Sport

Benny Tierney: Flair deserves place in Championship

Would there be a place for the brilliance of a player like Oisín McConville in the modern game? 
Would there be a place for the brilliance of a player like Oisín McConville in the modern game?  Would there be a place for the brilliance of a player like Oisín McConville in the modern game? 

LAST year, I was asked to take a goalkeeping session in the Athletic Grounds.

While I was in the changing room, two Armagh players came in for a rehab session and started to get changed for their training routine. Now, I don’t want to be accused of voyeurism but, when the two lads took off their shirts, I quickly covered my ever-expanding chest with a towel as quickly as I could out of sheer embarrassment and a small inferiority complex.

I couldn’t get over the build of these two men as there was hardly a trace of fat, compared to my significant overhang, and I shuffled about until the two boys left so I could get changed in private without any prying eyes.

Obviously, the developments in physique and strength-and-conditioning in our game have been remarkable in the last decade or so. The days of seeing a pot-bellied player taking the field for his county are well and truly over.

I read an article this week by Brian McGuigan in which he said the build of players is now so different from when he played that he would have struggled in the modern game. I immediately thought people listening to me talking about strength-and-conditioning would laugh it off as another example of my somewhat laid-back approach to fitness, but when you hear one of Ireland’s marquee forwards highlighting it then, you realise that GAA players are a different breed than they were only five years ago.

I fully realise innovations regarding physique and strength are now part of the modern game. However, I can’t get the idea out of my head that there is currently a mindset of system over skill and fitness over flair. Maybe my ideology is old fashioned, but I can’t help feeling that many county players are being picked out of position ahead of more flair players because they possess great strength and a better work ethic.

I was talking to Oisin McConville last week and joked about where we would stand in the modern game. I have written about McConville’s out-and-out brilliance and ability many times in this column and, yet, in the modern game there would be no place for him if it came down to work-ethic or physique.

Considering he only retired in the last decade, that is quite amazing. Gaelic football has been enveloped by the system and the players’ strict adherence to a pattern of play. The idea of the marquee or maverick player who thinks outside of this is rapidly diminishing.

When Crossmaglen needed a score in any of their big club matches, they looked for McConville, regardless of systems or how good a game he was having because he had the flair and belief to get that score.

In the 2002 All-Ireland final, when the game was slipping away from us and we were struggling to win kick-outs which had been vigorously rehearsed, I saw Diarmaid Marsden make a run from corner-forward to our half-back line in search of my kick-out.

Even though I had already signalled elsewhere, I decided I had better hit it in his direction as he had made this unrehearsed 80-metre run. The goal that brought us back into the game came off that run by Marsden and it had feck all to do with a system, but more to do with a player who showed initiative and hunger to change the entire dynamic of the game.

It’s not just in our game where there is slavish devotion to systems. I listened to Eamon Dunphy last week, prior to the European Championships. He was asked why he still thought Martin O’Neill was just an average manager, even though he brought the Republic of Ireland to the Euros.

I don’t like Dunphy that much, but I was forced to agree with him on this one point because he asserted that O’Neill refuses to play Wes Hoolahan and only played Shane Long in three qualifiers because they don’t fit into the system as much as Glenn Whelan and Jon Walters.

Hoolahan is a flair and creative player, who plays well all during the Premier League and yet can’t force his way onto the Ireland team due to their gameplan. We all saw his impact on Monday evening when he was allowed to express himself and Ireland looked a totally different team.

Don’t get me wrong as Whelan does his job, as does Walters and many others, but that balance between system and skill is the key to any successful team and Hoolahan got man-of-the-match, as McConville would have done for us.

If Armagh, Derry, Down, Fermanagh or Antrim are going to progress in the Qualifiers then they are going to have to show more imagination and creativity up front to ask questions and open up these packed defences as all these teams know how to defend, but have been found wanting in their forward unit and scoring stakes.

This has been the year of the underdog, with Iceland, Leicester, Connacht and Tipperary all causing sporting shocks, with their ability to score proving every bit as pivotal as their capacity to defend.

Unfortunately, in our game, I feel more time is being spent in gyms and on defensive structures on whiteboards than on forward play. Dublin and Tyrone have a system that turns defence into automatic attack and they also have the most flair players I feel left in the Championship.

That balance puts them ahead of most of the opposition. While there is always, as has been proven this year, the possibility of an upset, I would be very shocked if either of these teams don’t capture the major prize.