GAELIC GAMES:SOME SUGGESTIONS to avoid a repeat of this ugliness. Get Congress to adopt basketball's shot clock. And don't forget the backcourt rule that prevents offensive teams from passing possession into their own half.
Maybe it could be trialled during next January’s McKenna Cup. Just some ideas for the clár.
Gaelic football has been at this juncture before in the “modern” era. An Ulster raiding party comes down to Croke Park and exposes the obvious deficiencies of the sport as a spectacle. Joe Kernan did it with Armagh in 2002. Mickey Harte’s Tyrone took matters to a higher level in their famous 2003 All-Ireland semi-final defeat of Kerry.
Then there was that year’s final.
The traditionalists spat fire. No one in Tyrone or Armagh seemed to care when supping from Sam Maguire. The multi-decorated Kerry man who sits in the RTÉ television studio bemoans the threat of these sorties on his beloved game.
The obvious difference between Jim McGuinness’s tactics and those of the aforementioned managers is Donegal’s ultra-defensive set-up failed to chart safe passage to the All-Ireland final.
“We won’t be going to Ballybofey or Castlefin next year when we start off training thinking how we can make Pat Spillane feel good,” said the defeated rookie manager. “That won’t be our primary objective. It will be about preparing for the Ulster championship and improving and developing the players and tweaking the game plan.”
At least the purists got their wish; Dublin and Kerry together again, but only barely – 0-8 to 0-6. Instantly forgettable.
McGuinness admitted his team need to become more clinical, but can this curmudgeonly football style ever yield an All-Ireland? That’s not the point, he explained. Donegal were just sick of being glorious failures.
“We started the championship trying to win a match against Antrim and you’re saying now do we need to evolve to try and win an All-Ireland! If somebody from Donegal was listening to you saying that five months ago they’d be going ‘what was he talking about?’ We’ve created that reality – your comment – from the work that we’ve done. If it was the normal, standard run-of-the-mill Donegal it’d be ‘go out in a blaze of glory, great football there, hard luck, bet by five points, you played really well on the day but you were never going to win the game’.
“Our job is to make them better,” McGuinness continued. “We’re not the finished article but we’re going to try and make them better. And if we can’t try and make them better let some other man come in and try and make them better in a year or two’s time.”
He made them better alright. No longer starved of success, McGuinness’ team forced the respect of their peers by winning the “sacred” Ulster medal.
They will return to the mines very soon. The McGuinness doctrine requires enormous levels of conditioning. Club players showing well in the coming weeks will immediately be given training programmes to ensure the depth of intercounty players continues to grow. The national perception of Donegal has certainly changed.
“These players would have been questioned within the media in some quarters and in the public, about their commitment to Donegal, but they have shown this year that they are committed to Donegal, they want to play for Donegal, they have a passion for Donegal and the atmosphere in Donegal for the last number of weeks has just been fantastic.
“And to have a part in changing the mood of a county is really special thing, I think, from a manager or a selector or a player’s point of view. Everybody in Donegal is talking about football now, and they are excited about football in Donegal now and they have got pride in their own county. Them players have done that and they have done that by really, really hard work.”
