Cynical and Negative Armagh?

[larryin89]

The rules need changing and proper definitions put in place, then we can go back to man to man stuff, Kerry will win all the all irelands and Galway will dominate out west. Down will become a force too.

[seafoid]

The way I see it is that most football teams are all clones of each other in the modern game but yet most counties want to claim they don't adopt these tactics and play football the way the purists want. Its the footballing equivalent of wanting to take the moral high ground. Some counties get an unwanted label mostly due to media prejudice or bitter jealousies which applies in Armaghs case. For whatever reason Armagh are stereotyped based on McGeeneys robust physical style as a player and once you get the label it tends to stick. Kerry on the other hand have been media darlings for beautiful kick passing football which is also a complete nonsense since Jack O'Connor and subsequently Eamon Fitzmaurice have gone down this road. It's fair enough to criticise the style but don't be a hypocrite, Kerry have been as bad as anyone else and its the way that the current rules dictate that you have to play to win the game. Dublin lost an All Ireland last year for trying not to compromise their attacking style. They are probably a 10 point better team than Donegal and yet lost a game for sticking to their principles of wing backs bombing forward and leaving oceans of space in behind. Will they make the same mistake this year? No chance I'd say, Gavin if he has any cop on will have learned his lesson.

Two years ago Armagh were slated for their naieve tactics against Cavan in the Ulster championship, now they are being criticised for their negative cynical play. No worse or no better than the majority of other counties I say but mud sticks.

All the ulster teams are similar really but when it comes to clones Monaghan are the most notable. And easy to get to.

[yellowcard]

The rules need changing and proper definitions put in place, then we can go back to man to man stuff, Kerry will win all the all irelands and Galway will dominate out west. Down will become a force too.

A prime example of trying to fit as many stereotypes as you can you get into one sentence which is media peddled nonsense. The one team that can probably justifiably be tarred with the tag of having taken negativity, caution and defensive tactics to a new level in the last few years were Donegal. Kerry copied their template and had more handpasses in last years AI final than their beaten opponents and played just as negatively as Donegal did throughout the year. Yet the common stereotype put forward by Kerry natives and even some pundits is that Kerry play this attractive foot passing attacking style which is a complete nonsense. They themselves feel obliged to try to portray themselves as upholding the games kick and catch traditions when in reality they play in as much of a robotic handpassing style than most other counties and in fact since Fitzmaurice took them over, probably even more than most. 

[AZOffaly]

Kerry do whatever it takes to win, always have done, always will. However, I think they are the one team in the country that does use foot passing as an attacking weapon. Not just balls in on top of Donaghy, they like to use the 30 yard low ball in front of the likes of O'Donoghue, and that is their preferred option.

What they have learned though, is not to be slaves to that. If you are facing a packed defence, sometimes you have to have more than one way to skin a cat. They've improved in that area since the likes of Tyrone exposed their inability to deal with it in the noughties.

As regards their defensive style, I think what they did in the All Ireland Final is they just kept their defenders back, as defenders, even when Donegal retreated en-masse. That made it look like Kerry had a pile of spare defenders, but they hadn't really. What the did have were the half forwards funnelling back to defend when the attack broke down, but they never got caught with their half backs ahead of the ball, like Dublin did.

I wouldn't call that overly negative.

[yellowcard]

Kerry do whatever it takes to win, always have done, always will. However, I think they are the one team in the country that does use foot passing as an attacking weapon. Not just balls in on top of Donaghy, they like to use the 30 yard low ball in front of the likes of O'Donoghue, and that is their preferred option.

What they have learned though, is not to be slaves to that. If you are facing a packed defence, sometimes you have to have more than one way to skin a cat. They've improved in that area since the likes of Tyrone exposed their inability to deal with it in the noughties.

As regards their defensive style, I think what they did in the All Ireland Final is they just kept their defenders back, as defenders, even when Donegal retreated en-masse. That made it look like Kerry had a pile of spare defenders, but they hadn't really. What the did have were the half forwards funnelling back to defend when the attack broke down, but they never got caught with their half backs ahead of the ball, like Dublin did.

I wouldn't call that overly negative.

But that is the very definition of a blanket defence. They aped Donegal's style and there is no need for other counties to try and defend the stereotype peddled by Spillane and his ilk about the purity of Kerry football. If you can bear to watch the match again it it is two negative defence based teams involved in a 70 minute arm wrestle of a match. Kieran Donaghy asked Joe Brolly 'What do you think of that?' Well I didn't think much of it as a spectacle no need to try and hoodwink the public into thinking it was glorious football played by football purists. It was negative dour stuff and as you say yourself, Kerry will do whatever it takes to win and thats fair enough, but to slate other teams for winning defensively is just pure hypocritical.   

[Zulu]

Disagree yellowcard. Kerry copied what Dublin did under Gilroy when they played Donegal and kept their shape so that the retreating Donegal forwards didn't leave oceans of space inside the Kerry defence but unmarked Kerry defenders. Donegal were the reason both games were such poor spectacles, Dublin and Kerry did what they had to do to beat them.

The thing though that's bugging me about the way the game is going is the amount of people defending it when it's their own team doing it. We need to be really careful here as football, any sport, isn't just about winning. If it is, especially when it's an amateur game then it becomes closer to a job and not a past-time that should be enjoyable to play and watch.

Casual rugby fans used to love watching the French, everyone used to love seeing the Brazilians, knockout boxers are remembered far more readily than technically gifted but 'safe' boxers. We shouldn't be celebrating the idea that you need to have 15 behind the ball to be a modern football team. All that will happen is both teams will adopt something similar and football will become a sport few neutrals will ever bother with and that will be a very poor day for our sport.

[Rossfan]

The main issues remains - Gaelic Football ....... it is an advantage to foul. This should simply not be the case.

+1.

[yellowcard]

Disagree yellowcard. Kerry copied what Dublin did under Gilroy when they played Donegal and kept their shape so that the retreating Donegal forwards didn't leave oceans of space inside the Kerry defence but unmarked Kerry defenders. Donegal were the reason both games were such poor spectacles, Dublin and Kerry did what they had to do to beat them.

The thing though that's bugging me about the way the game is going is the amount of people defending it when it's their own team doing it. We need to be really careful here as football, any sport, isn't just about winning. If it is, especially when it's an amateur game then it becomes closer to a job and not a past-time that should be enjoyable to play and watch.

Casual rugby fans used to love watching the French, everyone used to love seeing the Brazilians, knockout boxers are remembered far more readily than technically gifted but 'safe' boxers. We shouldn't be celebrating the idea that you need to have 15 behind the ball to be a modern football team. All that will happen is both teams will adopt something similar and football will become a sport few neutrals will ever bother with and that will be a very poor day for our sport.

Don't agree on the poor game being purely down to Donegal tactics, it had everything to do with both sides philosophies, it wasn't as if Kerry had just devised this system in a few weeks and implemented it in one single match. They had begun work on the system long before that during national league games and it was clear that when Fitzmaurice came in he had decided that this would be their new template. Perception is everything but don't let it skew the reality.

Your comparing it to Gilroy in 2011 but Dublin had also adopted a similar defensive approach all year in 2011 after he wisely realised after year one that he couldn't compete playing orthodox XV on XV football. Again I'm not criticising either county for adopting these approaches but I'm criticising the hypocritical jumping up and down attitude after the game of natives declaring 'we played proper attacking football and yous didn't' attitude. That was arguably the worst Kerry team player wise since the turn of the millenium but they found a way to win and Fitzmaurice done his job but my opinion will not be swayed on the tactics devised to achieve their aims.

[yellowcard]

The main issues remains - Gaelic Football ....... it is an advantage to foul. This should simply not be the case.

+1.

Thats very true. Just ensure its outside the scoring zone and if you can manage to delay the game further by getting a pointless booking in the closing stages whilst holding a lead then all the better. It will waste a few more seconds and allow even more bodies to funnel back to fill the scoring zone.

[twohands!!!]

A huge issue with Kerry's all-Ireland performance was how bad their shooting for points from play was and it amazes me how few people take this into account when analysing the game.

In terms of shooting for points from play they had 23 shots at points and scored 4.

According to Don't Foul's stats this was the 3rd worst shooting performance in 74 championship games over 3 year.

Or in other words out of  74 championship games, their shooting was 146th out of a list of 148 shooting performances.

The fact that they still won despite these sorts of numbers, show how Donegal weren't really at the races at all.

https://twitter.com/dontfoul/status/549968584559329280

https://dontfoul.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/donegal-v-kerry-2014-championship/

[Rossfan]

The main issues remains - Gaelic Football ....... it is an advantage to foul. This should simply not be the case.

+1.

Thats very true. Just ensure its outside the scoring zone and if you can manage to delay the game further by getting a pointless booking in the closing stages whilst holding a lead then all the better. It will waste a few more seconds and allow even more bodies to funnel back to fill the scoring zone.

And when you concede a free make sure to stand in the freetaker's way till all your men are back.
Time for a Rule change - retreat immediately or free moved to 13 m line and yellow card.

[twohands!!!]

The main issues remains - Gaelic Football ....... it is an advantage to foul. This should simply not be the case.

+1.

Thats very true. Just ensure its outside the scoring zone and if you can manage to delay the game further by getting a pointless booking in the closing stages whilst holding a lead then all the better. It will waste a few more seconds and allow even more bodies to funnel back to fill the scoring zone.

And when you concede a free make sure to stand in the freetaker's way till all your men are back.
Time for a Rule change - retreat immediately or free moved to 13 m line and yellow card.

Would never get past Congress - you'd have the usual suspects bleating about taking the manliness out of the game.

[muppet]

Watching Tyrone v Mayo I found myself, as usual shouting for fouls on Mayo players. Then I decided to try to switch my head the other way and sure enough I saw many fouls the other way and a definite black card that should have been given against a Mayo forward.

The problem is that almost every challenge is illegal and every contentious challenge is an 'everyone in' event. How can a ref in all fairness cope with that?

[Orior]

Watching Tyrone v Mayo I found myself, as usual shouting for fouls on Mayo players. Then I decided to try to switch my head the other way and sure enough I saw many fouls the other way and a definite black card that should have been given against a Mayo forward.

The problem is that almost every challenge is illegal and every contentious challenge is an 'everyone in' event. How can a ref in all fairness cope with that?

Correct, but we want to keep gaelic a contact sport.

[orange]

Feel sorry for the poor wexford manager if sunday left a bad taste! Armagh weren't negative nor cynical enough in 1st 25mins, if we were we wouldnt have been 4pts down and could have been alot more! Wexford fouled persistently and the ref turned a blind eye, what was a free for wexford in the 1st half wasnt for armagh, that would account for his free tally.

As someone pointed out all the black cards were warranted including connells of armagh, and wexford can count themselves not to have lost 1 to a red. And Andy and Miceal mckenna were pulled and hauled every time they got the ball. I would also ask how Findon got a bust nose in 1st half? Which happened in front of the ref but turned a blind eye!

Armagh didnt even play with a massed blanket defence just 1 sweeper at times. The poor man needs to take his team out and give them a ball and show them where the goalposts are, cos if the could shoot they wouldnt have been thumped, and thats fact, they created as many chances as armagh but wasted the majority, hes not complaining about that!

PS wait til he plays Tipp then he'll see physical and cynical (and fair play to them - good young team going places)