2013年09月03日
Football match
I HOPE YOU’VE all recovered. Most of the people I spoke to after yesterday’s extraordinary All-Ireland semi-final seemed to have gone through some sort of major emotional event; a kind of psychological dismantling, regardless of their allegiance case covers.
It was an epic – for my money, the greatest game of football I’ve ever seen, and I’d sit down with anyone and argue the toss on that one. There are a few games that come to mind that had everything – but this one had plenty of everything.
There can’t be any doubt now that this Dublin team is the real deal. The strength of character required to win that game, after the start they made, after the way Kerry moved 4 points clear in the third quarter, and to push on with it all up for grabs in the final moments, answered all the questions.
I like Jim Gavin, and I like the way he has a belief in how to play the game. It’s obviously brilliant to see teams play with the handbrake off as Dublin have done all year, but just because it works for Dublin doesn’t mean it’ll work for other teams. So the people asking why we can’t see games like this every week are being a little unrealistic.
We don’t see games like this every week because this was one game where both managers spent the entire build-up trying to come up with a system that gave them the best chance to win, smart cloud HK and they both decided front-foot football was the way to go.
You play the system that gives you the best chance to win. If you don’t happen to have 20 or more really top class players, as Dublin do, you have a duty to yourself to try and tilt the odds back in your direction a little. If that means being more defensive than you’d like to be against teams that are better than you are, then unfortunately… that’s good management.
I’d rather enjoy yesterday for what it was rather than assign any greater importance to it. It’s not going to signify a massive change in how managers around the country approach the game because most counties don’t have the quality of footballer that Kerry and Dublin have.
And the sheer quality of the skills on show while performed at high speed on Sunday was breath-taking at times. Take out your old VHS machine, dust off a match (any match!) from the 1980s, and hit fast-forward. That was basically what you were watching in real time in Croker yesterday.
The suspicion was always there that Kerry wouldn’t be able to stay with the Dubs, and even though they were level going into the last minute of play where to buy wigs, in the final analysis they were outscored 2-8 to 0-3 over the last 25 minutes.
Dublin’s third goal was just a by-product of Kerry going up the field in desperation at the end, but even putting that aside, that’s still a 8 point gap between the teams in the key part of the game.
It was an epic – for my money, the greatest game of football I’ve ever seen, and I’d sit down with anyone and argue the toss on that one. There are a few games that come to mind that had everything – but this one had plenty of everything.
There can’t be any doubt now that this Dublin team is the real deal. The strength of character required to win that game, after the start they made, after the way Kerry moved 4 points clear in the third quarter, and to push on with it all up for grabs in the final moments, answered all the questions.
I like Jim Gavin, and I like the way he has a belief in how to play the game. It’s obviously brilliant to see teams play with the handbrake off as Dublin have done all year, but just because it works for Dublin doesn’t mean it’ll work for other teams. So the people asking why we can’t see games like this every week are being a little unrealistic.
We don’t see games like this every week because this was one game where both managers spent the entire build-up trying to come up with a system that gave them the best chance to win, smart cloud HK and they both decided front-foot football was the way to go.
You play the system that gives you the best chance to win. If you don’t happen to have 20 or more really top class players, as Dublin do, you have a duty to yourself to try and tilt the odds back in your direction a little. If that means being more defensive than you’d like to be against teams that are better than you are, then unfortunately… that’s good management.
I’d rather enjoy yesterday for what it was rather than assign any greater importance to it. It’s not going to signify a massive change in how managers around the country approach the game because most counties don’t have the quality of footballer that Kerry and Dublin have.
And the sheer quality of the skills on show while performed at high speed on Sunday was breath-taking at times. Take out your old VHS machine, dust off a match (any match!) from the 1980s, and hit fast-forward. That was basically what you were watching in real time in Croker yesterday.
The suspicion was always there that Kerry wouldn’t be able to stay with the Dubs, and even though they were level going into the last minute of play where to buy wigs, in the final analysis they were outscored 2-8 to 0-3 over the last 25 minutes.
Dublin’s third goal was just a by-product of Kerry going up the field in desperation at the end, but even putting that aside, that’s still a 8 point gap between the teams in the key part of the game.
Posted by cc at 16:09
│sports
