#TheToughest Topic: Ciaran Kilkenny doesn’t need to be a hipster favourite – he’s a much better footballer than that

At the moment Ciaran Kilkenny is the ultimate hipster footballer.  “Kilkenny controlled the game,” I hear them say, sipping their craft beer.

People who don’t understand the game think he’s playing great because he’s on the ball all the time. Even one of RTE’s best analysts, Ciaran Whelan, fell for it on the Sunday Game.

What is he doing with all his possessions though? When does he try a risky pass to unlock the opposition defence or do anything positive?

All I see him doing now is hand-passing sideways to a teammate, demanding the return and hand-passing sideways to someone else. All the while he’s pointing at fellas, telling them where to run. This style has only recently developed and Jim Gavin needs to cut it out of him. He’s a potential superstar and his all-round game is so much better than what he’s showing us at the moment. This new style has become more obvious since his move to the half-back line.

To be fair to Kilkenny, it’s a new position and he’s having to find his feet there in massive games. He needs coaching and guidance. In the modern game the skill set required when transitioning from wing-forward to wing-back is almost identical but both positions are nuanced. You need to make the position your own and that comes with practice.

When I moved from wing-back, where I played all my underage football, to wing-forward, it took me a few months before I figured out exactly how to play the position for me. I watched Brian Dooher and tried to copy his style – it didn’t suit me, too much running. Then I tried to play like Paul Galvin but I was awful at winning breaks. Wing forwards usually get sucked in under breaking ball so after a while I decided I wouldn’t go in there at all – what was the point when my man usually won the break?

I decided to hold my position on the 45 and when the ball was won in midfield or when someone else won the break I’d be alone on the half forward line in lots of space. Then I broke infield into the space and was open for a pass. I never went back tackling either; I held my position on the half-forward line and made runs from there. This all developed through trial and error.

Kilkenny doesn’t have time to figure all this out. Wing-back poses a new set of questions: Do I put my man on the back foot by attacking all the time or do I mark him? Do I drop off my man if he goes too far and cover my full-back line? Do I run the ball or do I deliver long ball into the full-forward line?

Kilkenny is trying to figure all this out against Donegal, Kerry and Mayo in high pressure games.

From what I see Kilkenny is trying to be some sort of soccer-style midfield general from wing-back and is slowing the game down. This is Gaelic football – playmakers make plays – they don’t hand-pass sideways and look for the return. He needs to be more direct – get on the ball, play a one-two to get past midfield and get that ball into his full-forward line. He’s well capable of doing that. His stats might show he gave the ball away a few times but what creative player doesn’t give the ball away?

Kilkenny slowing the game down suited Mayo’s tactics on Sunday. They didn’t play a full-time sweeper but dropped a lot of bodies back into defence when Dublin attacked. The slower Dublin were with their build-up, the better chance Mayo had to get back into their defensive shape.

This might all be irrelevant for the replay of course because James McCarthy will be back and Kilkenny will revert to his more familiar half-forward role but there’s a good chance Jim Gavin will move him at some point.

McCarthy was very unlucky to get the line on Sunday; he was silly, not cynical. There are too many offences punishable with a black card and referees are confused. It has made a difficult job more difficult. Let’s narrow the offences down to two –

1. Body checks, which the black card has succeeded in wiping out, and…
2. BLATANT professional fouls. These should be very obvious fouls where a player has been denied the opportunity to break free at goals or a counter attack.

A lot of the discussion around Sunday’s All-Ireland final has focused on how Mayo won’t have a better chance of beating Dublin. I don’t go along with that. How about Dublin might never have a better chance of beating this Mayo team?  They were given a six-point head start and still couldn’t beat their rivals.

LISTEN: Is Ciaran Kilkenny playing up to possession stats? https://t.co/a0YLUasNB0

— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) September 19, 2016

If Mayo were given a six-point head start and allowed a three-point lead slip away in injury-time they would be slated. Given Mayo’s record in finals they had so many opportunities during the game to throw in the towel but they didn’t. They deserve an awful amount of credit for that.

To be fair the Dubs are great champions and have been there, done that so they are rightly given a pass for a bad day at the office. I said in the build-up to the game that this is a cup final between two great rivals – form and what has gone before goes out the window and that was proven to be the case.

I also said you can’t out-point Dublin in Croke Park – Mayo went and scored six more! I went on to say that you can’t concede goals to Dublin in Croke Park and expect to get anything out of the game – Mayo scored two goals for them and still drew.

Nobody knows what’s going to happen, but as we saw on Sunday, it will be another day for taking risks. Ciaran Kilkenny should embrace that.

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