“He’s doing it for years and nobody seems to know what he is doing.”
Stephen Cluxton played his first game for Dublin 17 years ago. Back then, kick-outs were frequently pumped long and it was up for the midfielders to scrap over.
Times have changed and counties, and clubs, have whole game-plans built around winning kick-outs, retaining possession and sparking attacks. Cluxton is widely acknowledged as the finest proponent of GAA kick-outs and while many have tried to mimic the Dublin captain, Cluxton remains the standard-bearer.
Colm Parkinson was joined by Galway forward Damien Comer and Monaghan goalkeeper Rory Beggan on The GAA Hour and (from 1:12:00 below) they spoke about how Cluxton has changed the game. Comer and Parkinson both noted a swift Cluxton move that works a treat, and that TV cameras often miss.
“With Cluxton,” Beggan said, “he’s going to get his kicks away and, against Dublin, they have five or six guys inside your 45 and they have the ability to tear you open.”
Comer and Parkinson both spoke about how TV cameras are still showing replays when Cluxton is getting the game going again. The Annaghdown club-man said:
“With Cluxton, and we’ve seen as much ourselves, the ball would be going over the bar and he’s putting another one on the tee to kick out. And, like, you can’t squeeze that.
“Unless you have some chance of slowing down his kick-outs… there were times during our games that we tried changing it up with different tactics – manning the front of the kick-outs to block a bit of vision for him and marking from the outside – but they always seemed to have a spare man coming from… wherever he was coming from!
“I don’t even think Dublin have a tactic on their kick-outs. Their backs are just told, ‘Move’. And by them moving, they’re making space.
“He’s doing it for years and nobody seems to know what he is doing. It’s off-the-cuff stuff.”
The game has moved on from 2011, when Beggan, he modestly claims, was picked for Monaghan’s U21s solely because he could boom the ball 65 and 70 metres down the field. “If you’d asked me to pick out someone in the pocket, I’d have struggled,” he says. “The game has moved on since then.”
Without divulging too much of Monaghan’s kick-out strategies, Beggan remarked, “If you don’t know where the kick-out is going, other teams are not going to know where the kick-outs are going.
“You’re just trying to pick out the best man. If it’s being risky and you win it, great. You’ve probably bypassed a couple of players. But if there is a man on, 20 yards away, and you give him the pass it is the same thing – you have possession of the ball. That, realistically, is what it is all about – possession of the ball. And it’s about what you do after it. You can talk about winning kick-outs all the time but it is about what you do after it.”
Cluxton missed a couple of kick-out connections in the first half of Dublin’s All-Ireland win over Tyrone but soon found his groove. He finished with a kick-out retention rate of 29 from 31.
Whether that was finding Jonny Copper with a 20 yard chip or picking out Jack McCaffrey on the run, up the left sideline, Cluxton was dialled in. Sometimes the TV cameras caught his kicks but, like the Tyrone players, they missed a fair few.
