Crokes boss: Kerry kids are being turned off game by negative tactics

Dr Crokes boss Noel O’Leary will not be sending a Christmas card to Jimmy McGuinness.

O’Leary, who shares the management duties of the Kerry champions with chairman Vince Casey, is preparing his side for a county final against Dingle this weekend but believes negative tactics are turning players off the game.

“I keep saying it, but if we are not very careful in Kerry, youngsters very soon will not want to play football,” he said.

“In fact some will give it up. If you are bringing youngsters to this sort of [negative] football, they will turn away. It’s not football as it should be played. I think we are destroying the good player.

“For years we had the runner, the good Gaelic footballer, now he is gone. All you have to do now is develop and play six massive men at the back, drop everybody else back behind the ball, park your bus and say, ‘come on lads now try and get through that’.

“That is not football at all. The day of catch and kick are gone, high fielding is gone. I am a disciple of attacking and skilful football, football as it was meant to be played.”

He doesn’t want to be seen standing on a pedestal preaching about the pure game and admits adopting the style himself. They’ve had to.

However, when he saw other teams bringing coaches from Ulster down to Kerry to show them how to play the blanket defence he felt enough was enough.

“Yes I had to [play it]. Myself and Vince [Casey] have had to change. I have to do it, though I don’t like doing it,” he admitted.

“Hopefully if we win on Sunday, and we play outside the county we will be able to cope with the defensive walls that are being put up against us because we have plenty practice in this county.

“It is a fright to God that we are Kerry people and we are living on and playing northern football. Imagine other clubs and divisional teams in the county have brought coaches down from the North to coach them how to play the blanket defence!”