Diarmuid Connolly has slammed the modern trend of adopting defensive tactics in Gaelic football - and said that one 2015 Allianz League game was so bad that he questioned why he was even playing.
The ex-Dublin forward is part of a star-studded quartet with Lee Keegan, Sean Cavanagh, and James O'Donoghue for a Christmas special panel discussion on Gaelic football.
The GAA Roundtable airs on RTÉ 2 on St. Stephen's Day and it's set to be a fascinating broadcast, with some of the best footballers of the modern age debating various issues surrounding the game.
One of those topics, which gets countless hours of airtime every championship summer, is the trope of defensive football which enveloped the game early in the 2010s.
Largely credited to the rise of Jim McGuinness' Donegal, the game became more risk-averse for many teams, who sought to prevent their opponents from scoring rather than score themselves.
Speaking on The GAA Roundtable, Diarmuid Connolly lambasted the safety net with which counties tend to play in the modern game - and said that one 2015 league game against Derry was of such lacklustre quality that he questioned his love for the game at half-time.
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Diarmuid Connolly slates defensive football tactics
28 March 2015; Daniel Heavron, Derry, in action against Diarmuid Connolly, Dublin. Allianz Football League, Division 1, Round 6, Dublin v Derry. Croke Park, Dublin. Picture credit: Brendan Moran / SPORTSFILE
That 2015 game saw just 12 scores across the 70 minutes of football, with Dublin grinding out a difficult 0-08 to 0-04 victory.
Dublin's 2011 All-Ireland semi-final victory over Donegal (0-08 to 0-06) has gone down in infamy for the dire quality of football - but Diarmuid Connolly revealed on The Roundtable that the 2015 league game had been much worse:
I came in at half-time thinking, 'I don’t want to play football anymore’. That’s how bad it was. It was terrible, not enjoyable.
If we go around and start promoting that type of crap, it will stick. It has stuck. It stuck for about 10 years after Donegal did what they did. People adopted that because they got a bit of success.
St. Vincent's man Connolly explained his gripe with the defensive style of play, saying that the aversion to risk was not only tough on the eye, but also limited teams' abilities to sway a game:
What are players afraid of? Are they afraid of making mistakes? The whole game revolves around making mistakes and trying to make the opposition try to make mistakes so you can score. If you are risk averse in that scenario, what is the point?
Connolly would go on to say that he was grateful that counties such as Dublin, Kerry, and Meath have persevered with more expansive, attacking gameplans even against the backdrop of such conservative football.
The GAA Roundtable airs on RTÉ 2 and the RTÉ Player on St. Stephen's Day.
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