KEVIN CASSIDY: Imagination required

OVER the last number of weeks, I have heard a lot about St Eunan’s and how they were performing. So I headed to O’Donnell Park last Saturday evening interested to see what they were like.

St Eunan’s were playing against my own club Gaoth Dobhair and with us needing the points, the pressure was all on our lads.

Our management team had obviously watched a lot of St Eunan’s this year so they came up with a plan of containing them, which meant that we played a very defensive game. Now I have spoken here on many occasions stating that this type of game-plan will only get you so far and it won’t win you a championship, but it was a case of needs must against St Eunan’s on their home patch.

Now I have never been one to be over critical of any player or any team because any team can have an off day, but to say that St Eunan’s struggled on Saturday evening would be a massive understatement.

My good mate Brendan Devenney is involved with coaching the St Eunan’s team and after the game I sent him a text that said: “Mate, I learned one thing today and it’s that if St Eunan’s play like that, you have no chance of winning any championship.”

Dev knows me well enough to know that I wasn’t being smart but I was pointing out that they have too much talent to turn in a performance like that. Our lads were all set up well and structurally sound, but the lack of imagination and willingness to take opportunities on was alarming for the Cathedral town men.

That result really shakes the championship up because with the likes of Glenswilly and Four Masters and teams like that flying high at the top end of the table. It could mean that we have some very exciting preliminary quarter-final clashes, which I guess can only be good for the championship.

I missed our opening clash with Four Masters so they are team that I’m planning to go and see the coming weeks because there’s a lot of talk about them. They have a massive amount of work done at underage over the last number of seasons so will be interesting to see if they can bring this on to the senior stage.

One man that there is a lot of talk about in the country at the minute is my old half-back teammate Shane Carr’s son Seanán who seems to be shooting the lights out in the early rounds of the championship – and I look forward to watching him play.

We have a week off here in the club championship in Donegal with the last group games coming next week, and then we’ll start to find out the knock-out pairings. So it’ll start to warm up from here.

Elsewhere, there has been a lot of talk this week about the potential new rules. It seems, going by reports, that this working group and the players taking part in the exhibition games seem to be making great strides and we should see some of these rules come before us for consideration very soon.

I don’t think it’s any secret at this stage that I certainly have the appetite for change and I think change is needed so here’s hoping we hear something soon.

There is a video circulating online where one team put two man-markers on one player at an u-14 game.

I had to laugh at the amount of people who slammed that team for doing such a thing. I’d like to ask one question to all of those people who said it was a joke, how do you feel when your club or county team parks 14 men inside your own 45? Let me guess I suppose you find it intriguing to see how teams can break that down.

To me, that is far worse than double marking any player.

The new rules will rid us all of these ‘iPad coaches’ and hopefully we will get back to watching the likes of that talented u-14 player showcasing his skills without fear of facing 14 defenders every-time he gets in the ball.