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While I was sitting in my chair in RTÉ 's production room Sunday afternoon, I had a smile from one ear to another while watching Kilkenny and Galway go from the toe to the toe. It would be unusual in a match where Kilkenny was behind for long spells, but it was so refreshing to see the skill that I adore the most to perfect. The beautiful art of defending.
I have not seen such a level of defense for a long time. The two sets of backs went with venom, with real ferocity and fire, as they dominated each group of attackers. There was an abandonment to the way they attacked the ball on the ground and in the air. From the start, when Pádraig Walsh caught the very first ball in the square, there was an advantage and an attitude to defend throughout the afternoon. Pádraig grabbed it over Niall Burke's head – it did not matter to him that he was five or six inches tall.
One could see from Kilkenny's body language that they were pumped and swore to set the tempo of the first minute. Joey Holden had caught a high delivery. Paul Murphy stormed, won a free and jumped off the ground in search of his next victim. Kilkenny was there. Irritable. Hurting from Salthill
Catching, being the first to balloon, body position, defender's instinct. When they are perfected and played with the right mindset, who needs an extra advocate?
As a defender, when you're ready, it's a good place, as long as it's controlled. Your mental state is on it. Your chest is out and you look at the opposing striker as if to say, "What are you looking at?" You are insulted by the idea that someone will score against you.
On the other end, Galway had Pádraig Mannion hovering in the heavens – he was playing with an air of defiance. Dáithí Burke played and defended as he always does. All his behavior says, "There is only one winner here, I am the boss of this square and whatever I do, I take it and move on to something else." Send the next victim. "He is the man. For me, he is the best defender of the country – high or low, fast or slow, big or small, human or foreign.
Defending as unity
With Kilkenny, we have always defended as unity. We had a mantra – an honest mistake will not beat us. What we mean is that if you try to do the right thing as a defender all the time, an error will not matter in the bigger plane of things. If you are in front and you control a ball, someone will cover you and support you because we defend as a unit.
I remember matches when a runner escaped me and Eoin Larkin pursued him in our own square and dispossessed him. I would never thank him because that was what was expected of him. Remember, I could buy him a pint later just to make sure he continues to do it.
Defend, it is always be there for the other. When I had a ball, I knew that I had a defender nearby and another in striking range. You could smell them. You almost knew the breathing patterns of each other. If I heard heavy gasps behind me, I knew JJ Delaney was supporting me. We were so close that we could almost make out each other by the smell alone.
The two sets of defenses had the mantra of "not today" on weekends. The aerial duels at the stages were ridiculous. The bullets were drawn from the sky as if the boys were hastily stealing an orchard and they could hear the farmer coming. Anthony Daly missed superlatives next to me as we watched with admiration and open mouths.
This made me realize that the old values of defense are so important. Catch, be the first to the ball, the body position, the defender's instincts. When they are perfected and played with the right mindset, who needs an extra advocate? There were no sweepers in the Leinster final and the defenses kept at 0-18 each. Wexford opted for an additional defender in the Leinster final last year and conceded 0-29.
Sweeper
In all honesty, I think that using a sweeper for a throwing-eight team will not carry it. I think it's useful later in the food chain, or for a team that begins to want to consolidate its defense before moving on to bigger things. But looking at the peloton and the teams that left the Liam MacCarthy Cup in 2018, I can not see a team with a sweeper going to the end.
Teams with sweepers or seventh-tier defenders surprised traditional teams. hop in the past. But most teams have been working on how to play around her now. While this may work in one-off situations – perhaps as a tactic of horses for the courts from time to time – the further you go, the less you can afford it. You sacrifice too much scoring potential when you only play with five attackers.
Anyone who watched the defense between Galway and Kilkenny last Sunday could see that it is possible to keep the opposition on a manageable score just by pure defense. I'm not saying that everything is from man to man, or everyone is aligned in their positions as in the program.
Of course, teams like Kilkenny and Galway sometimes abandon the midfielders in defense or strengthen the middle with depth. lying in front. Johnny Coen, Conor Fogarty, Bill Cooper – they play the role of sitting in front of their central defender, looking at the space and the potential danger.
In the Munster final, Cork changed his defensive set at half-time. They did not use a sweeper, but they smartly got their half-line forward to drop and their midfield to fall deeper. This allowed Cork's half-goal line to fall and fill that space in front of John Conlon, knowing that their midfielder was within striking range of the man they were scoring. Cork took his bearings and removed the man from Clare's danger
Without a sweeper, they were still able to defend at one end while scoring 1-14 in 35 minutes at the other end. With a sweeper, you give up too much by removing a man from your attack to play in defense. Instead, the plan should be to straighten your opponents, defend as a unit of 15 and dictate the laws of engagement with a ruthless physicality.
Replay
Sunday's replay in Thurles should see more of the same. Galway is again favorite, but you can be sure that Kilkenny will come with a game plan based on the drawn game. Brian Cody has a good record in replays because of what he's learned from the previous game.
Whenever we were preparing for a replay, Brian always ensured that he had prepared the gameplan as soon as possible. When we drew with Tipperary in the 2014 All-Ireland Finals, we played an A-B game on the Thursday following the draw with Kieran Joyce in central defense. We had three weeks to kill before the resumption but he had no interest in playing some internal parts to see who would put his hand into play.
Bonner Maher had caused chaos in the drawn game and Cody s 39 was badured that it would not happen again. Joyce had not really played since earlier this summer in the Leinster Championship, but he was parachuted out of nowhere for this specific job. That's the plan, now we work on it and make it bombproof the same day. He ended up being the man of the match in the rebroadcast.
If the turnaround is tighter, as it is this week, the same rules apply. As the team recovers on a Monday, Brian and his coaches are studying the changes needed – which will come in, what worked and what did not work.
Mick Dempsey found two Monaghan women in Carlow IT a few years ago to work on statistics and they are essential in a week like this. I think we had a six-day turnaround for a recovery against Galway one year and the two girls stayed up all night so the stats would be ready for the first hour on Monday morning.
Gameplan
By training at Nowlan Park this week, they will have decided what Galway did well on Sunday and what Kilkenny can do to counter this. The gameplan will be clear. And most importantly, the players will have responsibilities to badume now.
Before this 2014 final draw, our defense had talked a lot about forcing Tipp to play long balls on the roof. from US. We basically said that they did not want to do that because our back-half line was very good in the air and that their game was more based on diagonal bullets in space and in before that moved everywhere.
remember that Brian told us about it directly at a meeting after the draw. As a result, our attackers and midfielder had exerted a lot of pressure and Tipp had been forced to deliver the kind of deliveries we wanted. We simply had not dealt with them.
"You were very confident that's what you wanted, guys," Brian said. "It was supposed to be your bread and your butter, you said it but you did not support it."
Brian Hogan and Joey Holden were dropped for rebroadcasting accordingly [19659002] Brian and the guys are very good at badyzing the parts, breaking down the facets into good parts and bad parts and working from there.Mostly, they know their players perfectly and are not afraid to make They almost never come back with the same team in a replay that they had in a drawn game.From this base, I would expect Kilkenny to make more changes for Sunday than Galway
Kilkenny will come up with a new replay plan, they always do, and they're good enough to beat Galway, we can only wait and see.
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