Darragh Ó Sé: Fear doing football more harm than defensive systems ever will

Fear is a terrible thing on a football pitch. There’s been a lot of talk about how defensive football was the cause of the poor quality of the Connacht final but I think anyone watching it will tell you that’s only part of the story.

The problem on Sunday wasn’t that the players all set up the way they did, it was that none of them was prepared to break out of formation to go and win the game. Fear kept them in their box.

I’ve been saying this for a while now. The problem with Gaelic football these days isn’t that teams are setting up defensively. It’s that they’re doing it badly. And they’re doing it badly because they’re scared of doing anything else.

Players are playing to a script laid down by managers and those scripts are just dripping with fear. Teams are basing their gameplans around a fear of what the opposition will do to them.

That is no way to live. It’s certainly no way to play football. It kills imagination stone dead. It turns players into box-tickers. It means teams that are filled with guys whose possession stats are off the charts, who never give the ball away because they never try to do anything with it. Throw in a bad day with a greasy ball and you get what we saw in Sunday.

Galway and Roscommon have both been on the wrong end of a couple of annihilations over the past few seasons so I can understand why they would want to be more cautious. But part of me would also be thinking, "So what if ye got a hiding or two in the past? Ye got plenty of wins too. At least ye weren't afraid of your shadow."

It’s one thing not to have the quality. But it’s a far worse thing to have it and keep it locked away. Watch Donegal and Tyrone this Sunday. Both teams will set up defensively but neither of them will play with fear. They will play with speed and intensity and conviction.

People give out about handpassing. There’s nothing wrong with handpassing – as long as you’re doing it for a reason. As long as you’re doing it to put a runner into space. I don’t even mind the odd handpass backwards as long as it’s to somebody who is on the move and looking to switch the play.

But this carry-on of handpassing to a fella five yards away and jogging back around behind him so he can play a five-yard handpass back to you is chronic stuff. It’s buzzword football. Transition, set-up, recycle, rotate, restart, blah-de-blah-de-blah. And the common thing running right the way through it is that curse of being afraid to do anything different.

Honestly, I don’t think players buy it. I think a lot of them are letting on that they’re okay with it because they want to stay involved. Think about it – you grow up playing football and if you’ve reached intercounty level, then you’ve probably been one of the top two players in every team you’ve played in. Why were you one of the best players? Because you were the one who did things differently to the rest.

But now you’re at the top end of the game, everything is being decided for you. The goalkeeper chips it short to the corner back, he takes a few solos before passing it to the wing back who has come back down the pitch to meet him. The wing back has a man up his backside – probably the opposition’s one attacker – so he lays it back to the corner back who goes sideways and the whole thing starts again.

Inch by inch, we get to midfield where we meet the opposition’s half forwards – all two of them, wearing 13 and 15. The whole move has taken enough time for the opposition to fall back in big numbers so we’re left with a totally stagnant game. The ball keeps circulating, the opposition holds their position and meanwhile we’re all getting older and some of us don’t have as many years left as we’d like.

Players aren’t stupid. They know this is pointless stuff but they also know they have to be seen to be buying into it or they won’t start the next day. And the one thing worse than playing in a team paralysed by fear is watching it from the dugout. So you muck in and do your bit.

You make sure you’re seen to be doing it too. Plenty of talking and organising and pointing. Especially pointing. The next time The Sunday Game shows a kick-out from the camera behind the goal, watch for the amount of lads pointing. Both teams, forwards and backs and midfielders and managers and selectors and supporters, all showing they’re tuned into the gameplan. And then the goalkeeper chips it to the corner back and we go again.

It all comes back to fear. There’s nothing a manager is more afraid of than being seen to be without a gameplan. There’s nothing a player is more afraid of than being seen to be colouring outside the lines. Make a false move and you’ll get excoriated on TV and ridiculed on social media. So you toe the line and recycle the ball and loop around for the return and wait for armageddon.

Fear makes everything so tentative. When you are tentative on the pitch, the seconds tick away. On a field with 30 players, the instinct of every player on the team without the ball is to close down space. So naturally enough, the more tentative you are, the less space you are going to see in front of you.

But the problem is, bravery in that situation doesn’t come with a guaranteed reward. Let’s say you’re not tentative. Let’s say you decide to hell with it, I’m moving this ball quickly as soon as I get it. Let’s say you do that and you play a long early ball into the full-forward line but it doesn’t come off. What are you going to do the next time?

This, to me, is where the management come in. It’s all fine and well watching Roscommon and Galway the last day and hammering the players for not having a go. But were they allowed to have a go? Or were they worried about the dressing-down they’d get at half-time if they kicked a couple of loose balls into the full-forward line? They’ve spent the last few months putting in defensive systems so you have to ask how free do the players feel when they go out on the pitch.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with defensive football or defensive systems by themselves. The problem arises when you don’t have the players to suit. I presume I’m not the only one whose heart sinks when the ball is thrown in for a club game and immediately you see two sets of half forwards sprinting back down the pitch to get into formation.

Packed defences in club games are the worst of the worst. If you think there’s fear at intercounty level, you should see some of the carry-on at these club games. The principles are the same – managers afraid to be shown up as spoofers, players afraid to be dropped for not following instructions. So it’s basically the intercounty game without the fitness or the quality. That’s why it’s a style of football that has such a bad name.

The Connacht final didn’t do it any favours either. But I really think that’s down to the fear on show as much as the systems. Watching Galway and Roscommon on Sunday, I was waiting on somebody to just cut loose. Be prepared to lose the ball. Trust the skills they’ve spent a lifetime developing. Kick it long and trust the man inside to do something with it. Deviate some way from this endless, dreary, no-risk football.

Every boy in Kerry grew up watching The Golden Years video and when you strip the great Kerry team down to highlights, they’re incredible. But if you ever watch those games in full, the amount of lost possession would amaze you. Balls kicked away, kick-outs lost, sideline balls hoofed forward. You could easily do up a highlights package of some very ropey football, by modern standards.

Of course, the game is very different now. When any manager takes over a team, it’s like they’re taking charge of a raft. The first thing they do is pull the ropes and tighten the knots to make the thing more solid. Cut out any looseness. Nobody free in front of you when you’re taking a sideline ball? Kick it backwards. Full-forward marked? Dish off another handpass. Risk nothing. Feel the fear and don’t do anything.

So what we have is a fleet of sturdy, well-made rafts and all of them are safely tethered up to the dock. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon because everyone is too afraid to let them out into the open sea.

It’s a game of fear and it’s boring everyone to death.