The Running Men - Donegal, Mayo and the State of Modern Football

There was a schoolyard game in the 1970s in Scoil Pádraig, Béal an Átha that may have been played in every schoolyard, or may have been unique to that particular grove of academe. Boys would line up at one end of the yard, hands joined, forming a human chain. A single boy would then run at this chain, choosing the weakest link – invariably small, fat kids with glasses, not dissimilar to your correspondent – and attempt to burst through the cordon. Those that did, did. Those that didn’t were surrounded, and probably shipped a few belts for their pains.

It will be extremely hard not to flash back to the days of the old school yard in Croke Park at four o’clock this coming Sunday, when Mayo and Donegal will both play a version of modern football that bears a closer resemblance to that schoolyard hurly-burly than to the sublime elegance of Ciarán McDonald, Michael Meehan, Maurice Fitzgerald or Matt Connor. But there it is. This is the modern game, and if you want to win, you have to play it.

The eagerness with which the modern philosophy has been embraced by the Mayo football public is an interesting study of the conflict between idealism and practicality. Mayo were always a Fancy Dan, tricks-on-the-ball football county. For Mayo, it wasn’t enough that the county should win the All-Ireland; Mayo should win the All-Ireland playing Mayo football.

Now, the penny has dropped that Mayo’s commitment to Mayo football may be one of the reasons why they lost all those finals in recent years. And, having failed to beat them, Mayo have now decided to join them. The fact that James Horan’s fighting talk at the start of the week was received without a murmur of dissent shows just how much Mayo have bought into the new orthodoxy. Substance trumps style every day of the week.

Of course, this is not to say that there are no skilful players out there. For all the talk of the Donegal System, Donegal would have won nothing if they did not have players of sufficiently exceptional ability to operate the System. Karl Lacey, Mark McHugh, Michael Murphy – you don’t get many of those in the one crop. There’s a case to be made for Murphy being the best forward in the country.

People thought same old Mayo when that first goal crashed home in the All-Ireland final, but how many forwards other than Murphy would have been able to score it? How many could have made the catch, broken into space and rifled home the shot? Murphy is worth his weight in gold.

Mayo have players too. Mayo are looking at what could be a golden generation of players who are young, talented and natural leaders. They’re on every line, and there are a few on the bench as well, chomping at the bit to get on. It’s a heady brew for supporters who have supped the bitter gall in the past.

Livening up the Sunday Game

Not just that, but the current Mayo team are ideally set up to deal with the Donegal System. Darragh Ó Sé wrote a how-to guide for playing against the System in his excellent and essential Irish Times column after Donegal beat Down in the Ulster semi-final. Kicking it long won’t work – the ball may travel faster than the man, but that doesn’t make any difference if the man doesn’t have to travel at all. It doesn’t make any difference is the man is just waiting there for the dropping ball with two or three of his best friends for company. Backs in the System eat that for breakfast.

Modern football is about possession in collision. You have to retain the ball when you collide with them, and you have to strip it when they collide with you. And then you have to be able to take your scores in what space is afforded to you outside of the slaughter zone. That’s how you win.

Last year, Donegal played with an aura not seen since those old Ready Brek ads of the early ‘eighties. Not only were good players playing a System they trusted and believed in, but the System was the talk of the country. It was like football alchemy, a magical formula for turning base metal to gold. Shell-shocked and beaten men limped off pitches in Ulster and Dublin, wondering what in God’s name had just happened them. They’d never experienced the like of it before.

But that was then, and this is now. The aura is now gone from Donegal – after an imperious display against Tyrone in their first game out, Donegal struggled when Down used Donegal’s own weapons against them and then Donegal got wiped out in Clones by Monaghan. Donegal recovered to win against Laois, but Laois isn’t the most prized scalp in the country.

The pivotal question before last year’s All-Ireland Final was what could Mayo do to stop Donegal? This Sunday, it’s about what Donegal can do to stop Mayo. By all accounts, Donegal’s defensive setup in Carrick-on-Shannon made their previous incarnations look like the Harlem Globetrotters, and this will most likely be key to Donegal on Sunday. The longer they can defend and keep the score down the more likely they’ll be to win it.

Mayo, by contrast, will want to reverse last year’s game and get an early lead because if Monaghan proved nothing else, they proved the System is badly suited to chasing down leads. Aidan O’Shea gets a certain amount of stick for running into tackles; on Sunday this will be a feature, not a bug.

And there are the intangibles too. What will the weather be like? What will the ref be like? What happens if someone’s sent off? If someone’s sent off, will it be a Colm Coyle or a Liam McHale? These are things on which destiny can hinge. But all things being equal, Mayo look good for avenging the 2012 All-Ireland, and competing in their third semi-final in a row. Run on, you true-hearted boys. Run on.

Ireland v England: This Time, It's For Real

Declan Kidney will name his team for Saturday’s game against England at lunchtime today. Unlike the embarrassing hype-fest of two years ago, the game on Saturday evening will be played for huge stakes.

The first reason is because Ireland are still on track for the Grand Slam. One of the reasons why all that blather two years ago was so nauseous was because the Slam had already been lost, when the Irish lost to the French in the first game of rugby played in Croke Park; the pressure was off Ireland, as 2007 was another year when the Golden Generation wasn’t going to deliver.

This year, by contrast, the Slam is more real than it has been in six years. Ireland were a side transformed against France, delivering a performance that gave rise to hope once more that this Golden Generation can get more out of a Championship than a silver medal. By kick-off in Croke Park, the French may have done Ireland a favour – 211 years too late, but welcome nonetheless – and put paid to the Welsh in Paris. If so, the Championship will seem almost within touching distance.

This restoration of the Golden Generation is the second reason that the game on Saturday is so important. People had given up the Golden Generation for dead after the disaster of the 2007 World Cup; instead, Declan Kidney has come in and has somehow breathed life into careers long thought dead.

Brian O’Driscoll, like us all, will never be young again, but he has turned the clock back at least four years. The Munster ethos, so long dormant in the green jersey, is shining through. And the return of the Ulster players seems to have healed the Leinster/Munster rivalry that blighted the national side for so long. If Ireland do manage to win their first Championship in twenty-four years this year, the thanks will largely go to the new coach.

The third reason why the stakes are heightened is because England are that much better than they were two years ago. England have never recovered from winning the World Cup six years ago and have been in a process of either rebuilding or falling apart since. But a combination of immense player resources and bloodlines that allowed a damp little island to conquer one third of the world in their day don’t just disappear. England’s relentless march to the World Cup Final two years ago, before finally falling to a superior Springbok force, is one cameo instance of that. The English performance in Cardiff on St Valentine’s Day two weeks ago is another.

England had the advantage in that World Cup of having Jonny Wilkinson at stand-off half. Andy Goode or Toby Flood don’t really compare, while Danny Cipriani, who cut Ireland to ribbons last year at Twickenham, is out of favour. That makes them vulnerable. You need never look further than the misfortunate Italians to see how much a team struggles without a ten of international quality. Perhaps Martin Johnson will decide that even if he can’t stand him he’s stuck with him, and name Cipriani at ten. That would fairly put the cat among the pigeons.

Johnson. The current English coach is the only man in Lions history to captain two tours, and he is widely hailed as one of the greatest second rows in the history of the game, up there with Eales, Meads, McBride, and the rest. But he will always be infamous here for standing his ground on the red carpet before the Grand Slam decider at Lansdowne Road in 2003.

The significant thing about that is that Johnson successfully bluffed Ireland; he knew that if Ireland caved in, and bent the knee to the red rose before a ball was kicked, that the day would go to the old enemy.

Johnson was right. The only way to respond to a bluff is to up the ante. Ireland should have walked off and make a diplomatic protest about the insult to our head of state. Don’t think for a second that’s not what would have happened had Ireland tried the same stunt before a Windsor at Twickers. Instead, Ireland blinked. England won pulling up, and went on to claim the World Cup six months later.

Two years ago, England were humiliated in Croke Park, and humiliated before it by being made to say a lot of inane pieties about the historical associations of the stadium. That crack wouldn’t wash much with Johnson. Johnson, at a guess, would probably respond to Bloody Sunday the way Dyer did about Amritsar, and only express regret they couldn’t get in the armoured car and do a right job on it.

An Spailpín has written in the past of the horrors of leaving Championships behind. But if Ireland were to lose in Edinburgh and in Cardiff next month it would be worth it if that were the price of beating England on Saturday. The notion of losing to England, in Croke Park, is beyond intolerable. This game is that big a deal. Let it begin.







Technorati Tags: sport, rugby, Six Nations, Ireland, England, Croke Park

God Save the Queen

Who says people aren’t passionate about music anymore? A bemused Spailpín Fánach has spent the weekend listening to a lot of huffing and puffing concerning the playing of the English National Anthem at Croke Park on Saturday, when England play Ireland. As a matter of fact, your on-the-pulse-of-the-zeitgeist correspondent may have even unwittingly triggered it all himself, during the course of an interview last Monday with Noel D. Walsh of Shannonside/Northern Sound Radio.

But people certainly do seem to be getting het up about it, and An Spailpín Fánach can’t quite figure out why, short of guessing that it’s another manifestation of the perpetual Irish need for having it both ways. We – the nation at one, to believe certain media outlets – are delighted to have our guests come and adore “our” lovely stadium, just so long as they’re not those beastly Tans who like to sing God Save You-Know-Who.

An Spailpín can’t fully understand why there’s a debate in the first place. Surely once you turn on the red light you concede all rights to say that you’re not that sort of girl or that you’d hate to ruin the friendship? Once you’ve taken the money, the customer is entitled to get what he paid for, and if he wants a singalong with it, a singalong he gets.

It’s also difficult to understand quite why it is that so much blather is being built up about a game that happens every year. Ireland first played England at rugby union football on February 19th, 1875 at Kennington Oval, a game which the home side won by two goals and a try to nil. It would be twelve years before Ireland managed their first win over England, but they’ve been playing happily every year since that original twenty-a-side encounter in 1875. Why is this Saturday going to be such a big deal? It couldn’t be the presence of certain nouveaux among us who like to thank the grace of God for them being the way they are, as if the Big Man wasn’t getting enough yada yada yada from Richard Dawkins? Considering the hype machine that was overheating by the Thursday before the French game, when a breathless Áine Lawlor told the nation on Morning Ireland that one upon a time, a little boy called Denis in Tipperary dreamed of playing in Croke Park, An Spailpín thinks he would be well advised to keep his head down for the week, for the sake of his own sanity.

An Spailpín is not in favour of the opening of Croke Park, as regular penitents at this corner of cyperspace are aware. That does not take from his great love for the game of rugby football, however. To those who would call this hypocritical, I would remark that my love for strong black pints of Guinness’ Porter does not mean that I’m going to start pouring the stuff over my morning Weetabix. To everything its place, and a GAA stadium is for GAA games. Not anybody else’s. But what An Spailpín cannot understand, for love nor money, is why those same learned men who call for the opening of Croke Park then start spluttering and turning red in the face at the notion of a visiting team playing their anthem? There is no more point in booing God Save the Queen when England come to Dublin to play rugby on Saturday than there was booing them when they arrived two years ago, or four, or eight, or ten, or twelve, or fourteen, or sixteen, or eighteen, or twenty. There’s nothing new about it. If people are thinking of it because the game is on “sacred” soil, look up and tell me if that red light is still switched on. If it is, then can it Agnes, and shut up.

Consultations with the weekend newspapers may have enlightened the boo brigade, although An Spailpín sadly notes the Cap’n’s prescient remarks to and concerning Cool Hand Luke that there are some men you just can’t reach. On Saturday, that quillsman semper optimus of the Irish Times’ sports pages, Keith Duggan, had a fascinating story about the last time Ireland played an International at Ravenhill in Belfast, and some last minute brinkmanship on behalf of those much derided blazers in calming the objections of the southern based Irish players who objected to the playing of the home anthem – which was God Save the Queen, of course, as the game was in Belfast. As Duggan remarked, it’ll be good crack when Ireland play Italy up there this coming August as part of their World Cup preparations.

And then Peter O’Reilly in the Sunday Times had a piece about John Pullin’s never to be forgotten bravery in leading out England at Lansdowne Road in 1973. As An Spailpín is concerned that some of these splutterers may even consider being so unspeakably boorish as to boo the visitors’ anthem on Saturday, a brief history lesson from when rugby was still an amateur game.

1972 was one of the worst years of the Northern Troubles. The second Bloody Sunday happened, the British Embassy in Dublin was burned down, Laughing Lenny Cohen sang Kevin Barry during his show in Dublin – it was hot stuff all around. A bit too hot for the Scots and the Welsh rugby football unions, who flat-out refused to come to Dublin for their games. When you consider that by the time of those games Ireland had already beaten the English at Twickenham and the French at the old Stade Colombes, this stung more than a little bit. The Welsh made a mealy-mouthed offer to play their game at the Arms Park (where Ireland hadn’t won since 1965, and wouldn’t until 1985 – thanks Taff, that is kind of you to offer) but what happened was that Ireland’s home fixtures were not played, and the Championship ended, for the first and only time, in a ludicrous five-way tie, despite the fact that Ireland were undefeated.

This put a lot of pressure on England to turn up in Dublin in 1973 to fulfil the fixture, and turn up they did, lead by a doughty sheep farmer from the West Country, John Pullin, who played hooker for Bristol, England and the Lions. Pullin famously remarked at the post match dinner that while England might not be any good – they lost 18-9 in a score that flattered them – at least they turned up. An England team got their first and only ovation at an Irish sporting ground in 1973 when they took the field at Lansdowne Road, and they deserved it. And this is the history and tradition of a team whom people are thinking of booing? The mind boggles, and the spirit is shamed by more fatuous and cynical behaviour in modern Ireland.

For what it’s worth, Ireland should win pulling up on Saturday. Brian O’Driscoll will be back, and that will make all the difference. It’s hard to see England winning enough ball on the deck against such expert scroungers as the Irish back-row and the Irish centres, and it’s also difficult to see a former League player turning into a silk purse overnight. Every few years someone jumps ship from League and is hailed as the next big thing, but it hasn’t worked for anybody yet. Hard to see it working for Andy Farrell on Saturday either.

Jonny Wilkinson is, of course, the dangerman. Daniel Carter, the New Zealand 10, has been hailed as the best in the world but for An Spailpín’s dollar that title is Wilko’s anytime he can stay out of the hospital. A player of astonishing talent and bravery, and a man of icy calm and resolve. If Ireland give away penalties inside their own half, Wilkinson can and will punish them. He has the technology.

Technorati Tags: Sport, culture, rugby, Croke Park