Dismissing the use of tactics? Now that’s a bad idea
You never know when you’ll meet them.
Last Saturday morning we met one looking for beef koftas on the quays in Cork — that’s 11.30am, not 1.30 am, if you’re being nosy.
And when you meet them, you never know what they’ll say.
We had a conversation with an intercounty hurler last week about next year, and his plans, and whether, well, he mightn’t be thinking of, you know, hanging it up...
“Well, that depends on management,” he said. “Not ours. Tipperary’s.”
The point was a simple one. He walked me through the various strengths of the other counties in Munster before coming to Tipperary, pointing out that the Premier had the best squad around.
“If they get in a good manager,” he added, “Then he’ll get them back on track next year and they’ll win the Munster championship. So if you’re thinking whether you’d come back or not depends on your chances of a Munster medal, you’d have an eye on what’s happening there.”
It didn’t matter that the player was speaking days before Declan Ryan and his backroom team formally announced they wouldn’t be seeking another term. Whatever you might say about the official statement from the Tipperary County Board on Saturday night, it wasn’t a shock.
Neither was the flurry of names that did the rounds yesterday. Eamon O’Shea, Nicky English, Liam Sheedy and Ken Hogan all entered the fray with updates and caveats attached: Nicky is in a different job, for instance — will that affect his availability? Will O’Shea and Sheedy only work as a team? Ken Hogan has done his stint at senior level; would he even be interested in returning to the senior job? Clearly if you have blue and gold in your wardrobe and you’re not a Boca Juniors fan, then this is a matter of some importance to you. But is it the most important talking point from the second All-Ireland semi-final? The scorn rained down upon the Lar Corbett-Tommy Walsh tactic, for instance, is one that has interested this column particularly. Not the mindless abuse, nor yet the entertainingly photoshopped pictures of Corbett in close proximity to the same Mr Walsh.
No, what’s been interesting in the last fortnight has been a general distaste for the notion of tactics in hurling in some quarters, one which has relied on the specific failure of a particular strategy for legitimacy. It’s no accident that a parallel pseudo-argument has been twitching fitfully in Gaelic football circles about whether Donegal’s on-field alignment under Jim McGuinness is good or bad for the game (try to stay awake at the back, please).
One aids the other, of course; those decrying tactics in hurling see a tiny leap to ‘puke hurling’, with McGuinness’s approach taken as a cautionary tale (“sure the next thing you’ll have them playing like Donegal, etc etc”).
The fact is that there have been tactics in hurling for decades. Donal O’Grady of this parish is wont to point out that if you had a wing-forward who was five foot six and one who was six foot six, you’d puck the ball out to the latter. That’s a tactic.
The failure of Lar vs Tommy doesn’t show that tactics are a waste of time in hurling, though it shows that getting a man who scored a hat-trick in an All-Ireland final to play like a back is a bad idea.
For what it’s worth, what Jim McGuinness is doing in Gaelic football seems to this observer to be a fair approximation of what happens in every field game: you keep most of your players in a defensive pattern and the minimum in attack.
Only an odd mixture of conservatism and naivete have kept hurling and football in 15 versus 15 all these years; McGuinness has just been the most persuasive manager when it comes to getting his players to buy into his system — and not to forsake it in adversity.
Finally (and) (in conclusion), last Monday we carried a press pass which raised some hackles in the Premier County. The gentleman in question, from Donegal, was less than complimentary about the welcome given him in Semple Stadium once upon a time. This columnist is not from Tipperary but feels compelled to speak: even before the day I locked myself in the toilet in Semple Stadium accidentally, and Philly Butler removed said door from its hinges to free me, the friendliness of the staff in Thurles has always been the finest, as they say in Tipp. The sandwiches are traditional, cakes never-ending, and if you tell them the wifi is down, they’ll have it up and running in minutes: on all counts, I can bear witness, as the saying goes. Donegal and Tipperary. Maybe it was lost in translation.
nmichael.moynihan@examiner.ie
