Man to Man Marking

[Milltown Row2]

Do defenders watch the ball up the pitch anymore or do they just face the attacker?

[tyrone08]

Do defenders watch the ball up the pitch anymore or do they just face the attacker?

Spot on. Man marking is now turning your back on the play and facing the forward. All defenders are doing now is reacting to the movement of the forward and not the actual play. Forwards can do a quick dummy and they gain a few steps infront of the defender. How players and coaches got to this I will never know. Stand with the forward at your side and read the play coming in.

[Milltown Row2]

Do defenders watch the ball up the pitch anymore or do they just face the attacker?

Spot on. Man marking is now turning your back on the play and facing the forward. All defenders are doing now is reacting to the movement of the forward and not the actual play. Forwards can do a quick dummy and they gain a few steps infront of the defender. How players and coaches got to this I will never know. Stand with the forward at your side and read the play coming in.

At club level in football and hurling, as a defender, I just stood that foot in front of the attacker, different at county level were the accuracy of the pass is better but for me it was a good deterrent for the the player playing the ball in seeing I was already in front of the space.

But you need pace, defenders need to be as quick or quicker than the attacker

I started (believe it or not) seeing this type of marking about nearly 30 years ago! one of our young cubs got on the senior team and was doing it in football, must have done something right though as he had a great senior career lol

[armaghniac]

Would need to be a change in refereeing for this to work. Slightest contact these days at times is free and forwards are getting away with 7-8 steps. Haven't a hope of getting a man stopped 1v1 like that. 

Ya, depends on the ref as well, need refs that are more biased to defenders. It's a sort of press out the field moreso, some club lads I spoke to said (and that this was under the old rules) is that you can't do a full on press or chase the opposition for the whole match as you'd be gassed after 40 minutes, so under the faster new rules I can see where a "containment" strategy is part of the plan. For the last ten minutes of the 1st half on Sunday I was surprised that the Donegal lads didn't chase Kerry like men possessed and gamble to get turnovers.

Under the new rules, backs can get a bit of a break as they some of them cannot go beyond the half way line. Of course the men they are marking get a similar break. But workrate also has to play a big role.

[johnnycool]

You need to be tighter definitely but a smart set up can drop a sweeper in.
The issue is lads are too used to shadowing. Everyone is raving about Rafferty from Meath but back in the day most teams had 2 or 3 lads like him.

The craic of lining up and not engaging is surely on tge way out.

The amount of defenders who "shadow" by that I mean run alongside a forward without putting a hand in is crazy. Every game you see defenders too afraid to try and actually win the ball. The tackle does need better defined so that both the refs and players know what actually is allowed.

One thing I don't want to see is Gaelic turning into basketball where is just constant scoring. Defending is an art and in my opinion seeing a diving block is just as good as seeing a 2 point score.

I think a large part of this is that players had become so reliant on using the 2nd defender and sometimes even 3rd player in to force a turnover. You could basically see players thinking hold-up/delay/stop the player's forward movement and because of how deep teams were set up defensively a second player is going to be close enough that they will be in within seconds to force the turnover. This wasn't helped by the fact that refs/the rules seemed to give so much leeway to the defending team in that basically all they had to do to force the turnover was surround the player in possession. So many turnovers were won by just surrounding the player in possession and simply not letting them play the ball away. This required little to no actual skill but was just based on the athletic ability to get close to the player in possession quickly. It's really not a surprise to see a number of players lack of actual defensive skills being badly exposed in relation to this.

2 of the biggest scourges on the game and i've said this for long before this "new" game.

Steps and throwing the ball. tidy up the refereeing around those two rules and you create space for defenders to tackle far too much of the game is sided towards the player with the ball.

Same in the hurling.
As a defender you always used to count the steps when the attacker had the ball and once they were about to take their 4th step you made the tackle.
Now they could be on 5 or 6 steps and no blowing a free from the ref.

Interesting that in the trailing Interprovincial games that the steps rules were being enforced much better, but like everything else GAA it goes into decline as the year goes on.