Kerry need to improve tackle discipline
It made me laugh and brought me back to the recent AIB Club documentary ‘Toughest Trade’, where the recently retired professional soccer player David Bentley expressed how he connected with the GAA culture and community and recognised it as what soccer used be.
I came across a brilliant young talent, Alan Davidson, at the recent Crossmaglen 7s tournament.
Alan was completely unrecognised amongst the sizeable GAA community present - until recently he had been playing for Ballymena United and quit the sport three days before last year’s League Cup final against Cliftonville.
Despite his team losing in the Sevens final, he was awarded MVP and everyone wanted to know who he was.
What’s the connection to Omagh yesterday? In the past week everyone has been scrambling to be the first to say gaelic football is in trouble. Jarlath Burns pronounced it dead. However, here is a real example of a young talent that has quit his job to rejoin something that he believes means more to him than money.
For those who missed yesterday’s game, I can assure them this was an entertaining match played at a high tempo, in good faith. There were promising signs for the summer ahead and some indications as to how the game is evolving today.
Let’s starts with Tyrone. Tyrone fit into the counter-offensive category, as described by Kieran Shannon of this newspaper. They defend deep and in numbers, forcing their opposition to shoot from distance, carry the ball into trouble, and force repeated turnovers. They counter-attack at ferocious speed and often carry directly into opponent’s danger zones thereby committing multiple defenders before offloading to a support runner or drawing a free from the panicked defenders.
Secondly, Mickey Harte has clearly been working on the commitment to the tackle or breakdown. His players are very aggressive at attacking the man or the breaking ball and for 35 minutes this resulted in multiple dispossessions for Tyrone. The intensity and endurance required to maintain this for seventy minutes isn’t there yet, but if the fitness levels improve then this Tyrone team will be very difficult to beat.
A negative for Tyrone is their kick-out percentages, from catching or break ball. Without the advantage of stats to hand I’d be confident in saying that this was their weakest sector and certainly a cause for concern.
Kerry remain very much an enigma. Progress has been slow this year and it’s difficult to see what is going to change. I will highlight two main areas of concern for them. The first is the poor discipline in the tackle. It is erratic, cumbersome and will undoubtedly need to be improved for championship. A neat example occurred after 40 minutes when Peter Harte brilliantly disposed Stephen O’Brien with a textbook near-hand-tackle only to be fouled (tripped) by O’Brien, resulting in a black card.
The second is the lack of understanding and communication in attack when facing this defensive system, best demonstrated by Paul Murphy fisting the ball onto Bryan Sheehan’s back after 26 minutes. Without Sheehan’s free-taking ability from distance, Kerry had precious little options in that first half, and were it not for a sequence of predictable long balls into Kieran Donaghy, the second half showed little innovation from Kerry.
A negative for Kerry - and something that may raise some eyebrows later in the year when it actually matters - is the propensity to look for frees from the referee. As the proverb goes “fool me once shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me”. Joe McQuillan might not be so forgiving next time.
Finally, something that interests me is the change in the amount of individual scores being created. Both teamshad players who had the confidence and ability to take on their opponents and finish with a score, Paul Murphy and Mattie Donnelly in particular. This seems to return a higher success rate than shooting from distance and is certainly a positive to be taken from the recent change in defensive formations.
Remember that yesterday’s game actually meant something, yet we still witnessed an entertaining seventy-odd minutes. Doesn’t that auger well for the summer months? Don’t lose faith.
