JOE BROLLY: Be Clare, not Donegal

ARMAGH must be Clare, not Donegal. Gaelic football has become two dull defensive formulas competing soullessly, with all the emotion of a game played on X box. The resemblance to modern soccer is uncanny. Everyone looks the same, plays the same, sounds the same.

Great sport, in the end, is about courage, imagination, intuition, self-expression, science (in moderation) luck, and footballing wisdom that has been passed down through the generations. As the great Argentinian Jorge Valdano lamented before the last World Cup, “football once came from its place: Brazil had an identity, Germany had an identity. Now, it belongs to its time. And this is a time of uniformity. All national teams look alike. It all looks the same. Football, as ever, tells us about the world.”

The soul has been removed from our game. A modern Gaelic football team is a factory. The manager supervises the conveyor belt. Players are programmed not to express themselves, but to follow a script that has been endlessly rehearsed.

The Spanish author Javier Marías described football as savage and sentimental, an emotion, a prolongation of life. Javier would have loved the hurling final. Savage, sentimental, an emotion, a prolongation of life. On Monday morning, the whole country was talking about it. We are still talking and thinking about it.

Meanwhile, in modern Gaelic football, in the bigger games, a mistake or a fluke decides things. When I first went to a cricket game 20 years ago, I marvelled at how silent the crowd was, chatting throughout the day, cheering the odd time. Now, a cricket and Gaelic football crowd are indistinguishable. When the half-time whistle went for the Cork Clare huring final, we couldn’t believe it. 37 minutes already?

The problem with modern football, as we see week in, week out, is that the players have to force themselves to conform to the system. They have to restrain their emotions. They are preoccupied with not making mistakes. This explains why the actual contest is compressed into the final five or ten minutes. Modern Gaelic football has become like modern soccer, where the key is not to lose and where taking the game to penalties is a good outcome.

The only reason Armagh are in the final is that in the 54th minute of their semi-final with Kerry, an event occurred that suddenly caused them to release their fanaticism.

For the first half, they had played to ‘the system’ – the same system that lost them the last two Ulster finals, the ultra cautious ‘you score a point, we score a point, you score a point, we score a point’ system.

Then Barry McCambridge, scored his extraordinary, improbable goal.

Suddenly, the Armagh boys woke up from their scientific slumber. They were reminded that an All-Ireland semi-final is a once in a lifetime experience. An emotion. A prolongation of life. Up until that moment, Armagh had been playing to exactly the same formula that was used by every team in this year’s championship: Derry v Kerry, Mayo v Derry, Dublin v Galway (until Galway sparked to life in the final quarter) Donegal v Armagh (Ulster final), Donegal v Galway, Donegal v everyone, Galway v Mayo and so on.

The goal caused a guttural roar from the Armagh supporters and electrified the Armagh players. Suddenly, they were alive. Suddenly, they were human beings, revelling in their skill and power and the thrill of the battle.

The legendary soccer coach and sporting philosopher Marcelo Bielsa is scathing about how soccer has been reduced to the dull formula we just witnessed throughout the Euros. A triumph of hype (“business” he calls it) over humanity.

Bielsa said, “Football used to be, and still can be a cultural expression, a way of identification. The people are more interested in the emotions that football produces in us. We are interested in the glory, the strong emotions that we cannot find anywhere else.” The problem, he says, is “the football factory” that reduces everything to science. In 1992, when he was the coach at the Argentinian club Newell’s, and the team were working on an adventurous style of football, they lost a game heavily.

After the game, a group of ultras turned up at his front door to complain. He opened the door in his pyjamas, holding a hand grenade, from which he began to pull the pin. As the supporters fled, he shouted after them, “Do you still want to talk?”

Like life, when football is played, actually played, the outcome is uncertain and maddening and joyful and breathtaking. Like the hurling final. Or for Armagh’s players in that last 30 minutes against Kerry, when they finally discovered why they started playing football in the first place. They let themselves go. They absorbed themselves in the moment. Their ferocity and precision and composure was the opposite of Kerry’s panic. Kerry were overwhelmed by the tidal wave of Armagh emotion.

Stefan Campbell barrelled through Kerry, kicking two terrific points. Jarly Óg Burns, our president’s son, kicked a superb point. Rian O’Neill scored a monstrous point and bookended Armagh’s first thirty minutes of actual football in years with a magnificent high catch on his own goal line. This was not the dull, stale nothingness of their last two Ulster finals. This was sport, real sport: epic and heart throbbing.

Systems do not win All-Irelands. Human beings do. There is nothing wrong with Armagh’s players. They have power, skill, finishing, endurance, tackling, high catching, free taking, huge desire and every other pre-requisite.

To win Sam Maguire they must tap into those feelings that were unleashed in the last quarter against Kerry. They must release their Armaghness. They must release their fanaticism. They need to remove the pin from the hand grenade.

Be Clare, not Donegal.