Jim McGuinness: Tactical flexibility will win the All-Ireland. But for which team?

Gaelic football has reached a stage where a team’s style of play has become their badge of identity. I think we will see that characteristic come into very sharp focus this weekend, as the race for the next All-Ireland championship gathers pace.

Some teams still out there are searching for an identity and a style of play. And others are wedded to a certain way of playing. And I feel we are of the cusp of another evolution in approach.

I was working at the Monaghan Mayo game last weekend and I was asked about the difference between Mayo in the first half, when they hit 1-7, and the second half, when they laboured. The difference was clear. In the first half, Mayo had a point to their attack. Even though Monaghan had a lot of bodies back, there was always someone in the square for Mayo. And they played little dink balls and diagonal balls inside. They were expansive on their own kick-out. They were willing to kick long.

Sometimes when you are working on a game plan, it is more evident in the first half. Mayo are a strong running team but their first half was a bit of a departure from that. Their team is littered with excellent athletes — Keegan, Durcan, Mullin, McLaughlin. And those players dug the team out of a hole when that point of attack sort of disintegrated in the second half. They returned to their running game. But its clear they are working to vary their attack.

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Remember how Armagh started the league against Dublin? They got their season off with a bang. They ran the ball and weren’t afraid to kick it long. They were explosive and exciting. Then they came to Ballybofey for the championship and they seemed stricken. Rian O’Neill played top of the left and tried to drag Donegal full back Brendan McCole out to that area. But Rian was restricted to the corner and out of the action. He should have been the point of attack.

Still, they did kick two or three long balls in at the start of the second half and chaos ensued. But no score came from it and they abandoned that idea.

So last weekend, Mayo and Armagh had time to prepare for their qualifier games. It’s clear there has been a shift in the coaching approach. Armagh did a brilliant job with their use of Ethan Rafferty as goalkeeper and orchestrator of their running game. But they also returned to their kicking game. It worked for them because Tyrone never figured out where the threat was coming from. There was always a variety for Armagh to work with.

In 2021, Dublin was a team heavily concentrated on the retention of possession. Because of that, they became highly predictable. They’ve coached themselves out of that since the league. Against Wexford, they had three players — Dean Rock, Con O’Callaghan and Cormac Costello − on the edge of the small parallelogram to give them a vivid, three-pronged point of attack.

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Then, in the Leinster final, they showed a serious willingness to kick the ball 50 and 60 metres for their inside forwards to win. It was as if they had thrown the shackles off. And crucially, they had runners coming through, then, when the ball was won inside. It was a back to the future moment for me — a return to the Dublin of 2013, a terrifying force.

Now, they still have all the other skills — how to retain the ball, how to make those little incisions around the perimeter. But the weapons of variety — the fisted pass inside, the dink ball, the diagonal ball, the long ball from open play — are once again features of their game. And it becomes a difficult style to defend against.

Derry have a very deep, dense rigid defensive game style. It asks serious questions of any team. The nature of the Ulster final caused a lot of debate. In that Ulster final, Donegal tried to figure Derry out by patiently breaking them down. Derry will set up the same way in the All-Ireland quarter-final. The question now for Donegal, with teams like Mayo and Armagh evolving, is whether to stick or twist.

Eoghan Ban Gallagher, after the Cavan game, used the term “running through the phases” which encapsulated the Donegal approach. That means a fanned-out offence, not giving the ball away, progressing up the field with timed, angled runs for clinical incisions and scoring opportunities. But against Derry, they were too inflexible to ask different questions when that stopped working.

There are five core variables — the fist ball, the dink ball, the diagonal ball, the long ball from open play and the long ball from the kick-out. Donegal never really tried these. There were only two balls kicked. One landed on the edge of the square and was a goal chance. And the other was Oisín Doherty’s mark and point. Those were the only two balls kicked inside.

So there is a gulf between the risk and reward. The rewards were high in both instances. But they were still unwilling to take that risk.

Go back to Dublin in 2021. I think Dublin felt the game was up and that other teams had figured them. The field was catching up with them but they were stuck in a pattern of playing that had served them well. And now, Donegal have fallen into that space. Derry’s game plan is based on predictability too.

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Let’s return to midway through the second half in the Ulster final. Donegal were two points up and were dominating possession. It was the first moment in the game when Derry felt the need to push out beyond their own 45 while defending. To me, that gets to the heart of the Derry game plan.

They are banking on the other team making mistakes and bad decisions. But they are also banking on getting a lead and defending it and then hitting you on the break. That moment is coming again for Derry. Yes, they are playing on their terms. But that can only happen if they have the lead.

But it is coming, too, for Donegal on Sunday. We are reaching the stage of the championship where tactical flexibility will be tested. It’s the trick of adapting without abandoning other traits. We have seen Galway move from a purist kicking team to a counter-offensive team which has a sophisticated kicking game: this has made them a more potent force.

Can Armagh persevere with their bolder path when faced with Donegal in Clones on Sunday? And do Donegal continue with that phase-driven type of game which frustrated many of their supporters? Or will they go with something different?

Mayo and Armagh have made the decision that possession must be married with a more varied attack. What is stopping other teams from reaching the same conclusion? I believe it is a fear that if you give the ball away, their team will not have the intensity to get it back. Because the other big trend is shadow tackling and chaperoning attacking teams down the wings: it is low intensity, compressed defence and it has become a dominant trend in the game.

It is going nowhere — just now.

You live by the sword and you die by the sword. Teams can still win with a possession game. But it is not the only weapon they can have!

But I feel there is a change coming in the way teams attack. A couple of teams have decided to make that change. Teams are realising what Dublin realised after last year — you cannot rely on keeping the ball and probing. There needs to be variety. Their needs to be calculated risk.

Kerry have always had that varied approach and build their game around a point of attack, with stellar inside forwards. But like Mayo, they now bring serious pace and running power in Gavin White and Paudie Clifford and company coming through.

You live by the sword and you die by the sword. Teams can still win with a possession game. But it is not the only weapon they can have! It is for management and coaching teams to develop a tactical balance so their teams can become flexible in their approach to the defensive problems they will face.

This will be the story throughout the series of qualifying games as the All-Ireland field is reduced to eight. And the team that comes closest to perfecting that balance will be All-Ireland champions.