GAELIC SPORTS WORLD Issue 23 – April 10, 2015 | Page 52

BUT STALL THE DIGGER
Following Round 7 of the Allianz League, the negativity is gone and football is not dead after all.
TOMMY MORAN
APRIL 6, 2015
The Allianz Football League had reached the end of the Group
stages in each division with only Cork, Fermanagh, Armagh and
Longford certain of progressing further. One or two knew they
were facing the relegation zone, while quite a few had much to
play for. Could be a place in the semi-finals or finals or for promotion or to improve their scoring totals or just a bit of pride to
finish reasonably high in the table. The League certainly has to
be a very even competition for most counties when such a scenario exists. What a pity, come Championship time, that we will
be back looking at whitewashes in the various provinces – maybe not in Ulster where there seems to be a better overall balance.
The standard of play in so many games over the last few weeks
has given rise to a wave of negativity and talk of the death of
football as we know it. We had seen teams failing to score from
play for almost a full half of the game, managers admitting that
it wasn’t pretty but they had secured the two points, other teams
getting a whipping in games they expected to win, pedestrian
type of play, poor contests, unhappiness with the standard of
play, teams taking too long to find their rhythm, fifteen or sixteen wides and several shots dropping into the goalies’s arms,
forwards going forty minutes without even a point from play or
from frees, feeble responses from teams, shocking gulf in quality between sides in the same division, players lacking in spirit
and what have you. Worst of all was instances of teams being
booed off the field because of boring play from blanket defences,
with only the occasional foray up-field to attempt a score. For
the spectators it was like watching a game of chess. But it has to
be said there were good games too, indeed many of them in the
lower divisions, so it wasn’t all bad.

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And, better followed as blankets defences or no blankets, we had three dozen goals at the weekend. Seven in
Division I, ten in Division II, no less than thirteen in
Division III and another six in Division IV.
If you throw in the result from a thrill a minute Eirgrid Connacht Under 21 Final, where Roscommon and
Galway fired in three apiece, then the onion bags were
surely shaking all over the country. Grit, determination,
passion had spectators on their feet and reacting as if it
were the middle of the championship. Certainly no signs
of players, managers or teams being unconcerned about
the results.
But the weekend brought regrets too, with some losing
out on scoring difference and others pinpointing games
they should have won that would have made all the difference. There’s no going back now, what’s done is done,
so the minds of most county teams are now focussing on
the Provincial championships that are but a few weeks
away. Others of course look forward to semi-finals and
finals berths with a double-header in Croker next Sunday
when Cork and Donegal and Dublin and Monaghan face
off in the Division 1 semis. In other divisions it’s final
time at the end of the month with Down v Roscommon
in Div II, Armagh v Fermanagh in Div III and Longford
facing off against Offaly in a midlands derby in Div IV.
A team to watch this year might be Roscommon, or Fermanagh, or Armagh.