Dr. Crokes v Crossmaglen

Was at game yesterday and I have to say Crokes threw this away.. Individually they have better players than Cross. However they didnt work as hard as Cross. Also the crokes sideline was poor.. How Quinn was left on Clarke is beyond me, roasted for every ball and clearly didnt have the speed to keep up, Fitzgerald who was excellent would have done a far better job.. Brosnan was magnificent and was one of very few to take the game to Cross. If more took his lead crokes would be in the final

You're spot on, Crokes play a hybridised game between basketball and football.Fair play to Cross they are some team and some club an example to the rest of the country.

here is my bit i agree with you mozzy, im a coach in kerry and the training courses we hold in kerry are very poor in the north they hold courses every second weekend.. on every aspect off the game down here we are blessed with having natural footballers and a very well organised county league... championship is poorly run in gerneral too much space between games. so i spoke to a county officer one day and said to her that they should run loads of courses for coaches who in turn will benifit from it and take it back into the clubs and in turn we develop good coaches and good players and she said developments squads are the way forward. so its better to hold 3/4 coaching courses a year and hold development spauads where you help 30/40 players but if you put more money into the coaches who take it back to the clubs you help hundreds of players also the crokes game shows how we as coahes lose it on the side line from not having the knowledge to counter act decisions in a game.. i remember a few years ago kerry were playing down i think in tralee and the games was 8 points all and the kerry player had a sideline kick and all they did is hoof the ball into the square and hope for the best you would think that a team who train 3/4 nights a week would have to plan or a move to make space to get the ball to a player who could get a score besides a hoof

There is an excessive focus at underage level , and senior level too, on handpassing drills. I even see under-10's on a Sunday morning doing handpassing drills. Madness

You could spend a lifetime trying to perfect your kicking off both left and right. By the same token, I think you could teach someone with reasonable co-ordination how to handpass in about half an hour. I would say the ratio of handpassing drills to kicking drills during teams training (in Kerry anyway) is about 90/10.

Teaching a young fella how to kick the ball properly would be far more productive than any handpassing drill. You could ban handpassing drills until senior level and it would be no major loss in my opinion.

As the Lord Almighty Pat Spillane says, let's put the foot back into football!

I had a feeling that the 3 or 4 bad wides that Crokes had in the first half would cost them. They died at midfield in the second half. Quinn was roasted, couldn't understand how he was left on Clarke. Also why didn't Crokes leave Cooper inside with Doolin? They were getting plenty of ball but Cooper was too far out the field to cause real damage. The better footballing team won in the end.

Eoin Brosnan was the best man on the pitch by a distance.

Calmed down a bit now and have watched the game a few times in the calm of victory. For 20 minutes, as has been said by everyone, Dr Crokes were very good. Their game plan of holding the ball up and having Buckley, Daithi Casey, O'DOnovan and in particular Brosnan making driving runs through the centre was very effective. However, the reality is that this game is very is very labour intensive and the repeated tackles that the runners take means that they are worn out very quickly. The 2 MFs and Caey in particular faded very badly and once Titch came on the launch pad for this was lost. The reality is too that in that period the Crokes got 3-4 very crucial refereeing decisions, the square ball goal, Ambroses excavation to pick up a ball which let to a point and there were 1-2 very dubious frees which allowed the to keep the ball in the Cross half, one in particlular against PK. We were fortunate once or twice as well, in particular a jersey pull by Titch should have afforded a 21 yard free which would have been scored.

Of course we all know what happened in regards to Oisin taking responsibility. I want to ask a very simple question, why could Cooper not do what Oisin did at the end of the first half when the Crokes needed him? We often see lists of the greatest forward of the last 30 years etc etc. Invariably the top 5 generally are Canavan, Maurice, Gooch, Joyce, Trevor Giles. You will then have the mentions for Mattie Forde, Dessie Dolan, Donnellan but rarely Oisin is seen as the top class forward in the same class as these men. I know I am biased, and I know he has been surrounded by great players, but he has been the fulcrum of the county team and the club team for years and is far from simply a free taker. His point to kick start our comeback was brilliant. He took it on himself to drive at the Crokes defence and was noy afraid to do it. This is a man of 36 with probably over 400 games at all levels to his name and he still has the drive and ability to do that. I have read on numerous forums that Crokes had better footballers but we were just a better team. I personally believe that if you went man for man on ability wise we would come out on top in over half the positions.

The sending off was wrong and frankly if, for talk sake Aaron Cunningham did what the Crokes man did, which he nearly did against St Galls (ie coming through late and frontal), there would have been uproar with the dirty cynical northerners tag being thrown up. The reality is that in a fairly clean game that didn't have a bad tackle the only instances of "cynical" play that I saw were this follow through on SK and the Gooch going down like he was shot when Oisin fouled him. It was a fould but why did he feel the need to tuck his legs under himself and spin around other than to emphasize the fall and draw a card.

The Crokes,by the time the game was really in the melting pot, were a spent force. The had no leadership in the forward line, outside of Brosnan there was no drive around the middle and he was noticebly less forceful in the second half, and the defence were chasing shadows. They were overkicking balls into the forward line and we were picking up a lot of lose ball and you'd swear we had the extra man. On several occassions Skinny, PK and Paul McKeown picked up stray passes. Gooch dropped balls, and on at least one occassion O'Leary was in his own full back line picking up the ball. This was of no benefit to Crokes.

buck02, I would take issue with you assertion that our FB line is very ordinary. The Crokes "star" FF line scored 2 points from play and all 3 have played for Armagh at every level. If anything I would say this is the strongest FB line the club has had in years.

Anyway, onto the final. Garrycastle have a very tight unit and play a very simpl style. Leave room for the 2 Dolans in the forward line and work the ball into the best position for them and Mulvihill to pick off scores. They work exceptionally hard and in Dessie have a special player. We will need Danny O back, Titch fully fit and SK to have his card lifted. We will of course be favourites and that in itself can bring problems but the management are the best I have ever seen at taking boys down to the ground after a big win. Another factor is the experience of playing in the Final. That in itself is invaluable. So long as we focus on playing our own game and do not underestimate Garrycastle then we can win but not easing up as some have suggested.

From my understanding, Buck was talking about the Crokes full-back line.

Misread you there buck, fair enough point.

When was the elbow woth Oisin, was that when he and Brosnan were wrestling over the end line? I know something happened but didn't see it. He never deserved a yellow for the Gooch tackle so maybe one balances the other out. Training is tough that's true but nothing prepares you fully for championship football like matches. I think that is one of the reasons Crokes had the better start as they had competitive football up to January whereas we were relying on challenges.

All came down to experience again. Cross controlled d tempo of d game when they got into the lead and showed great heart to go straight down the field after Bradys goal to get one of their own.
Who in earth was marking A. Kernan seemed to b in acres every time he got d ball - granted he is a top class player but give him time on d ball and you're going to lose.likewise the marking of Jamie Clarke
Compare that to the close attention Crokes forward line got when anywhere near the ball.
Crokes put in a great effort tho and I suspect thats as close as any team will get to Cross this year.
Think all kerry teams could learn from d marking jobs done by the cross back line..

Some consolation for Crokes fans is that they can get all the segregation they want on their armchairs at home on the 17th March!!

JUst there has crokes facebook and social media broke down because whern they won any match this year they had every paper report from around the country on it also every little bit on facebook now since they lost the game the last day nothing nothing thats why people dislike teams like this they shove everything into teams face when they win but go hiding when they lose you must show the good and bad sides when doing social media.

I dont understand how people can be this bitter! I am friends with Crokes Gaa on facebook and if you check their page (that has the team lining out for the national anthem for the UCC game as their profile pic and NOT any of the other pages titled Dr.Crokes or Dr.Crokes Gaa because they are pages set up that are not run through the club) and then you will notice how wrong you are! It gives clear updates and acknowledges that Crossmaglen deserved their win, also twitter account gave updates regularly and showed no bias whatsoever! The bottom line here is that crokes are a victim of their success and this is the only reason that some may dislike them!

On the game it was quite clear where the game was won, Crokes main performers in the forward line didnt turn up! Kieran, Colm and Brian Looney were off their game and Looney should have been taken off earlier for Brady, Looney backed out of 2 or 3 balls which should not be happening at this level! Jamie Doolan and Andrew Kenneally were their best performers in the forward line and this was rare considering the other forwards! I would have put Fionn on Jamie Clarke and moved Quinn to the wing where he played for a good part of the last few seasons but it is understandable why the lads on the line did not make this move as it would have disrupted the whole balance of the team especially with Buddy Leary already playing in the half back line! Brosnan has been outstanding all year and just seems to get better and better with age!

On occasions the following is entered at the base of some comments
“Talent wins games. Teamwork and intelligence wins championships”.
There was little teamwork from Crokes. How do players spend their time training? I mentioned this previously but the Crokes half forwards and midfielders cannot tackle. As a result the Cross half backs and midfielders were PASSING the ball into their forwards. That put the Crokes backs under severe pressure and most comments are critical of the Crokes backs where it was further out the field that the problems were created.

On the other hand ALL the Cross forwards and midfielders were tackling the Crokes players with the result that most of the ball going into the Crokes forwards were clearances rather than passes.

Were the Crokes players as fit as they should be? They looked as if they were muscle bound rather than being athletic. On other forums comments stating that certain Crokes players were in line to compete for places on the Kerry team but sadly I didn’t see any players likely to make the break through.

I only saw the Crokes/Cross game on TV, but I was in Croke Park for the Inter game Milltown Castlemaine (MC) V Davitts and I must say that MC were far better prepared than Crokes. MC had teamwork, they got most of the breaking ball, they could tackle and because their half forwards were tackling, quite often one of the defenders played in front of his forward.

The killer for Crokes was when they went in a half time only two points up. They had bossed 25 of the opening 30 minutes and looked anything but naive, unfit, etc. up until that point. It must have been a bit demoralising to be only two points up at that stage. They were playing a team that, given their experience, were never going to panic or question themselves. Cross, rejuvenated by their good fortune at only being two points down having hardly made an accurate pass all day, were always going to come strong after the break. Added to that, I think the wind was probably more difficult to play with as it didn't really effect scoring but seemed carry a lot of balls in over the end line, especially for Cross in the first half. There was also a blinding sun facing Cross, in particular, in the first half. Crokes only real 'spell' in the second half came when the heavy hail shower occured. At that point they got level and were up a man with roughly seven minutes remaining if memory serves. The game was anybodies at that stage and if the next score was anything but a Cross goal we could have been looking at a different result, as Crokes had their tails up at that stage. A game of two halves between two fairly evenly matched teams, but as always the winner takes all and the loser is left to face a lot of (probably undeserved) critisism. Very few are talking about how poor Cross were in the first half.