I’ll never forget one of the first pieces of advice I was ever given as a Gaelic Footballer.
I was late joining the club, I was about to turn 13 that summer and was starting my first game at number 2 – possibly the only man to ever show up to a team and declare, “I am a right corner back”.
If you want a place, be strategic.
It had come from a love of Derry player Gareth Doherty. The flame-haired Bellaghy Gael might not be as well known around the country as his younger brother Fergal but, in the corner, he was tighter than a championship haircut. He was sharp on his feet, he might’ve been a good foot smaller than his kinsman in the middle of the park but he had the shoulders to match him and, by God, he was game.
So I’m ready for this under-14 clash, I’ve gotten the jersey, I’m about to do the Doherty name proud and I’m geed up even more by a coach who was treating this first round Féile qualifier as the end of days.
“Defenders, f**king listen to me,” he was literally frothing at the mouth.
“I don’t ever want to see a gap between you and your man. Hands on him, all the f**king time.
“I want you to be able to tell me the colour of his underwear.”
You don’t forget words like that in your first competitive club match. Extreme, maybe, but they were pretty damn effective. It made my job simple – I had a player to mark, he was my responsibility and if he got loose, it was my fault. So I stuck with him, shoulder to shoulder, sometimes I didn’t even bother looking at the ball.
I don’t even think I got a touch that day but I was singled out afterwards as being one of the best players, an example from the management that you actually don’t need to do anything with the ball to be the best player. Apparently. My only regret is that I never got the colour of his pants.
You’re not supposed to give forwards space. You’re not supposed to make it bloody easy for them. And you’re not supposed to whine when someone brings battle on you a little rougher than you’d like it.
What manager in their right mind would ever ignore someone like Diarmuid Connolly?
Every defender is told to play tight, they’re told to play with aggression and bite, and they’re each given a job – a man. Any failure to do that job, any negligence of their assigned forward has a direct effect on the losing of the game and the ending of a season.
So there are boundaries and defenders are well within their rights to push them. They’re well within their sanity to do that and any coach who tells you they’d prefer a back standing off an attacker, keeping his hands off him – for the purity of the game – is a plain liar. Well, either that or they’re just a shite manager.
Yet you have former Dublin players – players who played hard, players who pulled and dragged and players who got damn well stuck in – coming out during the week in the build-up to the All-Ireland final replay and they’re almost painting Lee Keegan as this vicious cheat. They’re making it out as if he isn’t doing an absolutely spectacular job at silencing what is probably the most talented man in the country.
- “Lee is getting away with more than he should be…” (Alan Brogan)
- “I think Lee is conceding his footballing ability by pulling and dragging rather than pitching himself against him [Connolly] as a footballer…” (Paul Clarke)
- “If someone is constantly pulling and dragging at you and the umpires or referees aren’t going to take some sort of action, eventually you have to stand your own ground…” (Ger Brennan)
Ciaran Whelan, of course, talked about how referees need to look for the ‘instigator’ on The Sunday Game before they proceeded to show clips of Connolly and Keegan grappling (that grappling, incidentally, occurred after Keegan nudged the forward who then reacted by grabbing hold of the Mayo man’s jersey).
Pillar Caffrey was said to be giving his tuppence worth on the same matter on the radio and the worst thing about all of this isn’t the moaning or the bias or the attempt to redefine what a defender is, it’s that it actually could work.
Referees can be swayed by this kind of campaign, even subconsciously.
Think about it. Keegan fouls Connolly early on, the two of them are on the ground or whatever; Maurice Deegan isn’t blind or deaf; he’s heard all the rigmarole around the pair over the last two weeks and the last three years and he could see it as an opportunity to put down a marker. The reputation precedes them, Keegan could be punished for something he’s not even done.
Two years ago, I was coaching the club under-16s, we reached the B final and we were well aware of the opposition’s strength – a midfielder who’d run through 15-year-olds like they were a breath of air. So we put our best man-marker on him, moved the usual midfielder back to half back and told the man assigned that particular job of watching their main threat that he had no other role. Nothing else.
When he got the ball, he was to pop it off and go straight back to his man. Nothing else.
When they were attacking, he was to follow his man. Nothing else.
It didn’t matter if their player sat on his own 45′ with no interest in joining the play. Our man was to follow him. Nothing else.
And this guy was a good player with a lot to offer but, in this particular game, he had more to offer doing a job for the team.
He was targeted though by the opposition dugout. They complained to the ref the whole game that he was fouling, that he was ‘pulling and dragging’, that he wasn’t letting him play when, actually, he was completing his job to absolute perfection. It didn’t matter, come the second half, come what was his first foul of the game – his very first, I’ve watched the tape – the ref came sprinting over, pointed to three different areas of the field as if this had happened already and he dished out a yellow card more enthusiastically than he ever has.
It was his way of showing that he was on top of the situation, that he was aware of what was going on, even though nothing was going on. Maurice Deegan is a much better referee than that man but these campaigns can get to an official – any of them: the umpires, the linesmen, the meetings that may or may not take place in the build-up to a replay.
They can hear the kerfuffle and feel like they have a duty to address it.
Listen, as a footballer, Diarmuid Connolly is my favourite. Physically, he’s got it all, he’s way more selfless than anyone gives him credit for and he can do things with a ball I couldn’t even dream about.
But there’s no getting away from the fact that Lee Keegan is doing an excellent job on him. It’s confrontational, it’s aggressive, and sometimes it spills over. It’s exactly what every one of us would instruct our best man to go out and do if we faced off with Dublin and the beast that is Connolly.
It’s exactly what we should be lauding, that ability to keep arguably the best player in Ireland on the periphery.
It’s exactly the sort of challenge Diarmuid Connolly should be thriving off.
It’s a defensive masterclass. It is.
Where were these guys when Philly McMahon was under the microscope?
This is a battle for the ages and it shouldn’t be taken away by a few ex Dubs looking to make things easier for themselves in the replay.
What Lee Keegan is doing is unprecedented and it is brilliant. What they’re doing is almost pathetic.
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