LAST FRIDAY I visited Galway city for the first time since August, having accepted a role with the club’s media team.
Bohemians were in town, though it seemed as if nobody else was. Galway is arguably the coolest city in the world (no bias there); to see it become a tumbleweed of ghosts and people locked up in their homes, even around a year into the restrictions, was shocking.
My spirits were not long in lifting after I arrived in Eamonn Deacy Park, despite a downpour and gale consistent with the city’s position by the wild Atlantic Ocean. I couldn’t help but reflect on the weather being strikingly similar to my first Galway United game – a 1-0 win over Cobh Ramblers in 1997.
My buddy, Julian Canny, who I met the day of the Good Friday Agreement – otherwise remembered because we were at an away game in the RSC – has been doing some research of late. He found an extant match report of that game against Cobh, which meant more than it should have to a man turning 40 next year.
Anyway, it quickly became apparent that if John Caulfield has done something a bit special in the west, volunteers are flooding to the club at the same rate he used to bring right-backs to Turner’s Cross.
Around 20 people have offered their services for free to the club this year in the media team alone. It is said that folk at Connacht Rugby are amazed by this: that such a spirit can exist without anything tangible in return.
As I was introduced to various people, I saw a young woman doing an interview with Lisa Fallon, a high-profile addition to the United coaching team. It has been a systematic failure of the League of Ireland that crowds have been so male-dominated since time immemorial; at rugby and Gaelic games, you see a lot more of a gender balance in the stands.
The young woman turned out to be Miss Ireland finalist, Laura Martin, who is actually originally from Cork but living in the west for the past three years.
“I’m giving some of my time to Galway United because I want to give something back to the community,” she explains, “and with a background in sport I knew it would be an opportunity to grow my skills and profile.”
Getting involved with a perennially underachieving First Division club as a means to better yourself isn’t the League of Ireland I used to know. Laura will do wonders for the club this season.
I helped Bohs out with some live updates from the friendly game and, having been messaging Daniel Lambert, their chief operating officer, he wasn’t long revealing his excitement at another impending announcement the following morning.
Bohs were quite brilliantly described as “the league’s very own Greta Thunberg” by Neil O’Riordan in The Sun this week. Even those with a soft spot for the club are happy to have a laugh about where it is going, but what Bohemians have become is no laughing matter. Only Bohs could do it.
“An unusual combination,” wrote Eoghan Moloney in the Irish Independent, “but one of Ireland’s leading rock bands, grammy-nominated Fontaines DC, will feature on the front of Bohemians’ jersey this season in a joint-bid to tackle homelessness.”
The Irish Times’ magazine last Saturday had a striking feature on the latest big signing at Dalymount Park. As I made my way back to Dublin that day, ESPN, with its 2.3 million followers, tweeted “a goal Dennis Bergkamp would be proud of”.
Liam Scales’ strike against Dundalk in the President’s Cup has been watched several hundred thousand times across the globe. The nonchalant technical brilliance of the goal is quite something, notwithstanding that Scales is primarily a central-defender.
It is just over a year since another left-footed strike – by Jordan Flores – at Tallaght Stadium, with something like seven million views the last time I checked, put the League of Ireland on a platform that only social media could have rendered possible. Crowds have pretty much been locked out ever since but I can certainly attest to absence rendering the heart all the fonder in Galway.
I’ve often, as a Galway United fan, spoken enviously of Sligo Rovers, who boast a per-local-population support that any club in the world would be proud of. On Monday, RTÉ’s Eileen Magnier, its North-West Correspondent, was reporting that every baby born at Sligo University Hospital this year will be offered a Sligo Rovers jersey “on the day they enter the world” in an initiative by the club and supporters.
Indoctrinate them early. A simple gesture from the Bit O’Red, who are back playing European football this season, ensured a lot of free publicity. Today FM, TalkSport and Match of the Day picked up the story.
Ireland without the Irish famously meant nothing to James Connolly, who presumably would now be a Bohs fan. The League of Ireland without crowds wouldn’t last long but the lockdown has compelled clubs to look at new, innovative ideas to sell themselves in a favourable light, despite so many inadequacies still being part of life in the Irish professional game.
I’ve said in recent years I feel there’s something of a revolution in the League of Ireland. Maybe that is embellishing the progress made, ignorant of the challenges that won’t go away. But when I sit down to watch Shamrock Rovers host St Patrick’s Athletic this evening, a greater part of me becomes the teenager again who fell in love with it a quarter of a century ago.
I think much more misdirection can be gained from a flat or end over end pass, especially when the pass is in to space rather than directly to the man. Playing touch rugby in Auckland over summer and all the space is opened up by league style passing, out in front, easy to take at full tilt and using the ball to do the work. I remember Keith Wood saying he could have ran any number of lines when He scored off Axel Foleys sympathetic pass from a Lineout V England in 01 I think it was. Foley popped the ball up in space and Wood came on to the ball and went of the line. In the end he took the hardest route and went over the top of the defender, but he maintained several times that the pass made the try, not his bump off.
I suppose none of the great passing at Bath has anything to do with the influence of one P Stringer??
Really!!!!!
A Great player. Never got the same recognition as O’Gara(equally great player).
Just about to comment that John but you got there before me!
very interesting read the skill of a good simple pass in front of the player is some thing the all blacks do best ,The more league type pass is very like the passing you see when watching older games like classic lions and babas games .
Murray, whether you spin the ball or not, depends on whether you are going right to left or vice-versa.
A right handed player will use a spin pass if he/she is passing the ball from right to left because it is natural.
You can get a spin pass off as quick as a flat pass and if you are running straight lines, without letting your eyes give away your next move, then it is equally deceptive.
How is an end over end pass easier to catch?
How is slower, better? It gives the opposition more time to ping you. An end over end pass can wobble in the air.
We use to call end over end passes, bog passes, the Rugby equivalent of the bog toe(toe poke in England)
“The rush defence favoured by so many top-level teams in union has its roots in rugby league; there is more we can learn.”
The rush defence is countered by dinks over the top(not a cross filed kick). Even if a player cannot get the ball, the threat is in the back of the mind of the defending team, so they don’t ‘rush’ up as fast. See Christophe Lamaison’s masterclass in dismantling of the rush defence masters, New Zealand in the ’99 WC. It would be perfect for England’s Linear defence tactics. Big guys, don’t like to turn! It frees up midfield and allows our smaller backs, space.
This can’t be done in league until final tackle.
Nothing to do with the person being right or left handed. Maybe in junior rugby. In professional rugby It’s the distance of the pass that would determine whether a spin pass is needed.
Nothing to do with distance. You cannot use a weighted(end over end pass) over a long distance.The issue which the article addresses is about selecting spin or weighted over a distance in which both can be used excluding close quarter, pop passes.
Murray is arguing for the non spin when non spin can be used.
“Both Ford and Eastmond are sympathetic in their passing; when a teammate is close enough, they don’t spin the ball.”
Over greater distances the issue is redundant.
Your first two sentences contradict eachother.
No, they don’t Gareth. Have another go.
As MK pointed out, league uses the screen to attack and counter the rush D. The use of a end over end is key to this. A spin pass is easy to read and you can watch the player not the ball. With a traditional pass, the ball dictates where the defender is, allowing an attacker to counter a fast D with angles of running. It has nothing to do with left or right handed players, and when practiced, the end over end is just as quick for short and medium passes. I agree over long distances a spin is required,but the article says this also. In addition, an end over end can be passed using the wrist, with minimal arm movement, whereas the spin uses wrist and cross body arm movement to generate the spin and power, especially in amateur rugby. How league and rugby differs is in the propensity of rugby 1st receivers to lie flatter than in league, benefiting the rush D. In league, the 1st receiver lies deeper on 4th tackle to allow him to run the option, similar to a passing down in NFL.
Also, in league you can kick on any tackle, but because possession is everything in that game the kick is used for territory or where a try is unlikely to be scored by passing, so they use a kick to force a goaline restart or a speculative bomb for the wingers to challenge for close to the line. The dink through in the middle of the park is not common as if it doesn’t work you give up field position, it’s a low percentage play. I don’t know if you have ever tried to take a hard spin at full pace, but I can tell you from many years experience playing and watching rugby, it’s harder than trying to take an end over end or a traditional pass.
Shaggy criticised Madigan for his spin-passing being unsympathetic in the Wolfhounds v Saxons match. One such pass led to the Saxons’ intercept try.
Reddan is a disaster for lashing out rapid spin passes to players on the burst no more thanks 5 yards away, gives the oncoming attacker no chance of holding it