Football

Kicking Out: Coveting the old game stops us seeing the good in the new one

Shane McGuigan is a market leader of a new type of forward. McGuigan is almost never situated at full-forward and Derry almost never kick the ball into that area, but his scoring rate stands up to any scrutiny. Picture by Seamus Loughran
Shane McGuigan is a market leader of a new type of forward. McGuigan is almost never situated at full-forward and Derry almost never kick the ball into that area, but his scoring rate stands up to any scrutiny. Picture by Seamus Loughran

EVER watch two children playing? No matter what they have, they’ll always want what the other child has.

Scientists believe there are seven core instincts of the human brain – anger, fear, panic/grief, maternal care, pleasure/lust, play and seeking.

Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp argued that seeking is the most important of them. That in order to be successful, you always have to want what you don’t have, otherwise you simply stagnate.

You always have to want something else, something that someone else has.

In a sporting sense, it’s your Alex Ferguson and your Brian Cody. No matter what they’d just won, straight away it became about the next thing. Winning was never enough because winning never ends, and if they’re not winning then someone else is.

How the idea relates to us mere mortals is when it simply comes to watching football.

We want something else at the expense of appreciating what we have.

What is it we actually want Gaelic football to look like?

Basketball comparisons are used as terms of insult, yet there’s this ideal of a sport that flows up and down with plenty of scores and no massed defences.

We use rugby in the same way, yet if it weren’t for the transferable coaching influences on how to change the angle of running and break lines of defence, we’d have no scores at all.

Rugby has tinkered with itself, fought its internal wars against head-high challenges and seems to have come out the other side the better for it. Has there been a more entertaining start to a Six Nations, ever?

Its evolution has been mostly natural, more shown the right road by rule changes than pulled down it by the scruff of the neck. Yet rugby fans will never be happy either. The scrums will never work quite right, the clampdown on tackling above the chest will always feel alien.

There is no perfect sport out there. Why would ours be any different?

We all seem to want something different but we don’t actually know what it is that we want.

You can discuss rule changes until you’re blue in the face but short of insisting it’s six backs against six forwards, there’s very little you can do about teams dropping bodies back now.

When lads are able to run 12 kilometres in a game, they’re gonna run 12 kilometres. Why would they do anything else?

There’s an obsession with pointing out every time a team puts 15 men behind the ball, but seldom ever an explanation of how slow the opposition’s attack had to have been to allow them to do that.

Teams are now building structured attacks, effectively running set-plays in open play, because that’s the best way to beat the blanket.

The blanket isn’t going anywhere but more than a decade after Donegal brought it into being, we continue to obsess with its existence.

If you’ve the time, sit down and watch a soccer game through the week. Count the number of times all 11 players on the defending team are inside their own half. It’ll be a lot more often than any Gaelic football team gets 15 back.

But count also how often the commentators reference it, because it’ll be a whole lot fewer.

The constant negativity around the spectacle of Gaelic football heightens the angst and desire for something different. We’re each of us guilty.

Take Shane McGuigan. As Derry’s curve has risen, he’s been central to it as the team’s leading marksman.

But the better they’ve become as a team, the more I’ve been guilty of seeing Shane for what he isn’t rather than what he is.

There’s never been any question of his ability. But at times I couldn’t see past him not being this wrecking machine of a full-forward, this Damien Comer-esque figure that Derry could turf any kind of ball at.

Yet why should you want Comer when McGuigan’s consistency of scoring is so vastly superior? His scoring record stands up to any scrutiny. It’s pure Green Grass Syndrome.

He’s a market leader of a new type of forward. McGuigan is almost never situated at full-forward and Derry almost never kick the ball into that area.

The Slaughtneil man hangs wide, times and angles his runs brilliantly, manoeuvres on to his left foot and kicks the ball over the bar. 2-24 in four league games, how could you question that?

It isn’t what we’re used to seeing from talismanic inside forwards, winning a ball kicked into them, taking on their man, fighting for their space.

So it takes time to adjust. We’re always adjusting as viewers, trying to catch up on the latest training ground innovation.

Coaching at the top of Gaelic football is hugely innovative. It has moved on so much in recent years. The balance has been redistributed from obsessing over the defensive side of things towards the emphasis on how to score.

The game doesn’t need this big radical overhaul. It doesn’t need fixed. It’s not broken. A few minor tweaks that would show it down the right road is all.

I can’t get into the car with the girls at home without being tormented to put on Taylor Swift these days. Naturally there’s an element of seepage. I’m reminded now of the line: ‘Sorry, the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, ‘cos she’s dead’.

The old game of football is dead. It’s gone. Never coming back. Ever.

Teams will put 15 men behind the ball forevermore. They’re fit enough to run, so they’ll run.

It would be great if we could all stop talking about it now. It’s there, we know it’s there. It’s like pointing out that it’s 15-a-side or that it’s three points for a goal.

We can continue to blame coaches for ruining the game with defensive football, but really it was the combination of a tactical shift and the ongoing physical development of players.

Instead we can flip the coin and credit the work coaches are doing in the attacking sense. Scoring averages rise all the time. That doesn’t happen by accident.

So it’s either waste your time coveting something you don’t have, or take a closer look at what you do.

Accepting that the game has changed will help you see the good in the game we now have.