If you don’t like marking your man, Stevie McDonnell has a suggestion for you.
Hey Geezer, fancy a game of snooker?
The phenomenon of former pros writing columns is a bit of a blight across the sporting press. There isn’t one sport we can think of that doesn’t have a recently retired player giving their views on their former game.
Some are awful. Most are average. A handful of the new scribblers are excellent. It is early days in the writing careers of Donal Og Cusack and Stevie McDonnell but based on their first few pieces for GAA.ie, they are falling into the latter group.
Last week’s tactical breakdown of Galway’s win over Kilkenny by the Cork man was excellent so the Armagh man had a lot to live up to. As he usually did in the Armagh shirt, he delivered.
McDonnell produces over 2,000 words on the feelings of inter-county players before big games and free-taking technique, as well as previewing the Ulster and Leinster finals. It’s a really good read.
But it was McDonnell’s views on modern tactics that intrigued us most. It seems Stevie is not a fan of sweepers and extra defenders who don’t have men to mark based on this extract.
I hate to see sweepers playing. Football is a tough game and ultimately it is 15 versus 15. You against your marker. If everyone out the field is doing their job and competing with their man, the quality of the ball going in would not always be good anyway. That is what it boils down to. So why should one of your team-mates be given a licence to mark no-one while everyone else out the field is chasing bodies all over the place?
If you don’t want to mark your man, play an individual sport like snooker and not a team sport that requires the same effort from everyone. The sweeper is always the first person to give out to his team-mates when they concede a score, when in fact it is his man that more than likely has started the move that led to it, because he has the run of the park.
I know this is the case because I have seen it happen too often and I have been involved in too many teams where it has happened.
Considering McDonnell’s Armagh pioneered the extra man in the half-back line, with Kieran McGeeney probably the best known sweeper ever, we wonder what the Kildare boss makes of this. We’re sure McDonnell meant after Geezer retired, right?
Dollar bills y’all
Money and the GAA are like whiskey and custard; they don’t mix and it leaves a terrible taste in the mouth. The games remain amateur and while there is lots of cash sloshing around, it doesn’t interfere in the on-field action.
But Antrim boss Liam Bradley fears that an issue from the 1980s, players heading to the States to play each summer, is back.
“This thing of fellas heading off to play for dollars once their teams have been knocked out of the provincial championship — it’s become a cancer in the game,” said Bradley in today’s Belfast Telegraph.
“The GAA has got to tighten up the rules because it is usually the weaker counties that are most affected by it and that is only making things harder for us.”
As we have spoken about before, Ulster counties have been hit hardest this summer but so have others like Westmeath and Louth. It is hard to blame players who may have nothing to keep them here heading off but lads packing their bags before their team is out of the Qualifiers is an issue.
The clubs they are off to play for fall under the GAA umbrella so perhaps a quiet word from HQ may help. Whatever happens, we don’t want to see a return of the crazy bans of the 1980s, a la Tony Keady.
Interestingly, the Irish Independent report leaves out the crucial word ‘dollars’ in their quote from Bradley. The point is still valid, but the dollar part makes it a whole lot more serious.
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