Man-marking may be a dying art

When Brian Murphy, who retired from intercounty hurling during the week, was at his peak with the Cork senior hurling team, his brief was pretty specific.

Teammates can recall Murphy being approached by management before the games that marked Cork’s progress to four All-Ireland senior hurling finals in a row and being told that again, he had drawn the short straw: he’d be taking on the opposition’s top forward.

Now the Bride Rovers man has said goodbye to the intercounty game, does the concept of the man-marker disappear with him? The evolution of the game in the last decade or so seems to suggest that conclusion. The dominant side in that period, Kilkenny, relied on defending in numbers as they compressed the play in their own half, with the centre-back at times defending the D in front of the 21-metre line; that cut down on space, with defenders on hand to double up on troublesome forwards as long as the backs maintained their defensive discipline.

Yet Kilkenny have also boasted an ace man-marker of their own in recent years: JJ Delaney. As long ago as 2003, when Setanta Ó hAilpín threatened to derail Kilkenny’s All-Ireland title bid, Delaney was moved onto the tall Corkman to spike his guns, and he succeeded, collecting the Hurler of the Year award in the process.

Reassignment to the danger man in the full-forward line is the traditional lot of the man-marker. Delaney’s ability as a dominant wing-back overshadowed his occasional fire-fighting in that role while his positioning at full-back in recent years has had a slightly different dynamic.

Kilkenny have auditioned various replacements for Noel Hickey at full-back, but the reliable level of excellence guaranteed by Delaney means he’s kept on the end of the square. Man-marking jobs such as his silencing of Dan Shanahan in the 2004 All-Ireland semi-final have, as a result, tended to be forgotten. Kilkenny’s systematic approach at the back has clearly been influenced by group defending in football: the only surprise has been the relative slowness with which hurling has adopted the systematic group movement introduced to football by northern teams over a decade ago. Clare, for example, have taken that as a template in how they align themselves.

Rather than relying upon individual defenders to do a marking job, manager Davy Fitzgerald has often set Clare up to defend in numbers as well, even though there’s been a greater focus, naturally enough, on their free-running attack and ability to maintain possession with stick passes.

However, playing a sweeper in front of Joe Canning helped their full-back line last season, not only because it helped negate the single most dangerous forward of his generation, but it meant an extra pair of hands were close to any defender having trouble with his man.

Evidence needed from another game? Witness spare man Pat Donnellan’s vital intervention against a goal-bound Graeme Mulcahy in the All-Ireland semi-final against Limerick, a game in which nominal centre-forward Tony Kelly also popped up deep in his own half helping out his defence.

With that kind of manpower on hand, it’s doubly difficult for a forward to find space, and defenders can, as a consequence, ask different questions of those forwards: they can range forward, as Donnellan did in the Limerick game, for a vital point, or as Domhnall O’Donovan did in the drawn All-Ireland final for an even more significant score.

As a result, the defender who devotes himself to blotting out an opponent entirely has become something of an endangered species in favour of a ball-playing buccaneer at the back, someone who can force his man to defend him rather than the other way around, even in the full-back line.

The issue with this approach is that you may pay a price for not picking a player who dedicates himself to negating an opponent. Take the situation Clare found themselves in last season when they gambled on abandoning their sweeper when it came to September.

Davy Fitzgerald’s boat came in, but they also conceded six goals in two games, as well as giving away half a dozen 21-metre frees and penalties.

One more thought: the demise of the man-marker a la Brian Murphy may also owe something to the performances last season of ...Brian Murphy. As Cork recalibrated their defence early on in 2013 Murphy came to the half-back line to stiffen their resistance, picking up Clare playmaker Kelly in their Munster championship opener. Cork won that game and Murphy’s performance was judged a success, having reduced Kelly’s influence considerably. The Corkman didn’t contribute a whole lot of constructive play to the game — some accounts credited him with one meaningful possession over the seventy minutes — but man-marking Kelly was a huge factor to deciding the game.

Perhaps that’s the future of the game: the man-marker will still have a role, but far away from his own full-back line?