Vanilla Version 1.0

On the Sunday morning after the last football tournament of the season, someone approached Johnny Phelan and told him he'd hate to play for our team. Johnny questioned why he would say that and the reply related to our defensive style of play. Similar comments were relayed at the Guernsey tournament from opposing players.

I take no offence from the comments as I experienced first hand what it is like to play against us when we played some in-house games in the run up to Limerick. It was horrible. The work rate of the lads made it very difficult to find space in the attacking half of the pitch and indeed, it makes for a very dull and frustrating game if you are in opposition.

I would disagree with the suggestion that we are just a defensive team though. We were very focused on attacking in the same numbers with which we defended. I think good evidence in this regard was that we used five backs in Limerick; myself, Crusher, Ross, Keary and Diarmuid Lynch. Crusher was the only one not to score but he was the one who probably attacked the most. Whilst not registering on the score sheet that day, he was much more prominent on it in Guernsey.

Our plan was always to attack en masse but where we fell short was getting the required number of shots off. Bar maybe one occasion in the Pan-Euro series, we had the chances to win every game we played. Each time we created clear cut goal chances. You'll never convert 100% of those chances though so you need to create enough of them to make sure the percentages fall in your favour. We didn’t unfortunately.

There were fellas kicking great points in training games in the lead up to Limerick but we didn't bring that confidence to the tournament. Myself and Conan could be partly to blame for that. We gave most players a fairly specific brief but didn't emphasise the shooting aspect enough. Our focus needs to shift in that direction next year.

IT companies often have what they call a 'vanilla' package of their software products. This is basically an offering of the product in its most basic and bland format - no frills attached. Our style was like that this year but next year we will certainly invest in some new features. We focused on getting a strong work ethic in the team and setting solid foundations in defence. We touched upon attacking play but took the view that we needed to nail the work rate and defensive aspects first. I'd have no regrets about this approach. We learned a lot between mid-August and the end of October but to think we could have done more would be naive.

The reason I bring this subject up a month and a half after the season finished is because I head into the Christmas break confident that our work has had a lasting effect. In our recent in-house games, where all instructions etc were relaxed (!) as possible, lads fell straight back into the groove. Games were competitive despite being 7 a side. The work rate was good and we encouraged lads to shoot more. The result was not always so fantastic on the scoreboard but we will put that down to pressure rather than wayward shooting!!

Last Thursday's game was our final one before we restart training on the last day of January. To a certain extent I always felt this year was more about next year as we were rebuilding after the summer.

For now though, the focus is on Christmas. I head home via Amsterdam tonight and will stay until the 27th. I’ll then head for New York to bring in the New Year with Bolster before returning to Brussels on January 3. Not a blog entry or a spare thought for G.A.A. between now and then!

Merry Christmas!!