An old friend appeared the other day, out of the clear blue sky.
The same lad hadn’t been seen nor heard tell of since we were kids. Oh, we talked about him, of course we did. Never forgot him. You’d be in conversation the odd time at a match and there’d be loose chat that somebody, somewhere had caught a glimpse of him the previous week. But the God’s honest truth is that we all presumed he was gone for good.
There couldn’t be a way back for him, not with the way things were. He was too wild, too messy, too careless. We all know how the world works. It’s great to have a wild card around the place when everybody’s young and dumb and responsibility-free. But reality comes gunning for us all eventually. You’ve got to grow up and get with the programme.
So our old friend disappeared. Became a pariah, really. You couldn’t even bring him up in polite society without getting a dirty look or being told you were embarrassing yourself. And who wants to be that person? You liked him well enough but not so much that you were prepared to look like a simpleton defending him.
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But now, out of nowhere, he’s everywhere. He’s letting it all hang loose, like Lazarus doing the limbo. In the past fortnight alone, he’s turned up in the most unlikely places. Killarney, Castlebar, Ballyshannon, Dublin. He’s back, back, back. Everybody wants a piece of him.
Well, nearly everybody. There’s still a crowd of lads who want nothing to do with this buck. They don’t trust him, they don’t think they need him, they basically want to keep doing their thing without him. Truth be told, they’re happy enough that everybody else seems so delighted to have him back. Ask them on the QT and they’ll roll their eyes and tell you it’ll all end in tears.
Bad cess to them. Maybe they’re right and maybe they’re wrong. But if you’ve been at any matches over the early rounds of the football league, you have enjoyed watching our old friend come back into the fold.
Did you see him at the end of Kerry v Roscommon, when Seánie Shea went in search of Kerry’s last chance? Or early in Mayo v Dublin, when Ryan O’Donoghue collected the ball in midfield and sent a skyscraper into the full-forward line, for nobody in particular? Or the previous week in Salthill, when Mattius Barrett caught a weak clearance and returned it high and long and hopeful?
More to the point, did you see what happened each time? Success, that’s what happened. Magnificent, long-lost, hupyaboya success. Tomás Kennedy leapt like LeBron and twisted himself to flick the winning point for Kerry. O’Donoghue’s ball was such a lottery spin that it actually bounced in the Dublin full-back line, sparking pinball chaos that eventually led to a David McBrien two-pointer from the top of the arc. Barrett’s punt into the mixer fell nicely for Fionn McDonagh to rifle home.
And yes, obviously it’s hit-and-miss stuff. Plenty such kicks in the opening fortnight came to the square root of shag all. Kerry spent a fair chunk of the second half last Sunday letting high balls into the square, hinting at a weakness in Jim McGuinness’s defence without seriously threatening victory. But nonetheless, Donagh O’Sullivan’s late goal came amid the mass panic caused by a Seán O’Shea Garryowen. Something is happening.
Now that everyone has had the winter to scheme and concoct, there are noticeable changes in approach. Teams are pressing higher, they’re going more man-to-man, they’re creating increased two-point efforts. And some of them – not all, but some – are clearly deciding that it’s worth venturing a few high balls in around the square and seeing what happens.
Of the Division One teams, Kerry, Mayo and Galway definitely aren’t thinking twice about it. They’re collecting ball in midfield and getting it forward as quick as they can. Sometimes that’s a dinked kick pass up the line but sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s just a good old-fashioned up-and-under, trusting their inside men to go and win the thing or, at worst, to break it down for scraps.
It’s such glorious throwback stuff, an Oasis reunion for the Would Ya Just F**Kin’ Drive It crowd. Now that teams can’t really afford to have a sweeper, the thinking seems to be that it’s a fair fight under a high ball again so there’s little enough to be lost by trying your arm with a 50-50. The tyranny of possession retention at all costs seems to have relented, at least for the early weeks of the league.
Of course, it might not continue to happen. For all we know, it could be the kind of thing that flickers and disappears in an instant, like subliminal advertising. We might be sitting around in the summer waxing nostalgic for the bygone era of early February, when men were men and size five O’Neill’s balls rained from the sky.
But none of that matters right now. What matters is that all those years and years of fastidious, paranoid possession football appear to be ebbing away. Football is finally loosening its tie and opening its top button and dancing like the stats Poindexters aren’t watching.
Lorry it into them, lads.
