Part 2: The Event

As post mortem's go....

My analysis of the game has the beauty of have 20/20 hindsight vision!

So..........where did it all go wrong?

Firstly, I'm fed up of people saying Dublin are too good, machinelike and were only little Louth.

(If that was the case why do get out of bed in the morning!!?)

My point is, It didn't matter who the opposition was, we were not playing to our own Maximum and well below standard!!!!

Because, We are not that bad or half as bad as we looked!!

In fact, We made Dublin Look good

And here's how

As I said in the 4W before the game, 

we needed to be 100% accurate and importantly have maximum Concentration.

well, we didn't have 50% of both, We missed early Chances and sloppy passes lead to Dublin scores.

However lets go beyond stating the blatantly obvious.

Keeper of the Revolution

Sunday, Neil Gallagher showed how good of a shot stopper he was, making some fine saves and if it were a decade ago he'd be an all star contender 

but 

it's not a decade ago. 

Goalkeepers effect on the modern game is growing more and more.

They set the tone, pace of the game and determine possesion as well as keeping goals out.

You now think I'm going to compare Gally to Cluxton which would be unfair as Cluxton is the main reason for Goalkeepers increasing influence on the game today!

So I'm going to focus purely on Gally it just so happened that Cluxton was the other end.

Gally has an accurate kickout, his kickouts on sunday had good intention's. he wasn't just smacking them down the middle in hope. 

He was trying to pick Louth men out by pinging the ball on top of our half back line, all good.

but they were too easy for Dublin to Defend.

Why? What was the reason for this?????

SPEED!

Just like quick free's, Kickouts are very hard to defend against if you are not set or ready. The pass doesn't even have to be that accurate because the opposing team is not set.

The average time from when the ball went over the bar to the moment it left Gally's foot was.....?

30 SECONDS!!

Considering we had 33 Kickouts, (Dublin scored 24 times and hit 9 wides)  average of 30 seconds add it all up thats 16 and a half minutes out of 70 wasted kicking out the ball alone!!!!! 

More Devastatingly though,each Delay meant that Dublin could take a breather, get back into position and set themselves up in a perfect position not only to compete for the next kickout but to win them or at least pin us back by breaking the ball forward.

  

The fact that Gally was trying to play a modern style slowly meant The kicks were were only going as far as our half back line.

So on top of not getting possession we were even struggling to get out of our own half!

So we were basically Choking ourselves in our own half.

Therefore making it easy for Dublin and very hard on ourselves.

Start as you  mean to go on!

 

Don't get me Wrong I'm not blaming Neil Gallagher for the entire hammering.

Unfortunately for Gally, in goals his lethargicness is in Full Focus as he can't hide like many others out the field. 

But it doesn't help when he'd rather give out to players than give them quick possession and get Louth moving again.

Which was a real pity because we did win and could have won more possession Ronan Carroll, Paddy Keenan, Derek Crilly, Jim McEnaney all able to and did fetch ball in transition, Plus Gally has the accuracy to pick them out also!!!

Sadly, When we did get into their half, we caused them problems and created goal chances. just not enough to compete or to give us the platform to win.

In the end, the kickouts just set the tone of the day, no real urgency about us, lest we dare to dream of winning and putting it up to Dublin.

A further extension of the standards instilled by Management perhaps.

PART 3 tomorrow :The FUTURE!!