I watched Dublin and Laois playing in the Leinster Senior Football Championship last Sunday. It was a non-event. As they say in West Cork, “Louth could hardly keep the ball kicked out to Dublin.” In fact, the only real point of interest in the game was enormous gap between the physical condition of Dublin and that of Louth.
Dublin looked like professional athletes; Louth looked like a well-prepared club side. It was obvious, even to the untrained eye, that Dublin’s physical training programme is light years ahead of Louth’s plan. This was visible in every aspect of play. When a Louth player carried the ball into contact, he invariably lost possession. When a Dublin and a Louth player contested a ball in the air, the Dublin player always seemed to win. In short, last Sunday’s game was a case of boys against men.
What does this tell us a) for the rest of this year’s All-Ireland football championship? b) For Gaelic Games in general?
The first question is relatively easy to answer. Dublin are the All-Ireland champions. It has been almost impossible to win back-to-back All-Ireland titles since 1990 unless a team plays Mayo in at least one of the finals. This suggests the odds are against Dublin retaining the title.
But there are other factors to consider. No county, not even Cork, has access to as many players as Dublin does. This allows the Dublin manager Pat Gilroy to keep his panel fresh without reducing the quality of the overall squad. Secondly, after seeing Sunday’s game, it looks as if Dublin have left their mediocre league form behind and are in extremely good shape. Finally, Dublin should defeat Longford or Wexford in their semi-final to reach the Leinster final, thereby avoiding potential banana skins, and injuries in the early qualifier rounds.
Other recent games, such as Tipperary’s performance against Kerry last week suggests that Tipperary, Louth and most of the other division three and four teams may be as eager and skilful as the top counties, but they are not as physically strong. It is in this aspect of Gaelic Football that gap between the top teams and the other counties is most pronounced.
The late John “Kid” Cronin, former masseur to the Cork teams used to say, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight that matters, it’s the size of the fight in the dog!” In recent years this convention has been usurped by the old Yorkshire belief that “a good big ‘un will always beat a good little ‘un.” This suggests that Dublin, Cork and Kerry are the most likely winners of the 2012 All-Ireland football title. No other counties can produce enough big skilful players in the vital central positions. As the season unfolds other counties may come to the fore, but at this point we can only assess what each county appears to have in its arsenal.
My second question above asked what does this intense physical preparation mean for the future of Gaelic Games? For a start it has got to be accepted that size was always important in sport. The “size of the fight in the dog” observation only ever holds true when other aspects of the contest were out of kilter. This usually occurs when the bigger, more physical team are not as mentally prepared as they should be, or, the skill levels are not up to scratch.
The 2008 All-Ireland quarterfinal between Dublin and Tyrone is a typical example of a team getting caught out because of poor technical skills. It poured rain before and during the first half of that game. Dublin were the bigger and stronger team; Tyrone were supposed to be past their best. That was a “Pillar” Caffery coached Dublin team. They relied on their physical presence to dominate games. That was not a bad ploy in dry conditions, but in the rain players’ skill and first touch is paramount. The Tyrone players had skill and touch in abundance, and by halftime Dublin were beaten and the “Pillar’s” career was finished.
That result was an exception rather than the rule. In general, teams are getting bigger and stronger all the time and the bigger and stronger they get, the more they win. The physical preparation of inter-county teams has become an arms race all of its own. There are no accurate or reliable records of the height and weight of GAA teams over the decades and this makes it very difficult to be absolute in any finding, but I would say there is little doubt but that the Cork, Kerry and Dublin teams of the last three years would, in terms of sheer physical presence and effort, blow away their counter parts of the 1970s.
To try and find some accurate indication of this I looked to the NFL in the USA. I found two websites that are loaded with opinion and fact. The first was a blog on www.pro-football-reference.com by Chase Stuart in February 2008. He examined the height and weight of every player, drafted in the NFL between 1970 and 2006. He found an incremental increase in height, weight and body mass index (BMI) for all players during each five-year block. Even the quarterbacks, those vital position players where the skill requirements have neither diminished nor increased over the years, have become taller (one inch) and heavier (20lbs) with a greater BMI (26.1 to 27.9). The increases reach frightening levels when you examine the bigger players who play on line of scrimmage.
An article on http://espn.go.com “TQM sizes up players” by Greg Easterbrook backs up this evidence. Easterbrook concludes that while there is little difference in speed between the players of today and yesteryear, there is a huge gulf in strength. His headline point being that Randy White a feared defensive tackle with the Dallas Cowboys in the 1970s is 31lbs (over 14kgs) lighter than the average player playing defensive tackle today. It would take a lot of “fearsome reputation” for any player to consistently overcome a 14kg weight handicap.
We can be pretty sure that whatever is happening in the world of American sport is happening here also. While the GAA is not a professional organisation, many of the county teams adopt a “professional sport” attitude to their preparation – in so far as their budget will allow them. Budget is the important word here. It is quite clear from what we saw in Louth and Tipperary’s performances that their physical preparations budgets do not stretch as far as that of Dublin and Kerry.
Physical preparation of county teams has become extremely scientific. The players are programmed to peak on appointed weekends. In between these times they are often well off the pace. This is another reason as to why the qualifiers can be such a lottery. As the games come thick and fast in the month of July, the “skill” of honing the players’ physical performance goes out the window, and lesser counties have a better chance of creating an upset.
Gaelic Football, like all games, is supposed to be a test of skill. However, the game is evolving from a test of skill into a test of strength and stamina. This is partly the natural desire of teams to win, but the evolving playing rules (quick frees etc) have also contributed to the situation. Can the Gaelic Football be returned to a contest of skills? Is there a desire to see this happen? These are the weighty questions that will have to be tackled if Gaelic Football is to remain the most popular code of football in Ireland. For now we will have to endure many more mismatches. The real championship will not begin until all the “little ‘uns” have gone home.