If you don’t want it, you won’t get it.
You have to be tigerish, you have to be bloody minded, you have to bloody well want it.
We always hear managers in their post-match interviews claiming that the other team “got the breaks today, the ball just always seemed to break to their men today, and there’s not much we can do about that,” they claim.
These comments often pass without question, but should we actually take them at face value? Does the ball, on some days, just magically drop at the feet of one team and not the other?
Derek McGrath claimed after Waterford’s Munster semi-final loss to Cork that the ball broke to Rebel lads, and that was the key part in them winning the game.
“The ball was breaking to Darragh Fitzgibbon, Bill Cooper, (Luke) Meade, (Conor) Lehane coming deep into the area,” he said to the Irish Examiner.
It’s not only McGrath, though, nearly every losing manager says it, and the winners do, too.”We were lucky to get the breaks today.”
It’s doesn’t come down to luck.
Not a chance of it. Yes, of course, players can make it look easy, and some players have absolutely mastered the art of being in the right place at the right time, but that’s because they’ve made the important run.
They’ve made that run quicker than their marker. They’ve been focusing on the pall, they’ve anticipated where it was going to drop.
They’ve done the work on their first touch. That’s not even a worry for them come game day.
That’s why they’re the ones that “get” the breaks. They’re hungry for them, they need them, they’re insatiable.
Kilkenny midfielder Conor Fogarty is one of the best in the business at getting onto them breaks in the cauldron that is the midfield section in inter-county senior hurling.
He does it so often and so consistently that it would be a crying insult to him, if you just put it down to him being “in the right place at the right time.”
The Érin’s Own club man was speaking to SportsJOE recently, and he puts his ability in foraging for the dirty ball down to determination, down to wanting it more.
“It’s an important part of the game. It’s determination. You want to win it, and you want to be in them rucks competing.
Fogarty, a teacher in Coláiste Éamann Rís, Callan, County Kilkenny feels that the importance of winning the breaking ball is only going to get more and more important in an increasingly physical, tight game.
“It’s going up another level now, there’s more and more rucks in the middle of the field with every game,” he said.
That’s the most important part of it. Because when you win the ball, there’s 28 other lads on the field who want it. You’re in control, you can relax, you have the power.
“It’s just about making sure you get there before your man does, because then, when you have possession, you can do something good with it,” he concluded.
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