrived with his defensive coaching credentials widely praised, and the numbers indicated the Kingdom needed some repair work at the back. In 2022, they proved to be a far more resolute group. Sam Maguire was won, all was forgiven – or perhaps just ignored. Winning has that tendency to make folk forget the other stuff. O'Connor's gamble had worked.

Players who have worked with Tally say the pigeonholing of him as a defensive coach is unfair. Brendan Rogers made his Derry debut during Tally's time as a coach there in 2015 and is pleased to see him return.

"Paddy gets probably lauded for his defensive credibility, and rightly so, but nobody gives him credit for how to get out of a defensive system," said Rogers before the start of the league. "What he could actually do is help make us a better transitioning team. I'm excited to see what he has learned from the last time he was with us."

And yet the Derry job radiated like a double-edged sword last winter – at once both attractive and hazardous.

"I think it was well known Rory Gallagher wanted it and some of the players seemed to want that as well," says Hughes. "So, it is a difficult one, but if anybody can manage it and convince the players, then it's Paddy Tally."

And a victory against some old friends this weekend certainly wouldn't hurt.

[seafoid]

There is still plenty of nuance to football kickouts
Among the more esoteric grumbles about the new football rules is the charge that the kickout has been reduced to a lottery. From the very first weekend when Conor Laverty of Down was puffing his cheeks on TG4 at how frantic things had become around the middle third, there has been a pretty consistent drumbeat of giving out about the rule mandating that kickouts have to clear the 40m arc now.
The thrust of the complaints seem to be that goalkeepers have no option now but to hoof the ball long, thereby taking all the skill and wit out of the position. And there are plenty of occasions in every game where that's true – although it's not necessarily a bad thing. Restoring collisions and chaos to the game was and is entirely in the spirit of what the FRC have been trying to do.
But even allowing for that, the notion that all kickouts are just tombola spins now doesn't hold water. Anyone who watched Donegal v Kerry on Saturday saw Shaun Patton show that the best goalies in the game aren't going to just keep drilling out long one after long one. Two of his first four were short and low, right out to the space between the arc and the sideline on the Donegal 20-metre line. They were high-risk but the Donegal corner-backs were up to it and got out both times.
That set the game of cat and mouse in motion. Once Kerry saw that he was prepared to go short, they moved to squeeze up that space, meaning that Patton increasingly went longer. And yes, a lot of them were contested around the middle and Donegal had to take their chances with the breaks. But he managed to get several of them into open country too, with Donegal runners galloping onto them and Jim McGuinness's side immediately on the attack.
The point is, many goalkeepers will settle for lumping the kickouts long and taking their chances. But the best ones in the game won't be happy with that and they'll find a way to separate themselves from the pack. Isn't that what we want? — Malachy Clerkin


Maurice Deegan: An encouraging start for the football rules but a long road ahead
Weather didn't help but referees and players deserve credit for how well week one went
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Tyrone's Peter Teague scores against Derry. Photograph: Lorcan Doherty/Inpho
Maurice Deegan
Tue Jan 28 2025 - 06:00
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Week one went about as well as anyone could have hoped. That's not to say that there won't be trouble in week two or farther down the line, but it was a good start.
I was certainly happy with how it went and it is fair to say that is the consensus FRC view.
This was for the first time a whole programme of competitive matches and there were no big systems failures nor obviously unintended consequences.
One unexpected issue was the pitch marking in Omagh but that's not a system failure, just a groundsman getting to grips with it. Marking the pitches properly is critically important in light of the significance of two-point scores but there's no reason why it should be an ongoing difficulty.
I spoke to seven or eight referees afterwards and the feedback was very, very positive. The "solo and go" has speeded up the game no end. There are more scores. Discipline in dealings referees has gone to a new level. They're far more respected – or maybe it's simply the penalties are discouraging disrespect!
The players took to it well. As I noticed refereeing a couple of challenge matches, they are very well versed in the new rules. There may have been 49 changes agreed by special congress but in practice that means about 15 new measures to be mastered.
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It is a pity that the weather was so bad at a lot of the venues because I think when this will really take off is when the ground dries out and you'll see the ball moving.
We didn't see much of the advanced mark over the weekend because of that weather and the slippery ball. It was still a slight surprise, as it's a gimme of a score unless you're catching a ball in the very far corner.
If you're looking at the seven enhancements to football, which are actually 49 rule changes, I'd say the 3v3 was the most difficult but that's more of a matter for the teams to get right – there didn't appear to be many of those calls found to be wrong.
The controversy over Galway's two-pointer for Armagh breaking the 3v3 rule was surprising. Allowing players to bring that award – the 20-metre penalty – back outside the 40m arc for a shot at a two-pointer is something that referees have been aware of.
Overall, I thought the referees refereed very well and even more encouragingly, the players played very well. As I was saying on Saturday, I hadn't been that concerned about the obligation to hand back the ball after a free is awarded but I accept that it may take time to get into some players' heads. They'll learn fast, though.
In Omagh, where I went on Saturday, it happened in the Tyrone-Derry game about 15 minutes in when a Derry lad didn't hand the ball back and the ball was brought forward 50 metres. But it didn't happen again for the rest of the match.
I was doing some work with Thomas Niblock and Chrissy McKaigue on BBC and afterwards with Mickey Harte. There was some apprehension before the match but afterwards there was a lot more positivity.
Talking to the others, I made the point that the biggest difference is going to be at underage with the new black card coming in because in a game when a young lad, 16, shows dissent or challenges the referee's authority, off he goes and is replaced for 10 minutes.
That's penalising the player rather than the team. Culturally, you're starting from a very young age, under-14 and all the way up, and in five- or six-years' time, if these rules keep going, players will be well used to how they are expected to behave on the field.
It will be like the introduction of the helmet in hurling. Players will grow up with a specific code of behaviour and will know no different by the time they're seniors.
Mickey Harte and Chrissy McKaigue made the valid point that at a lot of juvenile games, parents are the problem. My reply was that you have to start with the players and that eventually it will filter back to the mothers and fathers but you have to start somewhere.
There has been a lot of talk about the goalie joining attacks and creating that 12 v 11 imbalance. Does that need to be looked at? I commented on this when on the BBC. Teams are starting to defend not on the 45 but on the 40-metre arc. If the 'keeper is going to play as a quarterback, which he is, he's looking for somebody to make a run.
On Saturday night, Niall Morgan got the ball and slipped it over the defender's head, Michael McKernan was in behind, bang, goal! There was space for the run because not as many players were crowding it.
The goalkeeper rule is a risk versus reward calculation. For the team that takes the risk, the reward is undoubtedly there but if the ball is turned over, the 'keeper is in trouble because possession will transfer at 100 miles per hour up to the other end like happened in Hyde Park on Sunday when Ciaráin Murtagh scored a goal.
There will be review after review from here on in, to see how things are going. If anything needs to be tweaked, it will be tweaked. All to play for.

[Smokin Joe]

Ha! The sentiment of that first article is that when you have great goalkeepers like Patton the kickout needn't be a lottery.
Doenegal retained 16/28 kickouts v Kerry (57%) that is not far away from being a lottery.  Yes, he picked out a couple of great kickouts long to runners, but on the whole even Patton still achieved less than 60% success.

[ONeill]

Magnificent Obsession

© Copyright The Sunday Tribune

Philip Lanigan

December 29th 2002

The sight of Marty Morrissey loitering with intent it was nothing new at a post-All Ireland meal,
yet few in the function room at the Citywest Hotel were prepared for what happened next.
Maybe it was the warm glow that stemmed from having the Sam Maguire at arm's length, but
for the first time all year, Kieran McGeeney dropped his guard in front of the cameras. The
smile was like the first shaft of sunlight after a storm. But then, it was that kind of day, a day
when his expression seemed to capture the mood of the whole county.
He cried when John Bannon sounded the final whistle. "I don't think I'll ever get a high like
that again," he says of the 20 seconds that followed, 20 seconds that are frozen in time. Tony
McEntee wrapping him in a bear-hug as he collapsed to his knees on the Croke Park sod, the
match ball, fittingly, in his hands; being buried beneath a mound of exuberant supporters and
then catching Joe Kernan's eye through the pandemonium. "I'd say there were 50 yards
between us and if we were young lovers you'd put a tune to this," is how the manager
remembers the 50-yard dash and embrace.

All the years of waiting – "130 years of frustration" as McGeeney put in his speech – seemed
to be etched in the lines of his face as he stood on the podium. Until that moment of release
when he became the first Armagh man to lift football's glittering prize. "When somebody tells
you all your life that something is beyond your reach, that it's impossible, that you'll never get
there, and then you do, well – there's that feeling that the work and toil that you put yourself
through for 13 or 14 years has all come to fruition."

Kernan uses two words to describe his captain – "solid steel." The proof? Just take one good
look at the photograph above, taken before Armagh's Ulster first round game against Tyrone.
The essence of one player, distilled into a single frame. Intense. Driven. Unyielding. A
footballer separated from his team mates by his own obsessive will to win.
"I can't imagine anybody in life wanting to be average at something, or come second," he
says. "We all like to be regarded as being good at something; it's just a matter of finding what
your niche is."

If the stoney-faced exterior is an image he has cultivated, it's because it suits him that way. In
his dealings with a typical media scrum on match day, he's always accommodating, if cautious.
One to one though, he's engaging company.

Trying to make sense of it all hasn't been easy but the past three months have been sprinkled
with epiphanies. The GPA awards provided one. He booked the cup for the function, travelling
up to Armagh the previous night and collecting it at one in the morning from Oisin
McConville, who had it for another function. A couple of hours later, he arrived back at his
house in Dublin, placing it on a chair in his room as he tried to snatch a few hours sleep.
"It was one of those moments. Lying in bed, I just turned over, and I could see the street light
coming in from the window at about three in the morning and the Sam Maguire sitting at the
foot of the bed." What the achievement has meant? "Have you ever lived through one of your
dreams? Have you? Well, I've been lucky enough to do that."
Not that he's going soft. If Kernan says "he's mellowing" (a verdict, when relayed, that
prompts another smile), it's all relative.

He doesn't smoke, and his manager can testify to his drinking habits. "The night of the All
Stars things are always a bit rushed, and he says, 'Joe, I'm going to go to the gym.' And I said,
'you haven't time. Will you leave it just for tonight?' That's Kieran. He wanted to go for an hour
for a workout, to prepare for the few beers he was going to have."
The management put a lot of store on mental preparation, on getting the whole team in the
right frame of mind. Some examples? The orange wristband worn by every squad member. Al
Pacino's storm-force speech in Any Given Sunday played on the team bus. The goodwill
message from Muhammed Ali, a copy of which was slipped under the door of each player's
room in the Citywest Hotel on the morning of the final.
"People might say, 'what has that got to do with gaelic football?" says McGeeney. "But you
have to look for what it has to do with football, look for the motivation in it, because motivation
always comes from within. Things have an impact on you if you want them to have an impact.
Sometimes it's the small things that can make all the difference."
A game of inches. It's been the Armagh mantra all summer. McGeeney has always been
fascinated by what makes winners, especially those that were able to 'transcend their own
sport.'

He's an avid reader (not to mention movie buff, Elvis fan and someone known to strum a few
chords on the guitar) and has digested biographies of Ali. But the man he holds up as the
greatest athlete that's ever played sport is Michael Jordan. "When you listen to him talk, he
didn't want to be good, he wanted to be the best. He didn't even want to be a winner; he
wanted to be the best at winning. Each step he wanted to take had to be a step up; there was
no such thing as taking a step to the side. He pushed himself to the limits. He just wanted to
find out how good he really could be."

He saw him play once in Boston during the early 90's, "back when you'd have your summer
free with Armagh," and the memory stayed. "You have to admire people like that. People think
that when you get to that stage it's pure talent, but it's not. If somebody said to you 'who's the
best footballer, Georgie Best or Roy Keane?' Who would you pick?" Best is the answer he's
fishing for. "But then who would you want on your team? You'd have Roy Keane."

McGeeney was never the child prodigy with the god given talent; rather someone who worked
relentlessly at his game until he reached the top. It's clear who he identifies with. "I like
watching Roy play," he admits. "He just wants to win – hates losing. For all the stuff people
would say about him, I think he's a great team player. I know he gives his team mates a hard
time but that's part of sport. I heard a great quote from a manager who said, 'I hate to see
people turning up to see challenge games in disco trousers and scoring 2-6. Give me the man,
whose back is up against the wall, who'll always produce the goods under pressure."
Is that his barometer of a player? "That's everyone's barometer. You want somebody that you
can rely on, someone that you can trust."

At half-time in the All-Ireland final, the Armagh centre-back was the man with his back against
the wall. The Kerry game plan of playing around him, rather than through him, was working
perfectly. His marker, Eoin Brosnan, steamed past him at one stage after a one-two near the
sideline, only to see his shot for goal miss by inches.

While Kernan bounced his own All Ireland losers' plaque off the dressing room wall at the
break, the team captain was struggling to find the right words. "I found it very hard to speak to
the players. Talking about things is all very easy; it's actually doing it that's the problem.
Although I knew that I was trying hard, I knew I wasn't doing all the right things. So I wasn't
going to give off to people. You can never say to someone, 'I'm going to have a brilliant game'
but you can promise them that you can try your hardest, that you'll run until you drop."
He kept his promise. Nineteen minutes into the second half, his diving block on Dara
O'Cinneide snuffed out a goal opportunity. O'Cinneide put over the resultant 45 but the point
had been made. Kerry would have to scrap for every ball. They weren't to score again.
It was a day when he recognised the debt of gratitude he owed to the people around him. In
the pre-match parade, he looked up to spot Charlie Grant, the man who introduced him to football in Mullaghbawn. He doesn't quite know how she managed to pick her way through the crush, but as he lifted the cup, his mother was just yards from the podium.

His father has since promised to pen a poem in honour of the occasion but there was another reason why it was an emotional family reunion when he met his whole family later in the upstairs bar in Croke Park. His brothers Patrick and Declan were there, but it lifted him to see that so too was 25-year-old sister Sinead.

"It took four morphine injections to get Sinead through the game. She has Crohn's disease, a disease of the bowel and she doesn't be well at all. She missed all of the celebrations. She tried to make it to the banquet that night but she had to be brought to the hospital and had a major operation the Wednesday after the game. So it was hard on everybody at the time."

He was at Croke Park recently to endorse a football and launch a special Armagh kit for children. All part of a charity fundraiser, with a percentage donated to the Craigavon Area Hospital where his sister is treated. "You wouldn't be where you are but for your family," he says.
Required Reading 12
In his view, Patrick was actually the one with the most natural talent; he was just prepared to make the greater sacrifices. This is a man who has no cruciate ligament in his right knee. No kidding. After he tore it eight years ago, he decided against an operation. Instead, he built up the muscles around it by doing rehabilitation work in the gym "everyday for six months."
He lifts up his shirt to reveal shoulders that hang like a coathanger, a consequence of dislocating the joints in both. Still at school when he broke onto the Armagh senior panel in 1989, it was ten years before he won an Ulster title. But despite the mental and physical scars, he never stopped believing that someday he would get to live out the dream. When he lifted the same trophy this year as captain, his words at Clones were, "it's not the cup that I want to lift."

The sense of focus is frightening. He didn't prepare a victory speech for the final, only because, "I wanted to keep all the available space in my head for the game."
So what's the motivation now that he has realised his ultimate ambition? "If somebody asked me now if I wanted to win another one, what am I going to say, 'ah no I don't think I'll bother?' it depends what you want in life. If we win two All-Ireland's we're up with the best. We're not just a good team then, we could become a great team."

For someone who turned 31 in October, he admits that, "it's going to be hard, I'm not getting any younger." So what happens if he walks onto a field after Christmas and the same hunger isn't there? "If I come to January and I kick a ball and I feel like that, I'll probably walk away. But I can't see myself feeling like that."
One particular exchange illustrates why:
-- If you retired now, with one All Ireland medal, would you be happy? -- No.
-- Why not?
-- Because I'm a greedy f**ker. I could go out next year and people will say that if you play badly, you could ruin everything you've done this year. But that's not what it's about. I get a buzz out of playing football. There are still challenges there for us. We're in the preliminary round next year and no team has ever won an Ulster title from the preliminary round.
-- But if there is one lesson from the careers of the likes of Ali or Jordan, it's that not even the greats know the right time to get out. Why not quit and be remembered as the All Ireland winning captain, the Texaco Footballer of the year, the All Star centre-back?
-- That's not why I played football. I didn't play football for everyone to remember me. The real self-satisfaction is knowing that you did your best, that you became the best you were capable of becoming. If I played my football to keep everybody else happy, I would have quit football a long time ago. Next year I could go out and people will say he's past it, then so be it. You have to follow your own path.

After the All Ireland semi-final defeat by Kerry two years ago, his Armagh team mate Aidan O'Rourke sent him a quote from former American president Roosevelt.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, if he wins, knows the thrills of high achievement, and, if he fails, at least fails daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."

That quote now sits underneath his writing mat in his office at the Irish Sports Council in Dublin.
Motivation? The thought of being back in the arena for another year is enough.

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https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/2025/02/17/risk-management-is-the-rot-in-gaelic-football-the-frc-set-out-to-treat/
Risk management is the rot in Gaelic football the FRC set out to treat
New rules that reward more exciting play are already having their impact on the game
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Dublin's Loran O'Dell kicks a two pointer late in the game against Kerry in Tralee. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho
 
Denis Walsh
Mon Feb 17 2025 - 15:54
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Dublin won the ball from the throw-in and didn't part with it until they had a shot at goal, 114 seconds later. Austin Stack Park was thronged with 10,000 people, some of whom had been queuing from before 5pm for a 7.30pm throw-in.
A lively two-piece kept the early comers entertained, rattling out familiar tunes, but nothing maudlin. Then the game started, and the ground descended into silence, like a doctor's waiting room.
"I thought the new rules were supposed to get rid of this sort of thing," said one Kerry supporter to his buddy, sitting in front of us in the press box.
Dublin stitched together 16 passes before a Kerry defender made a lunge for the ball; it escaped his grasp, though, and Dublin picked up the thread. Seventeen passes later they kicked a wide.
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Dublin's next move contained 13 passes; after that, 18 passes. Then they went short and wide from a kick-out and held the ball for just over three minutes: a staggering 49 passes.
[ Dublin steal the points from Kerry in adrenalin-fuelled finaleOpens in new window ]
Kerry's defence was massed inside the 40-metre scoring arc, but was too passive; Evan Comerford, the Dublin goalkeeper, was deployed as a pivot behind Dublin's attackers, without committing any of the Kerry defenders, or making a penetrative surge with the ball. On both sides, nobody was taking much of a chance.
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Against a fierce wind, Dublin were doing the sensible thing in time-honoured fashion: minding the ball, killing the game. In his post-match interview, Jack O'Connor lamented Kerry's comparative failure to do the same thing in the second half and blamed it partly for their defeat.
 
The umpire waves the orange flag after a two pointer from Galway's Cillian Ó Curraoin. Photograph: Evan Logan/Inpho
"We basically needed to get more out of our attacks in the sense of holding on to the ball for longer," he said. "I thought we rushed a couple of shots in the second half when we could have rotated the ball. Every minute that you were knocking off the clock was getting you closer to home but unfortunately, we panicked a couple of times and took rash decisions."
The new rules have made a terrific start. The opening rounds of the league have been the most exciting in memory, for die-hards and sceptics alike. There are significant gremlins that must be ironed out, but there has been a heartening acceptance that the reforms have improved the spectacle and that there is no turning back now.
Through its long and painful decline, though, the greatest issue that faced Gaelic football was the primacy of risk management. The game was being killed by its devotion to percentages and low-yield possession. Changing that thinking was going to require such a massive rewiring job that the FRC were never going to manage it in one take. Instead, they have introduced compulsory risk in microdoses.
Most kick-outs now are contested in the middle third, which had a massive impact on Saturday night's game, for example. Given the strength of the wind Dublin won just less than 50 per cent of their kick-outs in the first half and Kerry won a little more than 50 per cent in the second. Neither team was able to make a stress-free exit without putting the ball at risk.
The other major ideological battleground is shooting. In the derelict game we have left behind, working the ball to designated shooting zones was the main purpose of the endless rounds of keep-ball. Ideally, nobody wanted to shoot from outside the D, or from the flanks. The heavy emphasis on efficiency identified risk as the enemy.
In the new game it is clear already that the two-point arc has the potential to be transformative. Under the old rules, anybody shooting from that distance was guilty of an offence against the game plan. It was an unconscionable risk. In some instances, it would have been condemned as an act of grandstanding or hare-brained panic.
 
Kerry's David Clifford in action against Dublin. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho
In the new rules that kind of risky kicking has been incentivised. On Saturday night, two pointers shaped the game. In the opening quarter, Kerry kicked a pair of them in succession at a time in the match when Dublin had more than 75 per cent possession, according to RTÉ's statistics.
Those scores changed the energy of the game and reduced the value of letting the ball rest in a deposit account, with little or no interest. That was also true in the last five minutes, when Dublin were trying to chase down a four-point deficit and Lorcan O'Dell landed two beauties.
The early rounds of the league have been characterised by entirely uncharacteristic scoreboard swings. Games have jackknifed in team's faces. Kerry couldn't hang on to a 12-point lead on Saturday night; Cork couldn't hold on to a 10-point lead against Down in round two; Galway surrendered a nine-point lead against Derry on Saturday evening.
The general spike in scoring has been adrenalised by the 3v3 imperative, so that turnovers in the defensive half are leading to more productive counterattacks, and the solo-and-go frees, that are giving defences less time to set up. But ultimately, the championship will be decided on two pointers. How many are you prepared to attempt? How many reliable outside shooters do you have? Will Kerry leave David Clifford inside? Would that be crazy?
How it pans out will be fascinating. In hurling, scoring has gone through the roof over the last decade, enabled by the modern ball, but also by changed thinking. When Limerick took over their emphasis was on volume. Their first principle was to always have more shots than their opponents, even if that meant shipping more wides. By increasing their output, wides came at a smaller cost. That forced all of their putative rivals to play the same numbers game.
Nobody in football has adopted that approach. Efficiency was always king, not volume. With the turn the game has taken the actuaries in every back-room team must be forced to revise their view of risk. If these rule changes alter the future of the game, that is how it will be done.
In the Cork-Westmeath game on Saturday, Eoghan Cormican pointed out that there were an astonishing 60 shots from play, and of the 34 scores only two had been from dead balls.
Hallelujah.

[seafoid]

Malachy Clerkin: The Ulster Championship is awkward, parochial and still deeply essential
Getting rid of the provincial championships makes sense, except everybody in the north is clawing and scratching to win the Anglo-Celt Cup
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Derry's Conor Glass leads his team onto the pitch in Ballyfofey a fortnight ago. Photograph: Lorcan Doherty/Inpho
 
Malachy Clerkin
Sat Apr 19 2025 - 06:00
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In Ballybofey a fortnight ago, the queue for grub in the Villa Rose was as dense as the burgers on the menu. And just as full of flavour. The street outside was lined with young lads with Donegal hair, leaning against the wall of the hotel and knocking back cider in the April sun. Championship was general all over Main Street.
 
"Donegal hair": Finnbarr Roarty. Photograph: James Lawlor/Inpho
(Don't be feigning mystification as to what constitutes Donegal hair, by the way. You know it well. Long enough for a bit of bounce in the curls but not so long as to need tying up. Hinting, always, at a wildness within. Finnbarr Roarty, the teenage corner-back who made his championship debut against Derry, has a classic head of Donegal hair. One look at it and you can smell the rally fumes.)
Everybody knew Donegal would win. Nobody came to MacCumhaill Park thinking there was a Derry challenge in the offing. And still the crowd tipped the scales at 15,023. In last year's football championship, that would have been the second biggest attendance at a stand-alone game outside the provincial finals, All-Ireland semi-finals and final. It will be right up there when the counting stops this time around too.
In Clones this weekend, the Ulster Council are expecting somewhere a little shy of that number for Monaghan v Donegal. Probably something broadly similar the following weekend in the Athletic Grounds for Armagh v Tyrone. The final has sold out for the past three years in a row and there's no reason to think it won't again.
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All this for the battered old Ulster Championship, a competition that by most measurements is worth less now than has ever been the case in its history. Winning it doesn't get you into an All-Ireland semi-final or even a quarter-final any more. All it buys you is a Sam Maguire group avoiding the other provincial champions. Which sounds like a big prize until you remember how hard it is to get knocked out of the group stage anyway.
And yet, it's still a thing that everyone feels compelled to scratch and claw for. The last three finals have gone to extra-time. The last two needed penalties. Even that wasn't enough in 2024, when Donegal and Armagh went to sudden death in the shoot-out before they could be separated. Down the country, expending that kind of effort to win a provincial title would nearly be regarded as unseemly.
Pause
Unmute
 
 
The aftermath of lasy year's Ulster final in St Tiernach's Park, Clones. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho
So why does the Ulster Championship still work? After all, it would be so much easier for everyone if it didn't. The whole All-Ireland template could be torn up, the provincials could be quietly euthanised, every county would have to clear the same amount off their plate to win the overall competition. The championship could be neat and tidy and easily explained.
But it does work. You can see that as a problem or you can see it as a godsend but what you can't do is ignore the truth of it. Four different counties have won the last five titles. The past 10 deciders have featured nine different combinations of finalists. Eight of the nine teams have been to an Ulster final since 2017. The competition is ferocious, in every sense.
At its heart, it works because the rivalries have never died on the vine like they have elsewhere. Cork's years of wan capitulation to Kerry would never have been allowed to happen in Ulster. There'd be plenty in the northern province who'd have sympathy with how the Dublin beast was fed by Croke Park to go chomping on the Leinster Championship but there's limits to that too. At a certain point, you have to get thick about this stuff and find a bit of defiance.
Ulster works because of some of the oldest, fiercest and frankly most malign human impulses. Jealousy is a big one, for a start. Jim McGuinness has been stomping around the place declaring that the Ulster Championship is the be all and end all – you think the other counties are going to shrug and let him have it? No chance. They'll try to win it even if it's just to annoy him.
Insecurity plays its part, insularity too. It's a big old world out there but there's still nothing sweeter than coveting thy neighbour's ox, slaying it in front of the watching hordes, and serving it up for dinner. The fact that Ulster teams are emptying themselves in the pursuit of said ox while Dublin and Kerry are yawning their way through the early summer is always forgotten in the moment.
 
Clones, Co Monaghan, on Ulster football final day. Photograph: Cathal Noonan/Inpho
And people love it. They give themselves to it freely and fully. A couple of years back, I arrived into Clones about two hours before the Armagh v Derry final and already the place was baloobas. Half-cut, sunburned, chip-greased and teeming with life.
A garda came by me with a young buck from Armagh in a headlock and bounced him into the back of a paddywagon. His mates made no attempt to save him and instead tramped on up the hill to the game in stitches laughing. "Sure the stupid [bleep!] spat in the cop's face ..."
The tension during the match that day was ungodly. Same again last year. The new rules have loosened up the game so maybe when the heavier hitters meet this time around, it won't be a case of trying to outlast each other and hoping to make the fewest mistakes. Donegal v Derry wasn't encouraging on that front. Maybe this weekend will be different.
But whatever the aesthetics, the Ulster Championship is still going strong. Still, despite everything, the best argument the provincial championships have in their favour. Awkward, parochial and deeply, soulfully essential.
Everything you'd want from a sporting competition, in other words

[J70]

Up until very recently I'd actually agree with every word Clerkin says. I f**king LOVE IT when we win the Ulster Championship. I love the tension and the tight arm wrestle games, even if we often come out on the wrong side of them. I love that so many of the teams are at a similar level so that when we lose to, say, Tyrone, most years we can still be confident that we'll put it up to them and very possibly even beat them next year.

However, watching yesterday's match against Monaghan, for possibly the first time, I was thinking it wouldn't be the end of the world if they did manage to reel us in and win. Group stages and AI knock-outs do seem like basically a separate competition now, in the same way as your favourite English team going out of Europe doesn't mean that they can't still have a great season in the Premier League.

And let's face it, would any Armagh supporter swap places with us last year, despite their losing the toss in the Ulster Final? The AI title was always bigger, but at least winning Ulster used to leave you a lot closer to the former than it does now, where everyone basically starts again from the same spot.

[Fogarty]

The story of why a referee was forced to hide in the boot of a car after a GAA match
An incident in Wicklow involving referee Johnny Price got more attention than it probably deserved

Dermot Crowe
Sun 9 Aug 2020 at 02:30

The final whistle that November afternoon in 1985 brought joy to the young players of Blessington, confirming their one-point win over Annacurra in the Wicklow under 21 B football final. For the referee, Johnny Price, it signalled the end of his duties. From there he made the short walk to his car to change and prepare for the journey home to Roundwood from Baltinglass. But what happened next turned into a case that's still spoken of 35 years later, and is even familiar to people with only a passing interest, or none at all, in Gaelic games.
Of the many assaults on GAA referees over the years, it is the most notorious: Price was forced into the boot of his car after being confronted by angry supporters of the losing team. The story of a referee being locked in a boot had a uniquely sinister twist and helped create a caricature of Wicklow as lawless and ungovernable. It exposed referees to a new dimension of risk and ridicule. It also left deep and lasting psychological scars for those involved in the GAA in the county.

The story grew legs with the passing years. There was a version that had the referee driven away from the ground by the perpetrators and abandoned, which did not happen. When Price, an experienced inter-county referee, reached his Fiat Uno van he opened up the hatchback door and began changing out of his gear. His youngest son, David, was seated in the front seat when he heard a loud noise, the sound of the car's rear door slamming shut.

During the match Price had sent off a player from Annacurra and while he was changing afterwards three men approached him and hurled verbal abuse, before one forced him inside the car. Some say that because it was a hatchback, rather than a conventional boot, the deed wasn't as distressing as it might have been portrayed. The door was already open but it was still a very serious assault. Only the previous weekend in Arklow, Price had been seriously assaulted during a league match between Aughrim and Barndarrig which left him out cold for a brief spell. He was punched twice and kicked in the ribs while on the ground - remarkably he recovered and finished refereeing the match.

The car incident roused more interest, however, and became a kind of cause celebre in the refereeing world. Price had been officiating for 18 years and encountered serious situations before, but none as bad as he endured over those two weekends. In May the following year a player was fined after being convicted in court of the assault in Arklow, which happened after he was sent off. After Baltinglass, the Annacurra follower who assaulted Price at his car was banned for life by the GAA.

Johnny Price's son, David, was seven when he travelled with his father to Baltinglass for the under 21 final. He is 41 now, the youngest of the family. His brother Joe was on the An Tochar team from Roundwood that won the Wicklow senior football championship in 1995, ten years after the incident involving his father. An Tochar had a reputation for playing attractive football and the incident with Johnny Price, though the club wasn't culpable, remains difficult to talk about. The current chairman declined. He said that what happened in Baltinglass did not represent what they stood for and explained that he would rather leave it behind.

David Price remembers that day clearly. According to a report in The Nationalist and Leinster Times, it took the intervention of the county vice-chairman Liam O'Loughlin and Baltinglass secretary, Garda Seamus Kelly, to rescue Price from his car. He was 44 at the time and ran a garage in Roundwood. He died suddenly aged 64 in 2005.

"My dad took it fairly light-hearted anyway," says his son, David. "He would never let anything really get to him. I was in the car at the time, but I didn't see anything, I just heard the bang and I turned around and I locked the car. The keys were in the ignition. I didn't know what to do. I went along for the day because there was nobody to mind me. I was brought to most games at the time."

Johnny and Christine Price raised four children: Vincent, Carmel, Joe and David. They all played football but Joe was the most accomplished. "I played until I was 26 and then when my Dad passed away I took over the family business. I couldn't afford to be injured," David explains.

He remembers hearing the banging noise and looking around to see his father trapped inside the car. He said something but his father did not respond. "I locked the doors because people started gathering around the car. Eventually a man came to the window and my Dad said I could let him in. He was getting changed at the back of the van. I didn't hear any voices, so I didn't hear a confrontation or anything like that. I heard the bang and then saw him lying in the boot with the door shut."

* * * * *

Thirty five years on, serious assaults on referees are rare but not unheard of in Wicklow and beyond. When Aughrim native John Keenan was attacked five years ago he didn't see it coming. He is one of two Wicklow referees, along with Anthony Nolan, currently serving on the national referees' panel.

Keenan was leaving the pitch after an intermediate football championship game involving neighbours Stratford-Grangecon and Baltinglass when a spectator approached him and allegedly head-butted him in the face. He later received a two-year ban. "We have taken swift action in the aftermath of this incident," said Mick Hagan of the committee that made the decision to ban the spectator. "There is no place for this type of behaviour in our Association."

Keenan was just 12 when Johnny Price was locked into his car, old enough to remember. He later played matches in which Price was the referee. "I knew Johnny. I wouldn't have been out for a pint with him. It didn't put Johnny off either in fairness to the man. He was a businessman in Roundwood, he was well known. A terrible nice man."

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Refereeing was in the blood. Keenan's father, Liam, did it for years. "Now he didn't referee anything outside of Wicklow, he's 73 now and up to this year he was still doing a bit. He got me into it, I was going to games with him."

The day John Keenan was assaulted in 2015 his father was one of his umpires. "I haven't spoken to anyone about it, I had a lot of offers (to talk). I will never forget it. Lovely summer's evening and for some reason a spectator from a club, and the game went perfectly, decided on the way out he'd headbutt me. Caught me completely unawares.

"I got a black eye and a badly bruised nose. There was nothing broken. It was the shock more than anything. I was due to referee on the Sunday again. I took the Sunday off. I wanted to chill out. I rang the wife on the way home and sure she couldn't believe what happened."

Like Johnny Price, he was not persuaded to lay down his whistle. "I absolutely love it. If my wife was sitting here beside me she would probably say I love it more than I love the family (laughs). Now I obviously don't but I love it."

Keenan feels that respect for referees in the county is generally good. "You are always going to have a frustrated player here and there on a pitch. I was one of those myself, I used to get frustrated at times when I was playing. You will have players calling for frees and not agreeing with you and stuff like that.

"I know you will see a lot of people and they'll say Wicklow this and Wicklow that, but my way of looking at it is I'm sure there are a lot of incidents that go on in a lot of other counties, but because Wicklow has had one of the more high profile ones it is highlighted more probably."

* * * * *

David Price can't remember his father ever showing signs of distress from experiences he encountered as a referee. "If anything went on in a game he never brought it home with him. He would never let it get to him. He'd say, 'Oh I had to send so many off because they were fighting' - but he never said what the reasons for that were.

"I remember when I got a bit older and heard more about it (his father locked in the boot) I was upset that it happened and stuff like that, but I was only young at the time and didn't know any better. I remember my Dad saying it was big news at the time. It went to court."

His father died 15 years ago while on pilgrimage with his wife, Christine, in France. "When we were young, we didn't go on many holidays because of the business," says David. "And they were starting to do that, travelling more. I was here (looking after the garage) and we were all grown up.

"He was refereeing a football game and he noticed that he was short of breath and decided he had better go and get it checked and they did an angiogram. He had two blockages in his arteries, he got an angioplasty and then they put stents in after that. This was about four or five weeks before he went away, because he was told he might not be allowed fly. He was worried about that but went for a check-up and everything looked good so he could fly."

While in his hotel in France he collapsed and died. "My mother said it was very hard but she was lucky because there was a priest there who was fluent in French and he could translate everything for her because she was lost. My other brother Joe flew over I think a day or two after that and then we arrived a day or two after that, myself, Vincent and Carmel."

He speaks of his father's undying passion for refereeing. That is what endures. "He loved it. He played himself and went into the refereeing end of it and loved it."

Willie Barrett is chairman of the National Referees Development Committee. He began refereeing in 1977 and retired in 2018. "I knew Johnny Price actually," he says. "I met Johnny, after the incident, I met him twice in Croke Park. I remember him speaking briefly about it. He seemed to have recovered well from it. He was a hearty kind of guy to talk to, he was a nice guy.

"I remember well it got publicity in the paper, but that time we didn't have the communication we have now. I suppose in a way he more or less had to deal with it himself. Today it would certainly be different. Johnny was on the inter-county panel at the time. If it happened now you would have a call from Croke Park certainly. There would be support available to him in terms of talking to people.

"He seemed to get over it, he seemed to be very strong mentally. When I spoke to him about it, and I asked him how he was obviously and all that, and he told me he was in a good place and he continued refereeing."

Barrett made his inter-county start only a year after the incident with Price in Baltinglass. "At the time, I remember thinking of the pitfalls of refereeing and what can happen," he says. "But you always hope that it won't happen to you. I don't think you dwell on what might happen. It certainly never occurred to me that something like that would happen me."

He discovered that he was not immune ten years ago when he abandoned a South Tipperary championship match in Kilsheelan after a vicious assault from a supporter. He shipped blows from a hurl to the hand, back and hip. "It didn't stop me. In actual fact I was refereeing a week or two later. I was anxious to put it behind me and move on. But then again I had been refereeing for 33 years at that time. That helped."

* * * * *

Kevin O'Brien won an All-Ireland club medal with Baltinglass and brought honour to Wicklow through inter-provincial appearances, All Star recognition and featuring on the Irish team in the international rules series. But on his travels he might just as easily have someone ask him about the referee they put in the boot.

"Being a Wicklow player it is thrown at you everywhere," he says. "I knew Johnny. He was a referee who did an awful lot of games. I don't know exactly what happened on the night. From a football point of view I was lucky enough to go places here and there and play with a lot of household names and it would be thrown out at you. Even still.

"A lot of worse things have happened on football pitches. Now that is with respect to the family. We all knew Johnny as a referee. We all knew his style and we all know what to do and what not to do. If Johnny was refereeing you knew you shut your mouth and you did not get involved.

"People are uncomfortable talking about it. You go to places, say where you're from and they say, 'ye throw referees in the boot'.

"I think from a Wicklow point of view you're always trying to fight to get respect and there is only one way to get respect and that is to achieve things. From a team point of view the effort that goes in a lot of cases would be extraordinary and in some cases we are not good enough or you get a bit of bad luck on the day or whatever. But you are trying always to get people to believe they are good enough and something like that sucks the wind out of you.

"I am actually very uncomfortable talking about it now, because you feel you are actually supporting it, highlighting it more. Like the club he is from is a very respectable club. It is terrible to be remembered for something like that, but it's not going to go away. I could go down to Kerry in the morning or go anywhere in the country and someone could say it to me."

For O'Brien, and others, there has been a lingering feeling of persecution and an unfair press. After the Johnny Price incident Wicklow became a hunting ground for the next outrage.

"We always felt that the coverage would be stronger, because it was Wicklow, and give a dog a bad name and then it was 'ah they are at it again'. You'd pick up the paper and read of something, and I'd have played in that match, and know that it did not happen like that. Now we didn't help ourselves either. There were incidents, but there are incidents everywhere."

It left a legacy? "It's bad PR, isn't it?" he states. "And there's a lot of people doing a lot of good work and it kind of deflates them I think. We lose respect over that."

When Mick O'Dwyer came to Wicklow it was often said that he would be a liberating force, and help remove the tribal bitterness that existed between clubs. Kevin O'Brien was hitched to the same management team. He feels the club tensions were over-stated and created a false perception. "Club rivalry is everywhere," he says, "and it brings out the best and the worst in people. If that stops we're at nothing.

"I often think that's excuses, more excuses, I was caught up in all of that. Baltinglass won't play with Rathnew. One side of the hill. Two counties in the one county - f**k's sake, there's mountains in Kerry, Donegal, everywhere. High-stool excuses, that's the bottom line. It's crazy stuff. It's excuses for failure.

"There was never a problem with Baltinglass players playing with Rathnew. It's a derby match and it's tough and flat out but I never experienced lads not passing the ball from any club."

The Wicklow Games Manager is a former county player, Hugh Kenny. At the start of this year they recruited 17 new adult referees. "If you look at other counties that's a good return," he says. He speaks also about disproportionate press coverage and how incidents in other counties - he managed a club recently in Meath - do not get the same media attention.

In December, the month after the incident in the car park, the GAA expelled a member of the Annacurra club for the assault and another member of the same club received a six-month suspension for heckling during the trophy presentation.

Price spoke after the county board decision.

"I think they have taken the necessary steps to root out the troublemakers, and their action should serve as a deterrent to any players or supporters who might be contemplating assaulting a referee in the future," he said.

It didn't stop assaults on referees, but it probably reduced them and it helped bring people to their senses. Through all of it, Price's love of refereeing remained uncorrupted. It was a love that simply could not be contained.

[Fogarty]

Highlighting the myth about a referee being kidnapped in the boot of a car and driven away.

[imtommygunn]

There's definitely a story of at least one referee ended up in a boot elsewhere though wasn't kidnapped so I suppose that was something...

[weareros]

Highlighting the myth about a referee being kidnapped in the boot of a car and driven away.

Did it not happen. From the Irish Times:

There have been many high-profile instances of attacks on referees over the years, some of which have ended up in court. One of the most infamous incidents happened in Wicklow in 1985 when referee Johnny Price from Roundwood, Co Wicklow was bundled into the boot of a car and driven away by a group of supporters following a controversial under-21 football final.

[Wildweasel74]

Heard about this many yrs ago. as i had worked in Wicklow/Wexford. Team always mentioned then, was Rathnew and it was a senior game, not a U21.

[Fogarty]

Highlighting the myth about a referee being kidnapped in the boot of a car and driven away.

Did it not happen. From the Irish Times:

There have been many high-profile instances of attacks on referees over the years, some of which have ended up in court. One of the most infamous incidents happened in Wicklow in 1985 when referee Johnny Price from Roundwood, Co Wicklow was bundled into the boot of a car and driven away by a group of supporters following a controversial under-21 football final.

No, it didn't happen. Read the article.