Newtown and Gaels have done homework... now for fireworks
They have examined the entrails, analysed every aspect of play, both their own and that of the opposition. Their opinions make for interesting reading. “We were good, we were bad, then we were good again. Newtown were the opposite, bad, then a long very good spell, then towards the end they went down again, it was our period of dominance. We’ll be looking at that, trying to play the game we started off with, the game that got us back into it. We aim to keep the pressure on and not give them any space,” O’Loughlin’s selector Aidan Fogarty admits.
During Newtown’s purple period in the latter 20 minutes of the first half, their midfield pairing of Jerry O’Connor and Alan T O’Brien dominated the. The second half saw a more crowded midfield area however, which slowed the Newtown attack. This was partly due to the Gaels ploy of bringing one of their inside forwards to midfield, but, according to Fogarty, Newtown didn’t help their own cause. “They seemed to crowd it themselves as well,” he reckoned, “their half-back line and half-forward line were out the field a bit, crowded out that area.”
