Evolution how basketball skills could become a feature of gaelic football

 

The way it is.....Anthony Moyles

Recently much has been spoken about the current state of Gaelic football and the fact that we may be seeing the death of it. The fact is that we may be seeing the death of something all right, but it is not football. All sports go through gradual progressions. Some are aesthetically good for the game, some not so. 

We are currently in a period where the defensive tactics deployed by some teams and discussed here and elsewhere have left a lot of football fans frustrated. But just like the game and indeed the managers of teams, these fans must evolve.
The days of fans roaring “let it in” or “kick it long” and maybe something a bit too colourful for printing here are over. Supporters have got to realise that sometimes teams have to go back to go forward. The team just like the supporter, has to be patient.
It used to amaze me that supporters would get frustrated if you went sideways (not even back) with a ball when I played for Meath. Some teams had worked us out and had deployed sweepers in front of our full-forward line for many years. The teams that didn’t, got punished, the teams that did, either lived with us or beat us. Take Kerry in 2009.
Kerry’s midfielder Seamus Scanlon on that day stood in the middle for the throw-in and kick-outs and then spent the rest of the game in front of Tommy Griffin and Joe Sheridan. We won a mountain of ball that day against Kerry, but unfortunately we kicked a lot of it down Tommy and Seamus’s throat.
What had worked against Mayo in the quarter-final backfired on us in the semi and we lost a game that we could have potentially won.
This was not the only reason for the loss with terrible conditions definitely not helping our style of play or Tommy Walsh coming off the bench to give me a torrid time, but when you hold Kerry to 10 scores you should/could be in with a shout.
Supporters have to realise that the days of free-flowing attacking football where defenders are left one-on-one with opposing forwards are over.
Goalkeepers who used to being lauded for having the longest kick-out in the county are no longer top of the pecking order. Neither is the “bean pole” midfielder who can win kick-outs with ease, but who is not athletic enough to get around the pitch at full pace for 70 minutes.
No longer do we have a full-forward line who only ever cross the 45m line to change at half-time. A lot has changed and will continue to change.
I have spoken here before about the fact that managers have to be brave and accept this evolution and look at ways to beat it. There are ways, and I do believe the long term success of a team comes from being positive and playing positive.
With this in mind a lot of talk lately has been centered on teams seeking assistance from sports outside of Gaelic. Basketball seems to be the game in vogue at the moment. I can see the reasons for this as in basketball, teams use players in various ways to try and unlock very tight defences. The one drawback here is that these basketball players have been developing these skills since they were kids.
They have excellent hand-eye co-ordination and their ball control is exemplary. Their appreciation of space is also unparalleled and they are used to having bodies around them in very tight spaces and working within that.
GAA players since they were kids have been told the opposite. To get into space. To make space. They are used to creating space by avoiding contact and traffic. So this appreciation of the skills will take time and has to begin at an early age if teams are to become very comfortable with the suffocating ploy of blanket defences.
The aspect of basketball that I think could be enormously positive for Gaelic football teams is how they use every re-start in their game. Whether it’s a point guard bringing the ball down the court after a score or rebound or re-starting from a personal foul, basketball players have pre-planned moves for practically every situation.
Not only this but they have back up moves just in case the pre-planned move has been worked out by the opposition or they just did not manage to execute it first time.
People have argued that football is too off the cuff and is too manic for it to be broken down into plays like basketball or rugby. This may well be true for the most part, but Gaelic football has a massive amount of stoppages and only recently teams have begun to use these to their advantage.
Look at the recent emphasis on kick-outs. As mentioned before no longer is it the remit of the goalkeeper to boot the leather off the ball, but it is now about guaranteeing possession as much as possible and restarting the game retaining the ball.
Look at what Stephen Cluxton has done for the last number of years for Dublin in this regard or Paul Durcan for Donegal. If I was an under-age coach with a good goalkeeping prospect I would have him working on kicking the ball out with both feet so he could become equally adept from either foot and so be able to disguise the direction of the ball until the last second, it should not stop at kick outs.
The smart managers are using every break in play. Sidelines, free-kicks and throw-ins to a lesser degree. On average an inter-county football game has two to four throw-ups, 12-15 side-line kicks, 40-50 free kicks and about 55-60 kick outs. These can obviously vary depending on the openness of the game, but it just shows how many times that a team has possession of the ball with no opposition player able to interfere with them until the game is re-started again.
This I believe is the next area of evolution in Gaelic games.
Strength and Conditioning coaches have become massively important to teams (as they should), but skills coaches and people who can devise strategies around these specific plays or periods in the game will become ever more important.
Most teams score an average of 14-16 scores in a game. If you could ensure 50 per cent of these from pre-planned moves you would go very far to winning most games. Can this be done?
Well why not! Basketball players do it every week and that is even with opposing teams pouring over hours of video footage to work out how teams screen players and set up attacks.
All it takes is time, working on the moves, but this is where teams run into trouble. Professional teams can do their fitness, strength and conditioning and general training sessions every day and then apportion out time to work specifically on these pre–planned plays.
GAA managers and players are trying to work all of this into a week as well as resting, eating, hydrating and, oh yes, working a day job!
So can it be done and will it become a vital tool within a team? I think it will.
I remember a few years back we went to Portugal on a training trip. We trained twice a day as most teams do, but we spent a good portion of one of the daily sessions working on these moves.
We developed strategies for sidelines, free-kicks and one particularly profitable one from the throw-in. This simply involved tapping down the throw-in to the waiting midfielder who hand passed the ball to the forward surging centre-half-back.
He then kicked the ball over the opposing centre half back’s head and into the space that had been created by the full forward line moving towards their respective side-lines. If the full-back did not move then fine, but as long as the incoming wing-forward got onto the ball first and was running straight down the middle the worst result you would get was a point.
This ploy worked a number of times for us during that year, but then a few teams worked it out and we had to change it. The fact was, it was simple and it got us scores practically every time. One move one score.
People who do not change stay the same and this is exactly the same for football. The game IS evolving and I think we will see an increased emphasis on skills over the next few years within the game.
It is nearly a given now that you are an athlete first and foremost within an inter-county team. The stand-out players in the future will not only have this, but will also able to execute great skill with and without the ball.
Planned moves will become more important as managers look to break down blanket defences and get their scoring threats onto the ball and goalkeepers and outfield players will do things in the next 10-20 years that we could not even dream of now. That is gradual development. That is evolution.