Style wars dictated by material to hand

Kevin McStay tells Seán Moran tactical trends can be matters simply of expedience

Another Kerry All-Ireland final and another gear change in football's tactical outlook. Over the years the game's most successful county has been centrally involved in debunking or falling prey to prevailing fashion and the current era has been no exception.

Look back at recent years. Kerry were serially undone by the intensity and crowded cover of Joe Kernan's Armagh; Tyrone's swarm defence and quick-transfer support play; and just last year a futile attempt to play Mickey Harte's side at their own game.

In between all of that, the current manager pulled a tactical rabbit out of the hat in the 2004 final against Mayo by reaching for tradition's manual and bombarding Mayo in the air, a simple approach the Connacht side were simply unable to counter.

"In the final I felt we'd be stronger overhead," the Kerry manager, Jack O'Connor, reflected. "That suited the players we had. But we'd tried it against Dublin (in that year's quarter-final) and it didn't work because they dropped players back in front of their full backs so in the second half we had to play a shorter-passing game."

Contained in that summary are two of the key considerations in identifying changing trends in football. Firstly style in sport is just an expression of the players available and secondly the emergence of trends is often a function of caprice.

"Everything seems to have to be pigeon holed," says RTÉ analyst and former Mayo All Star Kevin McStay.

"Sometimes there's no reason. It's just championship; it ebbs, it flows. If Armagh had got another score or two at the right time, they had Kerry beaten. If that had happened there'd be no trend and no argument about it."

The trend this time is the putative return to prominence of the traditional catch-and-kick style. The amount of high fielding this championship has been noticeable, whereas Kerry's urgent reshuffle after the Munster championship has given the game and tomorrow's final an old-fashioned, go-to full forward.

Kieran Donaghy's height and reliable hands have revolutionised Kerry's attacking options and suddenly the risk factor has returned to the game, as the team's centrefield and half forwards are free to let early ball fly in toward the edge of the square, for the full forward to either attack or lay off to Colm Cooper and Michael Russell in the corners.

Is it, though, a new era? The GAA's director of games, Pat Daly, isn't rushing to conclusions. "You can read too much into it. Teams play to their strengths. According to perception, there are constraining elements and liberating elements in football. Tyrone would be seen as a constraining team whereas to the purist Kerry is the liberating force reviving catch and kick.

"But Tyrone have simply been playing to their strengths and capitalising on the weakness of opponents. As long as Darragh Ó Sé has been playing for Kerry the team has retained strong elements of the traditional game.

"It is also fashion. My first All-Ireland was in 1966, the last of the Galway three-in-a-row and people thought it a compelling match but for a contemporary audience the reaction to all of that 'blast and lash' would be, 'how did they watch it?'

"When a guy has the ball, he has four options: carry it, pass it, shoot or play it into space. Playing it into space used to be the first option but became the last option until Kerry started using it as the first again."

There is a technical development that explains part of the resurgence of high catching at centrefield. The option of a kick-out tee for goalkeepers became available in last year's championship but it is only now evolving into a permanent aspect of the game.

Former Roscommon goalkeeper Shane Curran has developed three tees to suit different requirements from straightforward length to shorter or lower trajectories, particularly into strong winds.

Teeing up the ball, as has been mentioned by Limerick manager and respected Kerry coach Mickey O'Sullivan, has produced greater elevation in kick-outs and so placed a premium on the ability to get up and catch ball that now hangs longer in the air.

Kerry's Darragh Ó Sé, his likely direct opponent tomorrow Ronan McGarrity, Cork's Nicholas Murphy and Ciarán Whelan of Dublin have all made a major impression in the air in the past few months.

Moving the ball quickly, McStay believes, has been partly born of the need to circumvent the crowded midfields and choked-up defensive alignments of recent years.

"Mayo had a sense that to beat the blanket-defence teams they'd have to get the ball in quicker. Kerry obviously worked out the same thing," he says.

When Mayo's management of two years ago discussed how to approach Tyrone, the need to pull back the half forwards and leave space for the inside line was obvious, says McStay, but the finessing of that logic to the selection of a big full forward didn't occur - for the good reason Mayo lacked a Donaghy.

Whatever about theorising, McStay believes tomorrow's final will please purists.

"The counties have an innate style. Mayo play a certain way. It can be a bit flaky at times but it's a natural style: wing play and soloing. At best it's very open; at worst you're going around in circles. That wouldn't change - even if Joe Kernan came to coach them."