Balancing the new and the old in modern game
It’s used to explain the occasional success of a movie that doesn’t rely on transforming robots or virginal vampires: call it a catch-all term accounting for a movie that goes back to traditional virtues.
In the movies that’s dialogue, or acting.
In Gaelic football, is it the six-man defence?
Much has been made of the adventurous football played by three of the last four in this year’s All-Ireland final. Dublin, Mayo and Kerry have been lauded for not fielding a seventh defender sweeping in front of their full-back line; Jim Gavin in particular has been depicted as more Dutch than Dublin in his reliance on total football to secure an All-Ireland.
How significant, then, is the fact that the fourth semi-finalist, Tyrone, made it deep into August with their, shall we say, less expansive game?
In yesterday’s curtain-raiser their minors had an extra man in defence, which suggests the ‘new’ game — it’s with some effort that we decommission the term ‘puke football’ — is going nowhere when it comes to counties north of the Border, anyway.
South of the Border? Jack McCaffrey, the Dublin wing-back whose searing up-field runs have come to epitomise the side’s all-out attacking style, came out of the dressing room to dissect the team’s approach.
Was he aware of the fondness neutrals harboured for the Dubs’ commitment to the beautiful game?
“I’ve heard it said, obviously, after some of our earlier games but if you look at Mayo they play something similar. I think it was our full-back line, our defence, which won it for us during the year.
“They’ve been getting an awful lot of stick but they really pulled it out of the bag today, lads putting their bodies on the line — lads like Johnny (Cooper) and Rory (O’Carroll) got smacks on the head but they just kept going. The defence obviously has a part to play but we do what we’re told by Jim and he allows us to express ourselves. Thankfully it was enough to do the business.”
And what of facing Mayo?
“You look at every team you’re playing for a couple of days beforehand,” said McCaffrey. “We knew their style of play and went out to combat that but they probably blew us away — they’re probably disappointed with a few of the chances they missed early on. But we stuck to it and got over the line.”
They did, but in the cold light of day, was it the joga bonito we’ve imagined all summer? First, the goals. A coach wedded to the sweeper system might make the point that Dublin’s second goal and Mayo’s only goal would both have been far harder to score if a spare man had been parked on the D.
Does that make them less admirable? Or more admirable?
Then you have the actual alignment of both teams. Mayo’s Keith Higgins spent a lot of time in his own half after the break, having abandoned his centre-forward slot, though his manager, James Horan, said it was a switch to replace an injured teammate rather than a tactical gambit.
The Dubs clogged the running lines near their own goal as the game wore on, particularly when they had a lead to defend, but that wasn’t the object of discussion after the game when it came to style.
The Dubs conceded 32 frees to Mayo’s 12, and in the press room Jim Gavin made a stout defence of his team’s approach, claiming 32 frees was an “unacceptable” total and grumbling about the imbalance on frees as a season-long issue.
Were they cynical? Gavin refuted the charge forcibly: “Anybody here can ask me are Dublin a cynical team and we’re not. We play the game with certain values in the squad and we play the game the way we believe it should be played and to have that amount, 32 to 12... at the end, that was just Dublin players getting frustrated. ”
That sounds like a circular argument — you concede frees, get frustrated, and so you concede more frees — but to the neutral eye, there seemed method in Dublin’s manhandling yesterday.
Those with an eye to history may point out — rightly — that some outrageously cynical sides have brought home the big pot in their time, and they’re correct. But it wasn’t right then, and it isn’t right now.
The heroics Dublin performed shouldn’t be overlooked, and they won’t.
But if you praise a team for their approach on the front foot, you have to be frank about their defending, too, and Dublin’s was on a par with what we have seen in recent championships — no worse, but certainly no better.
It turns out some phenomena recur all too easily.
