Doire v Mhuineacháin 24/5/09

[Fuzzman]

As a dub lad said to be yesterday at lunch, why does all this off the ball stuff only happen when Ulster teams play each other but when they play other counties they seem to relax the head and try to play reasonably fair open football.

Whether or not we like it I believe it tends to happen when one time considers itself inferior to the other and so unfair tactics are used to soften up the opposition to stop them from playing their usual game. This is especially true if a team has a talented forward or two and more often than not thr transgressor gets away with most of the early stuff before the forward reacts and then both get booked or sent off.

Remember yer man Walsh allegedly biting Sean Cavanagh. Remember Kieran McKeever & a Kerry defender trying to get a reaction from Canavan.
Most times refs let these incidents go & eventually the player being wronged eventually loses the head and reacts which is what they are hoping happens.

Good old Ricey & Conor Gormley often try to intimidate forwards like poor Oisin McConville etc to get a rise and remember Joey McMahon against Tommy Walshe last year in the final.

This crack has been happening for years but some teams take it to the extreme but as Heaney and a few others have said what do you do?
Do you wait for the ref & linesmen to defend you.
If Paddy Bradley had of lay down after the rabbit punch before the game started, loads of ye would cry Ach Get up he hardly touched ye. Its a man's game. Bullshit.
So instead he's expected to take it on the chin and not retaliate.

In Ulster especially there seems to be a rule that ye 1st have to earn the right to play football the way ye want to and every since more and more teams are using the blanket defence or 7th defender then it has made games much less fluid and less likely to see long kick passes being used as the "Sweeper" just intercepts and break down the field.

As Brolly & O'Rourke agreed on Sunday, the game has evolved into a much more tactical battle nowadays but I'm afraid I still lay a lot of the blame at the door of the Refs and their panel of umpires & linesmen. If they all evolved as well as the players have then a lot more incidents would be dealt with immediately. If Corner backs knew that umpires would be listened to and could get them sent off, would they be so keen to do off the ball stuff?

[Drumanee 1]

all this hypocritical crap about the match being a disgrace and not fit for kids to watch is really winding me up,are you telling me the down team of the 60's,dublin,meath and kerry in the 70/80's were football purists and would not sink to such a level well let me tell you they did when they had to and was part of what made them great teams,now i am not saying what happened on sunday was pretty but derry had to stand up to monaghan and thats what they did and i would be very confident in saying derrys approach will be different for there next match.i remember when tyrone were kicked out of croke park in 96 by meath and all the freestate media said "it's part of the game"well how the preachers have changed.

[INDIANA]

I'm not on any crusade Max. But when the likes of Kernan and Tohill said it was out of order-it must have been bad because they've never criticised Ulster Football before. I don't agree  O Neill- we had 2 of the top8 teams in the country who didn't want to play football last Sunday. Its a sad state of affairs.
It was the amount of incidents and the nature of them that was the problem. Rarely would you find a match with that many incidents over 70mins. We're not doing anything to promote the game by saying nothing about it. And in my view the lads on the Sunday game were dead right- by criticising it.
We're 3 weeks into the championship and we've haven't had a decent game yet. Crowds are poor and people are wondering why.

[Oakleafer93]

Remember Kieran McKeever & a Kerry defender trying to get a reaction from Canavan.

How many teams played that match?  

[DennistheMenace]

Derry are best when they are trying to play football as they have the quality players especially in attack to hurt most teams in the country.

At the weekend Derry management knew that playing footballng wasn't going to be enough to get past Monaghan, they were never going to be allowed to play.

Some of the stuff wasn't pleasing on the eye but all this 'expert' punditry is completely OTT, anyone who didn't think this was going to be a hard niggling game is completely out of touch with A) Ulster Championship football B)Monaghan's tactics and C) The way Cassidy would won't his players to respond

[DennistheMenace]

I'm not on any crusade Max. But when the likes of Kernan and Tohill said it was out of order-it must have been bad because they've never criticised Ulster Football before. I don't agree  O Neill- we had 2 of the top8 teams in the country who didn't want to play football last Sunday. Its a sad state of affairs.
It was the amount of incidents and the nature of them that was the problem. Rarely would you find a match with that many incidents over 70mins. We're not doing anything to promote the game by saying nothing about it. And in my view the lads on the Sunday game were dead right- by criticising it.
We're 3 weeks into the championship and we've haven't had a decent game yet. Crowds are poor and people are wondering why.

For a start the crowds were always going to be 'poor' for a wide variety of reasons.

Derry have tried in the past to play pure football against Monaghan and it hasn't worked so it's a case of horses for courses and in the end as a supporter of Derry a win is the end all and be all, I  don't care if it wasn't pleasing on the eye for the neutral supporter.

One things is for sure, Derry have the capabilities and usually do go out and play football, a first round tie against Monaghan was not the time nor place for it though.

[Zulu]

I'm not on any crusade Max. But when the likes of Kernan and Tohill said it was out of order-it must have been bad because they've never criticised Ulster Football before. I don't agree  O Neill- we had 2 of the top8 teams in the country who didn't want to play football last Sunday. Its a sad state of affairs.
It was the amount of incidents and the nature of them that was the problem. Rarely would you find a match with that many incidents over 70mins. We're not doing anything to promote the game by saying nothing about it. And in my view the lads on the Sunday game were dead right- by criticising it.
We're 3 weeks into the championship and we've haven't had a decent game yet. Crowds are poor and people are wondering why.

Exactly, the 'sure nobody was hurt' defence is nonsense as is the 'it was far worse in the 80's' type of stuff. We want tough hard football, not simply tough hard grappling matches. The real issue is should teams be able to go out and forget about football and instead intimidate their opponents into submission, IMO they shouldn't. The winner of a football match should be the team that played the best, hardest, most inventive football not the one who was willing to sink to the lowest level. This debate isn't about Derry and Monaghan or Ulster football, it's about football as a game and what type of game we want going into the future. This week we have the champions league final and Cork V Tipp in the Munster hurling championship, now both games  could turn out to be rubbish but they almost definitely won't turn into niggly, foul ridden, stop start contests with little to do with the sport they are playing. Why do some seem to think football should be different?

[screenmachine]

I'm not on any crusade Max. But when the likes of Kernan and Tohill said it was out of order-it must have been bad because they've never criticised Ulster Football before. I don't agree  O Neill- we had 2 of the top8 teams in the country who didn't want to play football last Sunday. Its a sad state of affairs.
It was the amount of incidents and the nature of them that was the problem. Rarely would you find a match with that many incidents over 70mins. We're not doing anything to promote the game by saying nothing about it. And in my view the lads on the Sunday game were dead right- by criticising it.
We're 3 weeks into the championship and we've haven't had a decent game yet. Crowds are poor and people are wondering why.

Exactly, the 'sure nobody was hurt' defence is nonsense as is the 'it was far worse in the 80's' type of stuff. We want tough hard football, not simply tough hard grappling matches. The real issue is should teams be able to go out and forget about football and instead intimidate their opponents into submission, IMO they shouldn't. The winner of a football match should be the team that played the best, hardest, most inventive football not the one who was willing to sink to the lowest level. This debate isn't about Derry and Monaghan or Ulster football, it's about football as a game and what type of game we want going into the future. This week we have the champions league final and Cork V Tipp in the Munster hurling championship, now both games  could turn out to be rubbish but they almost definitely won't turn into niggly, foul ridden, stop start contests with little to do with the sport they are playing. Why do some seem to think football should be different?

So its not Ok to talk about football from the 80's but its alright to compare with two totally different sports in the form of the Munster hurling final and the Champions league final.  Catch yourself on.

[Zulu]

What, is that a point or just some random statement? Comparing football today with that of the 80's or any other generation is pointless, especially if you're doing so to justify the worst aspects of our game. It's like a soccer fan defending a mini riot at a game on the basis that it was much worse in the 80's, i.e. pointless and irrelevant. I was comparing the fact that you don't worry that other codes will descend into foul ridden, stop start contests, whereas football can do so on a reasonably regular basis. And any fan of the game should find that unacceptable.

[Maguire01]

McEnaney's opinion on Brolly et al hits the nail on the head:

"There's pundits out there paid to do a job and I have no problem with Joe Brolly being paid for his opinion, or the likes of him making money on the back of us."

[Zulu]

Would he prefer if the game wasn't shown, would he prefer if the actions of the team he prepared wasn't commented on simply because he doesn't like what he hears? As usual there is an attitude, underlined by a few on here, that we aren't to blame it is those giving out who are the problem. It's long since past time for people in the GAA to start looking at the bigger picture and taking responsibility for where they are taking the game.

[orangeman]

McEnaney's opinion on Brolly et al hits the nail on the head:

"There's pundits out there paid to do a job and I have no problem with Joe Brolly being paid for his opinion, or the likes of him making money on the back of us."

Was this a dig, a direct insult or a manager answering an honest question ? Why did he pick Brolly ?? Was it because of his premature "I'm delighted Monaghan are out of the championship" remark ?

[INDIANA]

McEnaney's opinion on Brolly et al hits the nail on the head:

"There's pundits out there paid to do a job and I have no problem with Joe Brolly being paid for his opinion, or the likes of him making money on the back of us."

A lot of irony in that statement.

[GBXII]

McEnaney's opinion on Brolly et al hits the nail on the head:

"There's pundits out there paid to do a job and I have no problem with Joe Brolly being paid for his opinion, or the likes of him making money on the back of us."

I watched the game on Sunday and the RTE analysis afterwards. As far as I'm aware Brolly is getting paid to analyse the games he's watching. On Sunday he gave the opinions of Derry suporter not those of a supposedly objective analyst. If people wanted those views they could ask any fan who watched the match.

[bingobus]

McEnaney's opinion on Brolly et al hits the nail on the head:

"There's pundits out there paid to do a job and I have no problem with Joe Brolly being paid for his opinion, or the likes of him making money on the back of us."

A lot of irony in that statement.

If what you are saying is that Banty is also making money on "us", you would be totally wrong. He will spend alot of money on the team and others in the set up will get paid but Banty is the one man who wouldn't be taking a penny.