Offaly left with much to ponder as Limerick win tactical battle

The sense of disappointment felt by the Offaly players and supporters walking out of the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick last Saturday was palpable, and it can only have been heightened by the qualifier draw that followed on Sunday night. Limerick were handed a home draw with Waterford followed by a match against Wexford in a neutral venue as their path to Croke Park - two games that they would feel eminently capable of winning. Offaly, too, would have had a great chance of entering the last eight in the championship race if they had received a similar draw, but instead their 2011 season will go down as just another disappointing campaign where potential was not maximised. Limerick's 3-13 to 0-15 success also highlighted the value of tactical awareness and mental acuity on the field of play and on the sideline, as Limerick completely and utterly dictated the terms of engagement in this fixture. They had one extremely talented and in-form forward in Ian Ryan, as did Offaly in Niall McNamee. Ian Ryan received plenty of good passes into space and ended the game with 1-7 from play and more frees won for his team, while Niall McNamee was crowded out and ended up scoring a mere two points. Limerick played Stephen Lavin as a free defender and he duly mopped up a series of loose balls, supported the man in possession and played a vital role in working the ball from their full-back line out to midfield, from where they tried to find Ryan, Ger Collins or Stephen Kelly. Since Lavin was notionally a centre-forward, Offaly centre-back Scott Brady was also a spare man, but he played the game largely in no-man's-land, often manning the 45m line by himself but not close enough to the full back line to give them real support on a day when they came off clearly second best. Brady has always been at his best in the heart of the battle, taking physical contact and playing the game close to his opponent, so this was not his natural environment. Limerick had little or no primary possession, but they used the ball they scooped up deep in their own half very well, breaking forward at pace and creating scoring chances with nearly every possession, while Offaly won the vast majority of kick-outs that travelled more than 25 yards, and still failed utterly to turn that possession into genuine chances for their main scorers. Perhaps the most damning statistic of the game was the fact that Limerick had only two players on their team whose primary job was scoring - Ger Collins and Ian Ryan - and they managed to play in a fashion that left those two men taking nearly 80 per cent of Limerick's shots on goal from play. Offaly picked three players who would be considered scorers first and foremost - Bernard Allen, Ken Casey and McNamee - and less than 50 per cent of Offaly's shots from play were taken by those three men. Next weekend the senior football championship will resume in Offaly, and the dearth of tactical innovation within the county will be highly evident. The vast majority of football teams in the county will look to play largely the same way - defenders stay tight, half-forwards and half-backs fight for loose ball and work hard to support the man in possession, maintain control of the football and work it out to the midfield sector, where the half-forward line will pull out and make space. The player on the ball will then look to hit the full-forward line with long deliveries. For variety, some clubs will direct high ball into good fielders, others will try to play low diagonal ball into smaller corner men, but the patterns of play will generally be the same. Tullamore were the only club that looked to vary their method of attack beyond this template in the last few years, but even they will probably have to resort to a more simple style now that they have sustained such heavy losses in personnel. None of this is to say that there is anything wrong with such a structure. Indeed it is the equivalent of soccer's 4-4-2 or an eight man box defence in American football. It is simple, easy to execute, and players know what they are supposed to be doing at any time. However the net effect of the universal rigid adherence to this tactic is that every footballer in Offaly is trained to play this method and to play against this method, so that when they come up against something different, they struggle to adjust. It's no coincidence that players like Declan O'Sullivan and Sean Cavanagh simply don't exist in the county - carrying of the ball through the half-back line is largely discouraged, as trainers and supporters lose patience with the first turned over ball. Offaly football creates traditional corner-forward style danger men, while pace on the ball is very much secondary to pace off the ball in terms of the qualities sought in young footballers. As if to compound that damage, many trainers and managers within Offaly tend to be sceptical of different techniques and approaches and the standard counter ploy to an opponent dropping an extra player back is to follow him up there. That sometimes works, but on other occasions it simply clogs up what little space existed in the first place, leading to more side-to-side passing of the ball, which more often than not ends in tears. Managers need to be able to know when to react in each way, and what other moves to make to support this process. It's notable that this year, Kildare footballers are being widely condemned in the national media for kicking too many wides, and after shooting fifteen wides at the weekend, Offaly also came in for some criticism in this regard. However, a player shooting for a score over a crowded defence, provided they have the range, is not a bad thing, even if their strike rate is low. The worst outcome is a wide ball, which leads to a contested possession and the defence being set and prepared. When your team is ruling the aerial battle, as Offaly were on Saturday, there's actually little or no downside to this. However playing the ball side to side in attempt to try and create a clear sight of goal within 30 metres runs the risk of turning the ball over and the opposition gaining possession with acres of space and an unprepared defence. Kildare have weighed these options up and as a result are content to take low percentage shots on the run, but never pushing too many men forward or never going sideways with the ball. Blindly following Kieran McGeeney's style is not the way forward, but Offaly badly needs a few clubs to think outside the box and to bring some variation to footballing styles within the county. It's not as if they have no incentive - Limerick proved how successful a different approach can be, and as with all things, the first club to adapt will be the one to make the real gains.