Deegan: Sweeper system best for Banner
It’s a move deemed anathema to hurling but is enough to frustrate Kilkenny and force a replay but at the same time an acknowledgement of Clare’s inability to face Brian Cody’s side man-on-man.
As he conditioned Dublin to punch above their weight, it was a tactic Daly turned to more and more.
But now as All-Ireland finalists Clare have sucked Conor Ryan back from midfield to centre-back freeing up Pat Donnellan to sweep, the seven-man defence is no longer frowned upon. It is accepted.
“I think so, there’s no doubt about it,” says current selector Mike Deegan. “The game is speeding up all the time and you have to use the space and the players you have.
“The fact we have such a young, fast, light team helps us in that regard. We’re asking five forwards to do the work of six and the fact they are so light and so fast they are able to do it.
“But you have to pick the tactics that will suit you. The day against Galway, you have to try and stop Joe Canning. He is the main man and it worked for us that day, and it worked for us the last day against Limerick.
“Against Limerick, we didn’t play Pat back as much as we did against Galway. You have to vary it depending on the opposition.”
It’s a system that reaps high rewards but fraught with danger too, as Deegan explains: “We speak about that. You have to be very careful with regards to a sweeper because it’s like playing with an extra man at times.
“If players expect him to do their job, then the system will fall down. You have to be very careful. The players have to buy into it and they have to concentrate on what they have to do.
“I wouldn’t say there is more expected of the sweeper but obviously if he makes a mistake people will come down on him because he is not being marked or there is no one on him.”
The traditionalists in Clare mightn’t like it but they have come to learn the strategy works just as their short-passing system, which just seven months ago was ridiculed during a defeat to Waterford in Ennis.
“There was no doubt about it we were getting plenty of flak but if you believe in what you’re doing it doesn’t matter how much flak you get and we believe it and the players believe it.”
Deegan understand where the concern was coming from as much as he didn’t accept it: “People are afraid if a back gets the ball and he doesn’t drive it down the field. They are afraid he is going to get turned over and it will be a score against you.”
Clare had issues implementing it last year when they put particular emphasis on hand-passing. Now it’s been extended to stick-passing and is now such a success that the management find it difficult for the B team in in-house games to set themselves up any way other than the starting side. It suits the team, Deegan points out, just as it did the Cork team of the mid-Noughties. “Everyone was giving out about Donal Óg (Cusack), including Cork people, for the fact he kept pucking the ball to his corner back. It is changing and possession is a lot of the game. Without possession it is going to turn into a dogfight and the players we have aren’t going to win a dogfight.
“When players see it working – and it is working, obviously – then they will buy in.
“Obviously at the very start you were trying to, I won’t say force players but you had to keep reiterating to the players exactly what you wanted and what you were trying to create.
When you start winning with that system they will gain confidence. Our big thing from the very start was if we are playing against big, strong teams and especially strong half-back lines there was no point belting the ball down on top of them when you have the likes of Podge Collins trying to contest balls, or small light players like Tony Kelly. You want to play the ball that suits your forwards rather than their backs.”
The Clare panel harbour regrets from the Munster semi-final loss to Cork as much as he’s not looking at Sunday as a revenge mission. “If you look back at the Cork match, I think we counted eight missed goal chances.
“We didn’t look at it as intercepted passes that cost us the game; we had chances to win and we didn’t. We kept working on what we believed in.
“It was just one of those days things didn’t work for us. We didn’t play that well. It was as simple as that and in the second half we were under pressure and there was gale blowing.
“We had to work very hard and Cork sat back.”
