Defensive tactics nothing new-Jim done it within the rules.

[Hardy]

i love sporting experience that is of a deeper level. and what i mean by that is, that the what you see is merely the superficial surface, i.e, the high field, the solo run, the hand pass and the pick up, these are just the functional skills. like any great sport, the rules and skills are just the functional means that open the gateway to the possibility of exploring the physical and psychological challenges and limits. it's about finding the limits of what you can do. the game has been evolving because there will always be that desire to push to the limit and to see where it takes us.

Well said, sir. What's the point of sport, it this isn't it?

[mylestheslasher]

[. defence is supposed to make it difficult for other teams to score the last time i checked.

The one that always gets me is the call to "let him out " when 2 or 3 men surround an opponent. 
Why the fcuk should they ?
You never hear anyone shouting at a goalie to "let in in" 

i know. a player with the head down on some godforsaken solo run runs into traffic he shouldn't and it's the defender's fault. sport has to evolve or it's stale, predictable and uninteresting. and good sport should allow a space for innovation, even if that innovation is defensive. what i've thoroughly enjoyed with donegal is the committment, the hard slog it's taken them to get into the conditioning they are and the sheers guts to leave every last drop of energy out on the field. and thankfully football, the great sport that it is, has a place for it. this type of football demands everything is left out of the field, there is no place for the work shy. and there's something very admirable about that. you could even say it's principled.

come and have a go if your hard enough.

Let me ask you a couple of straight questions cadence...

If two teams were to meet who both play 14 men behind the ball when the opposition has it, they executed 250 odd hand-passes each and the final score was 0-5 to 0-5 is that a game that you would be interested in watching as a neutral? Do you think that GAA attendances would grow larger or smaller if matches like that were to become the norm? Do you think young people would be more attracted to the sport or less attracted to the sport? These are the bigger questions which need to be answered.

Slightly less important, but none the less important, are you happy to...

- See the end of high fielding
- less score taking
- more frees, cynical play
- the end of player vrs player duels?

I think you know what my answer is to the above but the question is can you park loyalty to Donegal for a moment and answer these questions as a neutral fan.

but your questions are not straight or nuetral, you load them with pre-judged connotation and meaning. i can't be bothered to guess why that is.

anyway... the answers to all of the above would be to allow the game to evolve in a natural way and pay no heed whatsoever to doomsayers who pontificate like they're the sole guardians of football, who disproportionately hit the panic button at the first sign of change being on the way.

i hardly need to point it out, but cynical play and a defensive tactical system are two separate things. it's the cynical play that holds up things, not the tactical system.

and as a nuetral, i love sporting experience that is of a deeper level. and what i mean by that is, that the what you see is merely the superficial surface, i.e, the high field, the solo run, the hand pass and the pick up, these are just the functional skills. like any great sport, the rules and skills are just the functional means that open the gateway to the possibility of exploring the physical and psychological challenges and limits. it's about finding the limits of what you can do. the game has been evolving because there will always be that desire to push to the limit and to see where it takes us.

the world of football will not only survive donegal, it will adapt and acquire whatever it needs to combat, compete and defeat those tactics. i'm sure there are coaches out there relishing the challenge. and those who aren't relishing it, perhaps they should step aside and let someone with the wherewithal to pick up the guantlet?       

Why didn't you just say you were not going to answer the couple of simple questions I posed instead of writing paragraphs of waffle which I can only translate as saying "Donegal are pioneers who assist in the evolution of football".

One other thing, I have nothing against Donegal. Up until McGuinness took over I would have cheered for them if they were in an AI semi as they are the representatives of Ulster. I could not cheer any team that plays like that as I would in fact be cheering for the degrading of the sport I love.

You think there is some tactical way to defeat this type of football, maybe there is. But the point that game will be ugly, that game will be tight and no neutral will want to watch it. Soccer had a similar problem with the back pass rule, teams got 1 nil up and started passing the ball back to the keeper over and over. The soccer authorities outlawed the backpass which was a revelation as it took a serious negative out of the game (of course they've still got other issues to resolve).

Gaelic football is battling a host of other games for the youth of this country. It must appeal to the youth in order to survive. There are plenty of counties under pressure from other sports - Sligo, Donegal, Limerick, Dublin to name a few. Turn GAA football into a 70 minutes trench warfare and we can forget about those young players.

[ExiledGael]

No class in RTÉ Establishment's crass attack
Keith Duggan
SIDELINE CUT : The feeding frenzy carried out by RTÉ's trio of panellists last Sunday on Donegal's performance was lacking in both taste and personal recall


SO IF and when Pat Spillane or Joe Brolly or Colm O'Rourke or any of the voices of Establishment happen to bump into Jim McGuinness at some of the velvet-tie functions this autumn, will they have the good grace to apologise to him? Doubtful.

But that doesn't make the comments emanating from RTÉ on Sunday afternoon and Sunday evening any less disgraceful or insulting – not just to McGuinness but to the entire squad and, by extension, to the county.

The tone of disparagement set by Spillane after Donegal's championship opening-day victory over Antrim overflowed into naked contempt following their 0-8 to 0-6 All-Ireland semi-final loss to Dublin on Sunday night. In slagging McGuinness and the Donegal side off, the afternoon panellists positioned themselves as aesthetes, brimming with concern about the image of the game.

Funny, that. Maybe weird things happen to the memory when you enter the powder room at Montrose and get dolled up for the cameras.

But it might be worth recalling the reality of Gaelic football when they were playing the game. In 1987, Paddy Downey, the doyen of Gaelic games coverage, penned an article predicting that the upcoming All-Ireland final between the Meath team of Colm O'Rourke's vintage and Cork would be every bit as ugly as the 1967 showdown between the counties, which was remembered chiefly for providing the statistic of 51 frees in 60 minutes.

"The final of 20 years ago is far from the minds of the two squads of players who prepare for Sunday's encounter," Downey wrote. "Nor is either side concerned with critics' comments over the standard of the 1987 championship, nor the special pleading that they are obliged to redeem the game's tarnished image."

That year's final marked the beginning of a four-year rivalry, in which the Meath and Cork players habitually assaulted each other in a series of games which saw private hatreds played out in a public arena. It was a dark and ugly rivalry. Both teams were ravenous for success and would stop at nothing to get it: this was the period of liberation just after the demise of the great Kerry team.

Two years earlier, Kerry and Monaghan met in the 1985 All-Ireland semi-final. Pat Spillane played that day. It was a novel pairing and yet it attracted a crowd of just 21,746 people.

Isn't it peculiar now to think that here were the gods of the modern game playing brand new Ulster champions and nobody was bothered going? Maybe it was because they remembered the 1979 semi-final between the teams, when poor old Monaghan shipped a 5-14 to 0-7 hammering against the Kingdom (But the Monaghan men played in the spirit of the game!).

It has to be presumed that most of the attendance came from Kavanagh country in 1985. Nobody from Kerry or no neutrals could be bothered to go and see the greats, Pat! If the game that Spillane and Kerry espoused was so irresistible, then how come they weren't pouring through the turnstiles?

The answer, surely, is that by then, everyone was sick of Kerry; sick of their winning, sick of seeing the same old faces and listening to the same old schtick. Watching the same team win becomes monotonous. All those Kerry versus Dublin games – the Kingdom and the Power – was fine if you came from those two counties. But it didn't do much for Gaelic football around the country.

In the 1990s came the Ulster resurgence. Joe Brolly played on a tough and talented Derry team, whose lone All-Ireland success in 1993 revolved around that year's Ulster final against Donegal, the All-Ireland champions of the previous year. The teams disliked one another and it was a horrible game. And yes, it was played in a torrential downpour but you could have played it in Hawaii and the atmosphere would still have been poisonous.

You remember it, Joe. You remember the score. Look away because the sight of it might offend you these days. It was 0-8 to 0-6, the same as the score last Sunday. Did you worry about the entertainment value or the romance of the game that night Joe? Doubtful.

So back to Dublin and Donegal last Sunday. Dublin's big misfortune was the sending off of Diarmuid Connolly and the incident was replayed and analysed at length.

Donegal's big misfortune was losing Karl Lacey. The Four Masters man is Donegal's most important player. It was notable that Barry Cahill's late 32nd-minute hit on Lacey was not replayed on the Sunday Game. It was notable that during the live broadcast, commentator Ger Canning and analyst Kevin McStay seemed determined to talk about anything other than the challenge as Lacey lay flat on his back.

It was interesting also that RTÉ made prominent use of a statistics icon noting (with due incredulity) the number of handpasses Donegal used in comparison to Dublin. And on the handpass issue, three of the Kerry goals in the celebrated Dublin-Kerry 1978 All-Ireland final were scored with the hands. It must make Pat Spillane ill to think about them now, given his aversion to that passing method.

And it was interesting that several of the frees Dublin were awarded were described on television as "handy". Does that mean that the referee whistled a few soft ones? If so, why not come out and say it? For there seemed to be no shyness about calling the Donegal team and tactics exactly as they saw it and the studio stars used language that must have stung the ears of those watching up in the Inishowen Peninsula.

The weird thing is that Spillane, O'Rourke and Brolly seemed sort of . . . aroused after the match. What other match has provoked the Kerry man to reference Marlon Brando and Apocalyspe Now ? Distasteful as they found the spectacle, it moved them to the use of flamboyant and excited language.

Maybe that was why Spillane felt emboldened enough to use terms like "Shi'ite football" and to bring in The Hague and war crimes. How they must have laughed out in Srebrenica at that one. You can imagine the reaction if a term like that was ever applied to an establishment GAA county like Dublin, Kerry or Cork or to the hurling strongholds of Kilkenny or Tipperary. There would be outrage. But a nothing county like Donegal –"up there" as it is often referred to – can shut up and take it. God knows what they would have said if Donegal had dared to actually win the game.

If Spillane and the others are going to take the grand-a-twist or whatever the Sunday Game fee is nowadays, they have to be more aware of their influence. So too should their employers.

They have to be aware of just how stinging those comments sound to the television licence-holders watching televisions in the bars of Glenties or Kilcar. They need to be aware of the weight of their reputations and of the weight that their words carry; they set the tone for the hysterical lynching that followed in the days afterwards.

There are people in Donegal dismayed by the way the team played against Dublin and who would dearly wish that the players might have expressed themselves a bit more openly when they game was in the balance.

However, they were entitled to set up that way. In most other field games in the world, from association football to baseball, the clean sheet or the shut-out is an acceptable – and lauded element – of the game. The Donegal team was guilty of nothing more than failing to enhance a clever and ferociously tough defensive strategy with a bit more attacking imagination.

They committed 22 fouls in the game – handy ones included. They scored two fewer points than Dublin. That was it. That failure did not merit the hostility and disdain which dripped from the state broadcaster on Sunday evening.

Anyhow, the Establishment has the All-Ireland final that it craved. The Kingdom and the Power, Alive-Alive-Oh and all of that. Meantime, the television stars might want to consider how they throw their words around.

If they do meet McGuinness and have the courage to look him in the eye, they will probably find the Glenties man will give them all the time in the world. They might learn from him something about that phrase which they like to confer on the gilded sons from the Establishment counties in the Montrose studio.

A bit of? What is it again? Oh, yeah.

Class.

[Denn Forever]

Surely they were echoing what a lot of people around the country were thinking?

If Cavan could use that system (highly unlikely) and win games would I care?  No.  Would I have liked to watch it? No. 

Maybe McGuiness cut his cloth to suit what he thought was available but he had players who could score and my downer on the system was that it could not seem to adapt.  Hopefully they will let loose next year (but not against Cavan) and this will just a memory.

[armaghniac]

Donegal have improved hugely in the past year. They may be fairly criticised if they don't try to move forward from this.

[samwin08]

Thank you Keith Duggan. Brilliant Journalism which echoes the sentiments of the vast, vast majority of 900,00 peaktime viewers and 83,000 paying customers.

[ExcellentDriver]

Jim devised a defensive game plan with BRAIN not brawn, within the rules, unlike most of the great , cute ,defensive game plans over the years , a few of which I will remind you off– Kingdom's Tadgh Kennelly  2009 All –Ireland final, ( some of the same pundits who shamefully gave this man an All star are now the same people not too happy with Gentle Jim) 1996 All Ireland Semi final - Meath  Martin O Connell & Peter Canavan's ankle collide , ( remember the final and Mc Hale incident) do I recall Francie and Mickey Linden in  a big  match , Dublin & the Kingdoms Mickey Ned O Sullivan  in that great era of football -1976? dare I mention the Meath Lyons defensive system v Donegal 1990 was it, oh and I nearly forget Derry defensive tactics, the great Offally teams were never found wanting or Cork, didn't Tony Davis or should it be Nial Cahalane have a defensive plan, Dublin's Barry Cahill and his tackle on Karl Lacey, which was the most successful defensive tactic last Sunday. Yes all those great plans involved breaking the rules. Jim done it legit and like all tactics, its great when you win, but when you lose.
If you think of a county who won the All Ireland with out these defensive plans before Armageddon let me know. Galway, Down and Donegal are the only counties which come to mind.

Well said. RTE not only hates the Norns but also Donegal (The Republic's forgotten County).

http://url.ie/d0e6

[mylestheslasher]

Thank you Keith Duggan. Brilliant Journalism which echoes the sentiments of the vast, vast majority of 900,00 peaktime viewers and 83,000 paying customers.

I've spoken about that game with a lot of people and they were all disgusted with it except for 1 guy who said he found it interesting. Did you survey the 983k people you are speaking for.

[LeoMc]

Donegal have improved hugely in the past year. They may be fairly criticised if they don't try to move forward from this.

True, they have the players so this may give them the belief and confidence.
If every team abandoned defence and it became a duck shoot for the team with the best forwards it would quickly become predictable and just as boring.