That doesn't take away from what they did in their previous three games, particularly the Moorefield performance which I felt was simply superb. It's just a pity that they
went from one extreme to another. Calling a spade a spade when it comes to Sunday's game doesn't equate to running them down in my book.
I would like to pick up on another point that's been made in this thread a few times however, with comments like this:
Chris wrote:....and despite the positive talk coming out of Rhode jin the lead up to the game, I think it was obvious from the tactical set up that they were in awe of Vincents.....
timber wrote: The fact that they had withdrawn 4 of the forwards deep meant that they had to work the ball out of defence to around the middle of the field and be accurate in kicking long. The kick passing was terrible. And midfield was controlled by Vincents which meant Rhode could not have a platform for the likes of Darby, Heavey and Byrne to play to their strenghts. I hate seeing Anton so far out the field. Of course he burnt a few vincents players with pace out there but where was he going to realistically go. Beat one and two players and slip and have 5 on top of him in a flash. Hes a player who should be close to goal winning frees and being dangerous.
(In fairness, I agree with most of this post)first_touch wrote: And, as Bracknaghboy so rightly pointed out, very negative tactics which totally backfired.
bracknaghboy wrote: Dingle quite rightly pointed out the obvious during the week, that being that scoring 1-6 this time around wouldn't be enough to secure the Leinster title.
Then why on Sunday afternoon the team is set up in such a way that they managed to reach a mere 66% of that figure?
The tactic of withdrawing Anton & Pauric Sullivan, Glenn O'Connell and at times Niall Darby in the first half beggars belief. It left just McPadden (who in these conditions will struggle to win his own ball) and Niall McNamee who was not only marked by his own man but had another 3 Vincents defenders in front of him. Any ball Niall got to he was then surrounded and any ball that was broken from him was mopped up by the 3 spare defenders. Most long balls kicked in were into the waiting arms of the loose defenders. Oddly, despite having men pulled back into defense Rhode were opened up to the point that Vincents were walking straight through at times.
The bottom line is that pound for pound Vincents were always going to the better team. Therefore, allowing their defense to have a 5 on 2 numerical advantage is going to ensure that Rhode scores will be scarce. Its a surprise they managed a score at all in the opening 25 minutes.
Garrycastle had a cut at Vincents and exposed them defensively so Rhode had to try the same and that meant keeping Anton closeish to goal and maintaining shape on the half forward line.
Now I'm not saying that Rhode were right or wrong to play the way that they did, however in Offaly people tend to have a deep seated dislike of anything other than old fashioned man on man long ball football, and woe-betide any team that loses a match playing defensively. I remember when Paschal Kelleghan's under-21s lost to Louth in Navan a few years ago I was accosted after the game by two prominent football coaches, both of whom were essentially saying "I told you so" to me, after I praised Kelleghan's approach in my columns up to that point. One man even talked about how Kerry never played defensively, and that they were the best footballing county in Ireland so every team should be modeled on how they play.
That's all very well when you're Kerry, but not everyone has the best players in the country and you have to cut your cloth to suit your measure. Against Pats, Navan and Moorefield, Rhode had the better players and so they could play their normal game. Against Vincents, they didn't, and so they had to try something. It didn't work, possibly due to lack of preparation, but I wouldn't castigate them for that. The inability to execute basic passes however, or the tendency to crowd around Connolly so he had a myriad of options to pick out with passes was different, that was a skill and discipline failure.