Footballing lesson from the Aussies

Started by darbyo, November 13, 2006, 06:34:06 PM

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dubnut

No1, in Gaelic football he would have been red carded in the first few minutes.
Yeah he fielded and kicked well, but thats not much use in our game if you arent on the field.
If a team went out in next years championship and did what the Aussies did in the first ten minutes and DIDNT have men sent off I am sure the opposition would be as rattled as our lads were. Fortunately our rules protect against this.
Lets not put all this down to lack of skill and suggest the start didnt affect the Irish players, it clearly did.
Lets let this topic go anyway, its been done to death.

cavanmaniac

I think there's a certain case to be made about a decline in some areas of gaelic football.

Our kicking skills are always shown up in international rules games because what's a good pass in gaelic - dropping it in front of the forward to bounce into his hands - is criminal in International Rules as you're stting a guy up to get creamed. I accept our lads are not used to delivering this pass because they simply don't need to or advised not to use it at home but you would think with their round ball skills they'd adapt quicker to it than the Aussies who had absolutely no trouble popping passes onto each others chests from a variety of distances. Gaelic football passing is easier, but when asked to step up to the pressure of accurately landing the ball direct into a guy's arms, we're sorely lacking. I know this doesn't really matter for our own game but I still think it's sad to see that guys trained so hard cannot execute this basic skill, under pressure from a marker or not. The over dependence on the handpass in our own game doesn't help, but even the Aussies out-manoeuvred us here too - whereas we handed the ball to guys beside us, whereupon they ran into a thicket of Aussies and got creeled, they always always found a man in space and had us running about like headless chickens.

Tactically, and I don't know if this a reflection on Boylan alone or the game in general, the Aussies showed us a thing or too as well. Time and time again they engineered space and got men free to collect marks despite our best efforts to man mark them, whereas the Irish guys had to resort to passing backwards and sideways etc. every time we were in possession because we never had a man in space. We could learn alot from the Aussies there I think. The number of times we resorted to despairingly hoofing a 50-50 up the field was depressing and the lack of finesse in our approach was disconcerting, but like I said that might be down to Boylan and it could have been different had a different manager been on the sideline.

There was also the profligacy in front of the posts which for seasoned intercounty and international footballers was simply unforgiveable. The second test we had been physically rattled, I grant you, but in the tamer first test there was an orgy of shots dropped short or blazed wide for behinds or worse, no score at all. Year after year the Aussies take a round ball for three weeks and kick it over the bar and into the net better than us and anyone who thinks this doesn't show up certain deficiencies in our own game, even allowing for their professionalism/fitness/strength etc., needs to have a word with themsevles. You see this type of basic error at all levels of our native game as well.

Something else we should bear in mind as well is how sanitised gaelic football has become. Look around you, the big strong men have disappeared out of the game in favour of light, quick nippy lads with great engines. Players don't take the same hits in gaelic football that the used to because it's over-policed - some of the frees you see given now are ridiculous and more than one manager has remarked how it's turning into a very soft game - so it's no wonder that we could slug it out with the Aussies back in the 80s but feel like we've been shocked and awed and can't handle it when the same stuff starts today.

tayto

We managed it all the week before when physical intimidation was at a minimum. also the ladies were footpassing like good things as there was no rugby tackle in their game, the men were rushing everything in the second test and really seemed half panicked about everything they did. I've no doubt we'd have given a much better account for ourselves if the first 15 minutes hadnt been violent.

dubnut

Good point, poor kicking wasnt an issue for most of the championship either.
How you can judge our kicking skills on one hybrid game under those circumstances surprises me.

cavanmaniac

Well poor shooting is an issue in more championship matches every summer than it isn't and my point about kicking is that it's not a problem per se in gaelic football, because there's no need to kick direct into a guy's arms in gaelic. Hence, a lack of skill in executing this is never exposed.

And fair enough if it doesn't need to be done to prosper in gaelic then why bother perfecting it, but my point is we should be able to quickly become proficient at it in the few weeks of the International Rules, especially if the bloody Aussies can, that have never seen a round ball apart from 3 weeks of the year!

dubnut

Good point, however as full time pros they have probably been adapting full time for weeks beforehand while our lads are still trying to squeeze it in on tuesday and thursday nights!

darbyo

Lads some of you seem to be missing the main point of my argument.Forget about the Aussies and the IR for a second and lets evaluate the standard in our own game.Of course there will always be bad games,passages of poor play,and shocking misses,regardless of the sport or the level. But maybe we're not critically evaluating our own games enough.Someone made the point of over coaching being part of the problem, I would argue that it is more a case of the wrong type of coaching. At adult level it seems your a tactical genius if you set out your stall to restrict the opposition to 6 scores or less while only a naive coach goes out with an attacking policy.However, it is not adult football I'm talking about, what I'm questioning is the way we coach kids. I feel we should be far more proactive in ensuring that the kids we coach are actually mastering the basic skills, Gooch's or Stevie O'Neill's will always come along every so often but maybe with the right direction and application we could raise the bar for everyone.

dubnut

"Forget about the Aussies and the IR for a second and lets evaluate the standard in our own game"

Why is the thread entitled "footballing lesson from the Aussies" then?  ::)

darbyo

Fair point I guess,but I was only commenting on the Aussies as we don't have an international frame of reference to compare ourselves to, but as Cavanmanic pointed out, the Aussies performed the skills of our game better than us.I think we should be seeking to learn from them and other sports similar to our own to see if there are better ways of doing things

dubnut

Darbyo, nothing personal but this bugs the shit out of me, why should we be looking for International frames of reference.
If we played Gaelic football internationally then fine. But we dont.

The poor kicking in the second test stands out as particularly bad but this is not a decent comparison to most intercounty GAA games, especially given the conditions of this test, which was unlike the majority of GAA games where players are much more protected.
Yeah look to improve standards, but if anything its becoming MORE like professionals that is doing us damage, its all physical power and speed and less skill for many teams these days.

tayto

Quote from: darbyo on November 14, 2006, 05:32:25 PM
the Aussies performed the skills of our game better than us.

Sorry to go on about the IR but I just don't agree with the above statement.

You can't ignore the fact that they only outplayed us after they'd bate the heads off us.

Our basic skills went out the window shortly afterwards, they went from strength to strength, as they're more used to dust ups and generally came out on top of the violent confrontations.

In the first match they didnt perform basic skills beter then us. Also they had the week between the games together traning and our players only met up again on the thursday.

Sure, you can probably always improve coaching but using the IR as an example of us being poor at certain skills is inaccurate IMHO.

criostlinn

Players nowadays are not encouraged to use the footpass. In the modern game the emphasis is on retaining possecion. One of the best passers of the ball with the foot in the game at the moment Ciaran McDonald is ridiculed if the pass is not directly into a team mates hands. He gets accused of always trying to be to fancy. Twice I read in sunday papers this year that if mayo wanted to go anywhere they had to drop mc donald. Managers knowadays are happier with players like Paul Galvin who are a safer bet. Many taught the same when mc donald was picked ahead of galvin for a gpa allstar.