How do you beat the blanket defence?
This has been a question that has troubled GAA managers at both club and county level for a few years now and it goes without saying, the conundrum has proved a difficult one. However there are two aspects those involved in the game always seem to agree on; spread the play as wide as possible and don't clog up the centre channel.
By doing this teams hope to stretch the defence and thus create little channels for strike runners to hit at the right time and create a scoring a chance. If a player hangs around the scoring zone too long they'll not only be impossible to find with a pass but they can also crowd out those very channels their teammates are trying to create.
While this creates a nice image in our mind's eye, Peter Canavan and James Horan went one step further, during Sky Sports' coverage of the Dublin V Monaghan All-Ireland quarter-final, by showing us this tactic in action.
Monaghan have numbers back but Dublin are so good, so patient and their movement is so good that Monaghan aren’t getting a hand on them.
Explained Horan while highlighting Dublin's width and patience in the first half, before Canavan brought us through a set-piece the reigning All-Ireland champions carried out to perfection, direct from the throw-in,
So right from the throw-in there is obvious movement, there is a plan but the two men that go out; Mannion and McManamon they stay out, and the idea of that is, if they get the ball in a one on one situation but if they don’t there is space and gaps down the middle and the other point that we noticed during the game, any of their inside forwards are crossing the goals or are in around the middle sector, they don’t stay there, they are always on the move.
Fascinating stuff.
You can watch this and the rest of Talking Points Episode 9 below:
