Tackling the new defence

The old skills of Gaelic Football, of man-marking and long-passing appear to be returning to the game.

So says All-Ireland winner with Derry Kieran McKeever.

The Oak Leaf man from Dungiven, who is vice chair of the Derry county board, said in a recent interview that he believes that teams are realising that the techniques of blanket defence, and short hand-passing may not be the best strategies.

“We are evolving back into the original skills of the game,” McKeever said.

“We stopped allowing the players to make decisions. Even the skills coming out of the game.

“There are defensive skills that are being taken out of the game because coaches were going to other sports and were bringing back positives, but they were bringing back soccer tactics of 11 behind the ball. We now have 12, 13 or 15 behind the ball.

“The skills were taken out of the game. There are not many corner backs now who can man-mark. though there are a few teams who are doing it now, They are getting wise to it that you can’t bring people back to mark space. They realise that if you get players to mark the dangerous forwards, then have you other defenders covering the space then that is a bonus.”

McKeever believes that while there are those in the GAA who lament the loss of those old skills, it is our own coaches who have led the association down a path that has forgotten the old ways.

Introductions such as the advanced mark have sought to encourage players to work on the old skills.

“Not a lot of teams are using advanced mark as much as they should. Maybe that comes down to not trusting your fellow player enough to hit the perfect past. In the old days you would have had a punt pass that would bounce ten yards from where a player was. It would bounce in his chest. Maybe that skill of punt passing to a player is not being used because we don’t trust the players to do it.

“There are always 20-30 metres of space to hit a ball into, whether that is over a defenders head. Maybe the trust isn’t there.

“Back in our day we had Enda Gormley, Joe Brolly and Seamus Downey in the full forward line. We had a meeting one time and chatted about what way they wanted the ball to go in. Brolly said ‘just kick it into the space, don’t worry about me. Don’t worry if I am behind or in front. Just kick it into the space’. Gormley and Downey said: ‘We don’t care what way it comes in. Just get it in early’.”

McKeever pointed out that the GAA has lost its way, but there is a chance to get back on the right path.

“Nowadays I hear about letting players make decisions and it is a language I don’t understand. When we were growing up you were given a ball and you went out and played. The players made the decisions naturally. Nowadays they are telling a player that he has to make a decision. I think we went through a bad stage of 10-15 years where coaches were using cones because they saw other coaches in other sport using cones.

“They were making people go from A to B, but we never taught them how to get to C. C was the decision-making.

“They didn’t allow players to make their own decisions. It is a fault of our own that we have got into this situation, more so than the fault of the modern player.”

Though as he says, it appears that the new skills are returning.