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Post by kerrygold on Jul 1, 2018 15:42:34 GMT
The Leinster hurling final is heavy slogging. Galway look like their heads are clued in. KKs limitations keeping Galway in it. I presume the Munster final was more fluent? I didn't see it.
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Post by Mickmack on Jul 1, 2018 16:35:08 GMT
Galway look like their heads are clued in. KKs limitations keeping Galway in it. I presume the Munster final was more fluent? I didn't see it. Much looser. A draw was about right. Cody will be delighted when he reads the stats for hooks and blocks. The two finals were starkly different.
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Post by Mickmack on Jul 1, 2018 16:40:28 GMT
Limerick could have a big say yet in 2018 .....after watching the 4 teams today.
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Post by kerrygold on Jul 1, 2018 16:40:42 GMT
Hurling must potentially be one of the best field games in the world.
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Post by glengael on Jul 2, 2018 6:50:28 GMT
I would forget the potentially, I can't think of anything else to compare. Cork rallied well in Thurles just before half time. Clare conceded free after free often fairly predictable frees if you follow me, can't expect to make headway when Pat Horgan is in town. That said they were unlucky a few times with calls that went the other way or when play was allowed to continue when a free was merited.
GAA change their own rules again and play a Leinster final in Thurles. The young man of the Buble's has to be accomodated in HQ of course.
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Jul 2, 2018 7:49:53 GMT
After 2014 they really shouldn't be booking gigs for days for replays.
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Jigz84
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Post by Jigz84 on Jul 2, 2018 8:05:25 GMT
Waterford are the big losers here with the GAA refusing them their preference to play their "home" games in Kilkenny this year with the excuse being that they had to select a Munster venue. They then selected Cork but that was also turned down by the GAA.
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Post by glengael on Jul 2, 2018 8:29:31 GMT
After 2014 they really shouldn't be booking gigs for days for replays. President of GAA on Morning Ireland this morn says he wants no gigs booked in future for July & August in Croke Pk.
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Post by Mickmack on Jul 4, 2018 23:03:27 GMT
A last minute goal by Galway won them the Leinster u21 final over Wexford by a point at the end of extra time. Unbelievable drama. Wexford got a goal at the end of normal time to send it into extra time. On TG4.
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Post by MrRasherstoyou on Jul 5, 2018 0:49:17 GMT
Anybody here fancy Cork to win Liam McCarthy this summer? Can't really see it myself, Galway will never get a better chance to do back-to-back, mind you I said that about Tipp last year and after their previous win! But no great Kk team in the way of Galway and Tipp gone. Not a great record against Cork in championship overall I think. Anyway still a few teams left in it......
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Jigz84
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Post by Jigz84 on Jul 5, 2018 7:56:39 GMT
I see that there's a crowd of 20K - 25K expected in Thurles for the Leinster Final replay. O'Connor Park in Tullamore can hold 20K .....
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Post by Mickmack on Jul 6, 2018 11:01:56 GMT
In 2017 galway won the league and kept in going all the way to winning the all ireland.
KK were off the pace in 2017 and were beaten by Wexford and Waterford.
Galway thought they had the hunger for battle in 2018 till they met a KK team who were simply ravenous for battle.
The drawn game was about both defenses being outstanding.
The losers play a resurgent Limerick in QF. The winners go to the semi final and avoid Cork.
KK have always tried to kill a team off early with a couple of goals "two shots to the head" was how Tomas o Se described it. They dont seem able to do that anymore to teams anymore but through sheer grit and bloodymindedness i think KK will win this.
Its going to be ferocious again.
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Post by Mickmack on Jul 7, 2018 8:19:13 GMT
Jackie doesnt mention KK once in this weeks article. In his book be says Cody often referenced Willie o Connor prior to the 2000 final v Offaly when Willie said "I am not prepared to die but i am prepared to kill". At times you recoil at some of the stuff in the book but its honest and gives a great insight in Cody. KK to bring war tomorrow? Jackie rectifies it this week!
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Post by Mickmack on Jul 7, 2018 8:19:59 GMT
Jackie Tyrrell: Kilkenny-Galway to show beautiful art of defending The always analytical Brian Cody will devise a new plan to beat Galway in the replay Fri, Jul 6, 2018, 07:00
As I sat back in my chair in the RTÉ production room last Sunday afternoon, I had a smile from ear to ear watching Kilkenny and Galway go at it toe to toe. This would be unusual in a game where Kilkenny were behind for long spells but it was just so refreshing to see the skill which I adore the most being perfected. The beautiful art of defending.
I haven’t seen such a high level of defending in a long time. Both sets of backs went at it with venom, with real ferocity and fire, as they dominated each set of forwards. There was an abandon to the way they attacked the ball on the ground and in the air. Right from the off, when Pádraig Walsh caught the very first ball lashed to the square, there was an edge and an attitude to the defending all afternoon. Pádraig caught it over Niall Burke’s head – it didn’t matter one bit to him that he was giving away five or six inches in height.
You could see from Kilkenny’s body language that they were pumped and had vowed set the tempo from the first minute. Joey Holden had caught a high delivery. Paul Murphy stormed out, won a free and jumped up off the ground looking for his next victim. Kilkenny were at it. Tetchy. Hurting from Salthill.
Catching, being first to the ball, body position, defender’s instincts. When they are perfected and played with the right tetchy mentality, who needs an extra defender? As a defender, when you’re tetchy it’s a good place to be, as long as it’s controlled. Your mental state is on it. Your chest is out and you look at the opposing attacker as if to say, “What you looking at?” You’re insulted by the idea that someone is going to score against you.
Down at the other end, Galway had Pádraig Mannion soaring in the skies – he played with an air of defiance. Dáithí Burke played and defended as he always does. His whole demeanour is saying, “There’s only one winner here. I am the boss in this square and whatever I dish out, you just take it and move on to another position. Send in the next victim.” He is the man. For me he’s the best defender in the country – high or low, fast or slow, small or big, human or alien.
Defend as a unit With Kilkenny we always defended as a unit. We had a mantra – an honest mistake won’t beat us. What we meant is that if you try to do the right thing as a defender all the time, a mistake won’t matter in the grander scheme of things. If you are out in front and miscontrol a ball, someone will be covering and backing you up because we defend as a unit.
I can remember matches when a runner got by me and Eoin Larkin would chase him down into our own square and dispossess him. I would never thank him because that is what was expected of him. Mind you, I might buy him a pint later on just to make sure he kept doing it.
Defending is about always being there for each other. When I had a ball I knew I had a defender close by and another one within striking distance. You could sense them. You almost knew each other’s breathing patterns. If I heard heavy panting behind me, I knew JJ Delaney was backing me up. We were that close we could nearly tell each other apart by smell alone.
Both sets of defences had the mantra of “not today” at the weekend. The aerial duels at stages were ridiculous. Balls were fetched out of the sky as if lads were hurriedly robbing an orchard and they could hear the farmer coming. Anthony Daly ran out of superlatives beside me as we watched in awe and with our mouths open.
It made me realise that the old values of defending are so important. Catching, being first to the ball, body position, defender’s instincts. When they are perfected and played with the right tetchy mentality, who needs an extra defender? There were no sweepers on show in the Leinster final and defences kept it to 0-18 each. Wexford opted for an extra defender in last year’s Leinster final and conceded 0-29.
Sweeper In all honesty, I feel that the use of sweeper for a top-8 hurling team will not win an All-Ireland. I think it is useful further down the food chain, or for a team starting off that wants to solidify its defence before expanding to bigger things. But looking at the field and the teams left in the 2018 race for the Liam MacCarthy Cup, I just can’t see a team with a sweeper going all the way.
Teams with sweepers or seventh defenders have caught traditional teams on the hop in the past. But most teams have worked out how to play around it by now. While it can work in one-off situations – maybe as a horses-for-courses tactic every now and then – the further you go, the less you can afford it. You sacrifice too much scoring potential when you only play with five attackers.
Anyone who watched the defending between Galway and Kilkenny last Sunday could see that it is possible to keep the opposition to a manageable scoreline just through pure defending. I’m not saying it’s all man-to-man, or everyone is lining out in their positions the same as in the programme.
Obviously teams like Kilkenny and Galway sometimes drop midfielders back to defence or bolster the middle with deep-lying wing-forwards. Johnny Coen, Conor Fogarty, Bill Cooper – they play the role of sitting in front of their centre-back, watching for space and potential danger.
In the Munster final, Cork changed their defensive set-up at half-time. They didn’t use a sweeper, but they smartly got their half-forward line to drop back and their midfield to drop deeper. This allowed the Cork half-back line to drop off and fill that space in front of John Conlon, knowing that their midfield was within striking distance of the man they were marking. Cork got their changes spot on and took out Clare’s danger man.
Without a sweeper they were still able to defend at one end while scoring 1-14 in 35 minutes at the other end. With a sweeper you give up too much by taking a man out of your attack to play in defence. Instead, the plan should be to get your match-ups right, defend as a unit from 15 back and dictate the laws of engagement with ruthless physicality.
Replay Sunday’s replay in Thurles should see more of the same. Galway are favourites again but you can be certain Kilkenny will come with a gameplan based on the drawn game. Brian Cody has a great record in replays because of what he learned from the previous game.
Any time we were getting ready for a replay, Brian always made sure he had the gameplan ready as early as possible. When we drew with Tipperary in the 2014 All-Ireland final, we played an A v B game on the Thursday following the draw with Kieran Joyce stationed at centre-back. We had three weeks to kill before the replay but he had no interest in playing a few internal games to see who would put their hand up for selection.
Bonner Maher had caused chaos in the drawn game and Cody made sure that wouldn’t happen again. Joyce hadn’t really played since earlier that summer in the Leinster Championship, but he was parachuted in from nowhere for this specific job. This is the plan, now we work on it and make it bombproof on the day. He ended up being man of the match in the replay.
If the turnaround is tighter, like it is this week, the same rules apply. While the team is doing recovery on a Monday, Brian and his selectors are working out what changes are needed – who’s going to come in, what worked and what didn’t.
Mick Dempsey found a couple of Monaghan women in Carlow IT a few years ago to work on stats and they’re vital in a week like this. I think we had a six-day turnaround for a replay against Galway one year and the two girls pretty much stayed up through the night to have the stats ready for first thing Monday morning.
Gameplan When the players arrived for training in Nowlan Park this week, they’ll have decided what Galway did well on Sunday and what Kilkenny can do to counteract it. The gameplan will be clear. And above all, it will be put to the players that they have responsibilities now that they need to carry out.
Before that draw in the 2014 final, our defence had talked a lot about forcing Tipp to play long balls down on top of us. We basically said that they didn’t want to do that because our half-back line was very good in the air and their game was more based on diagonal balls into space and forwards moving around all over the place.
I will always remember Brian bringing that up with us directly in a meeting after the drawn game. As it happened, our forwards and midfield had brought plenty of pressure and Tipp had been forced into the sort of deliveries we wanted. We just hadn’t dealt with them.
“Ye were very confident that this is what ye wanted, lads,” Brian said. “This was supposed to be your bread and butter, ye said this but ye didn’t back it up. Ye have to be accountable for it.”
Brian Hogan and Joey Holden were dropped for the replay as a result.
Brian and the lads are very good at analysing games, breaking down facets of it into the good parts and bad parts and working from there. Above all, they know their players inside out and they’re not afraid to make changes. They almost never go back with the same team in a replay that they had in a drawn game. On that basis, I’d expect Kilkenny to make more changes for Sunday than Galway do.
Kilkenny will come with a new plan for the replay. They always do. Whether they’re good enough to beat Galway with it, we can only wait and see.
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Post by Mickmack on Jul 8, 2018 16:58:40 GMT
Galway to meet Clare or Wexford in the semi which they will win if their heads are right like they were today. We know how good they are when in the right mood.
KK must get by Limerick next week. Will 3 games in 3 weeks derail them. Huge chance for Limerick.
You just have to admire KK for keeping going when being outplayed all over the pitch. Cody will be delighted with that. If they get over Limerick they will meet Cork in the semi final.
A clash of styles if ever there were one!
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Post by glengael on Jul 9, 2018 10:59:53 GMT
Only saw the last 15 mins. Galway closed out that game well. You could see the confidence that winning has given them, they just kept at it and taking their points. No panic at the missed goal , just kept on taking the points. Their ability to take the ball in the air and move it quickly and with purpose was noticeable.
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Post by glengael on Jul 10, 2018 8:56:35 GMT
Clare v Wexford fixed for Cork on a Saturday afternoon. Not very practical for either county.
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Jigz84
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Post by Jigz84 on Jul 10, 2018 10:05:08 GMT
Clare v Wexford fixed for Cork on a Saturday afternoon. Not very practical for either county. No and I'd swear the GAA stated a while back that the hurling quarter finals would go back to the one venue on the same day again this year.
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Post by Mickmack on Jul 10, 2018 10:14:39 GMT
Awful venue for Wexford.
A great double bill has been lost here.
PUC must have some deal to get QFs.
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Jigz84
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Post by Jigz84 on Jul 15, 2018 7:25:16 GMT
Only 10K in Cork yesterday. What a kick in the hole for the GAA. Madness that it wasn't a doubleheader in Thurles.
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Post by Mickmack on Jul 15, 2018 8:54:47 GMT
Only 10K in Cork yesterday. What a kick in the hole for the GAA. Madness that it wasn't a doubleheader in Thurles. People voted with their feet. Proper order too. Wexford didnt turn up at all. Clare v Galway semi now presumably. Around Tubber and Gort this will be huge. Bragging rights etc.
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Post by Mickmack on Jul 15, 2018 22:54:11 GMT
KK must get by Limerick next week. Will 3 games in 3 weeks derail them. Huge chance for Limerick. You just have to admire KK for keeping going when being outplayed all over the pitch. Cody will be delighted with that. If they get over Limerick they will meet Cork in the semi final. KK were heroic again today and in defeat you just have to admire a team dying with their boots on. Limerick were fresh while this was KKs third week out. They might have been better off if the lost to Galway the first day. I have just spent the past hour watching the tape of the game and what an antidote to the non event in the football earlier. Limerick will give Cork plenty of it. Its a wonderful chance for them to reach the final. The two semi finals are on the same weekend...a saturday and a sunday..which is a great bit of scheduling for hurling fans wanting to make a weekend out of it.
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Post by glengael on Jul 16, 2018 9:50:01 GMT
2 cracking semi-finals in prospect, 2 local derbies. Hurling really has been the story of the summer. 3 Munster teams in the shake up but possibly not the 3 people were expecting.
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Post by Mickmack on Jul 17, 2018 8:29:45 GMT
I think DJ Carey only played one two championship games outside of Croker.
This has always been a huge advantage to KK.
Now that they are losing Leinster semi finals and finals they are finding themselves playing in of all places Thurles. And a poor record they have tooin Thurles.
In 2017 they lost to Waterford in extra time and in 2018 they lost to Galway in the replay of the Leinster final and Limerick dumped them out last sunday.
Thurles is nearly a home venue to these Limerick lads as they have all played numerous u21 games etc there.
KK were not given a fair shake in Thurles by the ref last sunday. They have every reason to be cross.
Near the end and a point up one of their players was virtually assaulted yet no free was given...the ball was cleared and Limerick equalised. A two point swing. Limerick tacked on two points to win..one a soft free in.
There were other instances too when KK got short changed by decisions.
Pure home town stuff.
It wouldnt have happened in Croker.
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Post by glengael on Jul 23, 2018 9:49:37 GMT
At least we have a respite from the dreariness to look forward to.
Cork v Limerick and Clare v Galway should be some occasions.
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Jigz84
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Post by Jigz84 on Jul 24, 2018 13:14:19 GMT
At least we have a respite from the dreariness to look forward to. Cork v Limerick and Clare v Galway should be some occasions. 35000 tickets sold in Limerick already this week!!!
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Post by Mickmack on Jul 24, 2018 22:37:50 GMT
Clare v Galway. Galway dont score many goals but can hit 25 points. Clare do possess a goal scoring threat but Galway have the best defence of the final four. Clare will need at least 2 goals to win it. Galway showed v KK that they are up for battle. They will need that hunger again.
Limerick and Cork drew a brilliant game in Munster but Limerick had a man sent off. Maybe its the heart ruling my head but i think Limerick have a huge chance. The only caveat is lack of Croke Park experience.
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Jigz84
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Post by Jigz84 on Jul 25, 2018 10:32:44 GMT
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Jul 25, 2018 10:37:05 GMT
Moreover that fellow has no psych training whatsoever as far as I understand. A bluffer might be unkind - but he is going well beyond the remit of a mental health advocate here.
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Post by Sons of Pitches on Jul 28, 2018 9:10:41 GMT
Both all All-Ireland semi-finals in July, it'll take getting used to.
Expect lots of slipping on the Croke Park turf after today's rain.
I'll go with Galway and Limerick.
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