The 16th Man

IF WE were to believe all that has been written and spoken about Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final, it was the day that football nearly died.

In 2003 Pat Spillane coined the term Puke Football as he watched his beloved Kerry being systematically dismantled by a fitter, hungrier, better drilled Tyrone side.

At the weekend there was talk on the Sunday Game of ‘Armageddon’ and ‘the game from hell’ and it was considered a good thing for football that Dublin won.

Had Donegal come out on top there would have been a clamour for a change in the rules to limit the number of players allowed in the defensive half of the field.

But what the experts are completely missing here is that football is a game of tactics and systems.

Good managers come up with systems to win games. Jim McGuinness believes the best way to win, or perhaps not to lose, is to play eight defenders and get 14 men behind the ball at times.

It’s then up to other teams to come along and break them down - just like the Dubs eventually did yesterday.

Donegal’s style of play is set up to stop other teams from playing.

Its limitation is its lack of ambition, meaning they will always struggle to beat better teams as long as they don’t commit more bodies into attack.

This was only Donegal’s seventh-ever All-Ireland semi-final appearance and this year marked just their sixth Ulster title.

There’s no guarantee that they’ll be back at this stage again next year and it’s hard to see them going any further without significant changes to the game-plan.

If they don’t achieve more success their system will quickly be forgotten about and the outrage will all be proven to be exactly what it is - so much hot air.

Puke Football turned out not only to be effective, so long as you have players like Tyrone had in the last decade, it is also pretty attractive to watch when done right.

Systems are like fashions in that they come and go and each in turn seems to spark outrage from pundits who played themselves in some pretty unattractive games.

Don’t let anybody confuse you - football wasn’t great to watch in the seventies, it’s just that most of it wasn’t televised.

The way Donegal play isn’t a threat to the future of football and the Dubs didn’t save the GAA.

They merely played in a match that was an intensely poor spectacle and one that will be long forgotten when the All-Ireland final comes around in three weeks time.