Poacher warns teams will get innovative to break up keep-ball killing of games

Poacher predicts a championship of counties running down the clock from as far out as the 65th minute.

Leitrim’s Ryan O’Rourke and manager Steven Poacher. Pic: Tom O’Hanlon/Inpho

Teams are going to start deliberately breaching the three-up rule so as to interrupt the ugly trend of keep-ball at the end of games, Leitrim manager Steven Poacher has warned.

With Poacher predicting a championship of counties running down the clock from as far out as the 65th minute, he also envisages counties developing cynical ploys to counteract this anticlimactic end-game approach.

In Saturday’s Division 3 League final, Down held possession from 66:24 until shooting wide 10 seconds from the hooter. There was an earlier point attempt on 66:57, which was charged down by Wexford and Down immediately retrieved possession.

“It could be closed out a lot earlier than that. Teams could be looking at four or five minutes and thinking, right, let's just shut this down. That's unfortunately the lie of the land with the hooter at the minute,” said Poacher.

“You've seen at the weekend the problems it caused, even the Meath game where cynical fouling comes in closer to full-time. People criticising Down, but you're allowed to play within the rules.

“David Clifford's moment before half-time in the All-Ireland final last year, I actually thought that was a really well orchestrated point. It wasn't as cynical as what we saw last weekend.” 

Unless there is a return to last year’s system whereby the game continues past the hooter until such time as the ball goes out of play, the Leitrim manager believes counties will get innovative in breaking up the keep-ball killing of games.

“You will find a way. Would you go to the extreme that if you're a point down and know you are running out of time that you would just create a deliberate breach, take the one-point score against you, and then take your chance on winning the kick-out and getting a two-pointer to equalise?

“A deliberate breach, that's the extreme, but it's that or else bring the ‘keeper out and go kamikaze, go 12 against 11.

“The alternative is to let the opposition have the chance to run the clock down which would be death by a thousand cuts.” Poacher expressed annoyance that Division 3 and 4 teams had another spring without the hooter in operation, leaving them ill-prepared in this department for their Connacht Championship quarter-final away to Sligo on Sunday week.

“Last year, we were playing Mayo in championship. Young Darren Cox, the hooter went on the stroke of half-time and he started to walk off the field. I said, 'Coxy, the hooter's fucking gone, you play on'. He'd never played under the hooter, so he thought the hooter went and that’s it, and there was him walking off, but lucky enough the ball went out of play anyway.”