Football League Review

[Lone Shark]

Paper asked me to put together this article, said I'd throw it up here - feel free to disagree, ignore....

“It’s only the league”, they say. Only it isn’t. For the first time in the history of the GAA, the National League now has a bearing on the Championship and with an impeccable sense of timing, the Offaly football panel have landed themselves in the middle of that maelstrom.

By now we are all well aware of the importance of next Sunday’s clash with Roscommon – anything but a win and we become one of the unfortunate eight, the counties ruled out of participation in the All Ireland qualifiers. Even securing that win will more than likely result in playoffs due the recent ruling that points difference is not going to count in the division, but what is certain is that a loss or a draw will condemn us to the Tommy Murphy Cup, one of those unfortunate competitions that will no doubt fall by the wayside in the coming years as efforts are stepped up to peg back the intercounty season and give more time to the clubs.

The events that have led to this situation have been well discussed, so for the moment let’s move past that and examine what this league campaign has informed us about the team in terms of preparation for the upcoming Leinster Championship. It’s quite ironic that what has the potential to be one of the most catastrophic league campaigns in terms of consequences has in fact revealed much more about the team than any league campaign for quite a long time.

Playing Monaghan in Clones was always likely to be a difficult outing, but the performance of James Keane in marking Tommy Freeman was a revelation and along with Paul McConway, he has emerged from the league with his reputation most enhanced. Problems remain in the centre of defence, though Scott Brady did settle things a little when he came into the side after twenty minutes in that game. Joe Quinn has proved his footballing skill if not his aggression at full back – it’s far from impossible that those two players could end up swapping roles before the championship starts.

Midfield remains the conundrum that it has been for several years now. Alan McNamee is a good distributor of the ball and can be worth a couple of scores, but he is not the solution to the primary possession issue. Ciarán McManus battles manfully when forced to perform this role but he too would be much better employed sweeping up breaks and covering yards up and down the field as he has done for the county for so long. Several players have been tried in this area, but the message that keeps coming back is that we don’t yet have a player that can rival the likes Ciarán Whelan or Dermot Earley for fielding. Tempting though it might be to suggest that the county board tries the Mick O’Dwyer solution which is to find the right player in another county and parachute him in in dubious circumstances, instead lets hope that either the Minor or Under 21 teams in action right now can offer a long term solution.

Up front, we have learned that a half forward line cannot operate without pace – all too often we took the field with players who offered nothing by way of penetration because they were just unable to beat players. Niall McNamee is fast becoming one of the elite players in this country, but he needs to be able to offload, and an entire half forward line made up of players around 30 years of age with no fast break does not allow him to do that. One or two of these older players could be picked by all means, but to take the field without at least one of Thomas Coughlan, Seán Ryan or Aidan Keenaghan next summer will greatly reduce or scoring threat. What these players will also offer you is honesty in terms of doing their defensive duty. Good teams will punish you severely if you give them a man over anywhere on the field. They will continue to draw the defender and find the free player, so one player not doing his duty defensively, even in the full forward line, can have severe consequences. Several Offaly players deployed in the forward line this spring showed either a reluctance to track back, an inability to do so due to sheer lack of pace, or most dangerously a tendency to high tackle and get cards rather than chase and tackle properly.

Of course learning all these lessons is of little value if they are not acted upon on the 10th of June, but for the first time Offaly have an advantage in that we don’t need to be championship fit in early May, so it’s not unreasonable that the team has not been primed all Spring – however severe the consequences might be. One merely hopes that they’ll have enough in the locker to beat Roscommon and guarantee at least two bites at the Championship cherry this spring, along with a competitive league campaign next year.