“It’s no longer just winning the ball, turning and popping it into the corner forward…”
It used to be a lot simpler for classy playmakers like Paddy Kelly.
There used to be green grass to run into and space to bounce passes on. But in half a decade, the Cork star has seen everything change.
He’s seen the game change, he’s seen the Rebel county fail to change with it, and he’s seen his own fortunes change as injuries have ravaged one of the country’s brightest talents.
It’s not like he’s crying about it. Just explaining what he sees on a football field now.
“Those balls aren’t on anymore [for the corner forward] and, if they are, you’d nearly have to kick it out to the corner flag to find him,” Kelly spoke with Colm Parkinson on SportsJOE’s GAA Hour football podcast ahead of Cork’s Round 4 clash with Donegal on Saturday.
“The game has changed completely. It’s getting set up, the blanket is in front of you, and it’s recycling and it’s patience and it’s no turnovers, waiting for openings and going wide. It’s just very, very different. It’s not the game we grew up with.
“I don’t enjoy it as much as I used to, certainly not. That’s not to say that they need to change or whatever, that’s just the way it is. You still enjoy seeing the best teams. Dublin still go toe-to-toe pretty much, thankfully.
“The modern game, when you see a full forward like Conor McManus against Donegal, or Colm O’Neill and these fellas, you wonder where the game is going when they’re having to come out around the 50′ and 65′ to get on the ball and they’re not influencing games as much.”
Listen to the full Paddy Kelly interview (from 37:10) with Colm Parkinson on The GAA Hour below.
Whilst football is going through an expedited identity crisis, Cork is too as they try to keep pace but the 2010 All-Ireland champions are late to the party.
“The successful Cork team that won the All-Ireland, we would’ve been very much a man-on-man team, we pushed up on everyone but I think that team… we kept playing open football,” the forward explained.
“I know people would’ve been fairly critical of that team, saying we ran the ball too much from defence, that we were too slow with it and stuff, but around that time, the game started to change drastically.
“Against Donegal in 2012, they beat us in the semi-final, we went toe-to-toe and pushed right up on them and we were quite good in that game. We were level at half time and it was just for 10 or 15 minutes in the second half we started turning over a lot of sloppy ball around the 45′ and Donegal, as they do, ate us up.
“Since then, the game has completely changed. Dublin tried to go toe-to-toe with Donegal in ’14 and got caught out. But every team is just trying to go like Tyrone did against Donegal, match them style for style, or else find a happy medium like Dublin or Kerry with sweepers dropping back. We’ve probably experimented with everything and, over the last few years, just haven’t settled on what works for us.”
Listen to our GAA podcast with Colm Parkinson. Click here to subscribe on iTunes.
