Jack Sheedy stands by attacking approach

Jack Sheedy stood defiant afterwards.

Eschewing the chair awaiting him in the press interview room, he clasped the back of it instead and awaited the inevitable questions after a game in which his Longford side went 15 on 15, mano a mano with Dublin and got filleted for their impudence.

So, Jack, any regrets you didn’t dig in?

“No,” he said. “Don’t believe in it. Don’t like it. I think it’s horrible to watch. As a spectator sport, it’s called football so let’s go play football to the best of our ability and if we had done that with our lads, what would they have gained out of it? Very little.

“They got to experience playing against one of the best teams in the country, suffered heavily against them, but putting 15 guys behind the ball was not going to improve how they play football so no I wouldn’t have wanted to do it.

“And they wouldn’t have wanted it either.”

Parking the bus wouldn’t have stopped Dublin’s juggernaut, he explained. Some counties have the resources to play that way against them at Croke Park, but Sheedy doesn’t feel Longford, with its population of under 40,000, is one of them. Maybe he is right.

Sheedy and Longford went into this with eyes wide open. They knew what they were inviting by staying true to the game they have played all year and which got them out of the Division Four basement and past Offaly in the preliminary championship round.

The gulf is there between that standard and the Division One league champions and they saw it for themselves on those occasions when they engineered some openings and had them demolished by the speed of movement and thought shown by the Dubs.

The postscript is inevitable.

Leinster was already being portrayed as the sick man of the All-Ireland football championship and Sheedy declared its passing yesterday evening when asked if it was time find a formula that suits both the Dublins and the Longfords.

“Absolutely. Who is going to get within 15 points of Dublin? Possibly Meath are the only team that are equipped to do that within Leinster. So you have a two-tier championship and two teams, then 10 others, nine others.

“There’s no benefit to that. You have a similar situation in Munster. I think we have a fantastic game, a fantastic product but we’re getting away from... we’re losing people going to the games because it’s not attractive.

“It’s not interesting. There’s nothing big there to come and watch and it’s disappointing because we’ve gone away from the traditional values of what the game was about. I think we really need to review it.” Of more immediate concern for Longford is their health as they approach the qualifiers. They have accounted for sides like Derry and Mayo in that arena before, but the pause in the action now leaves the door open for players to slip away Stateside and elsewhere.

“It’s going to be disappointing if lads head away, but that’s the lure, particularly for lads in college,” said Sheedy. “I’m hoping none of our lads head but I suppose it’s understandable if they do.”