1. There was one recurring theme: teams looked beaten before they started. The Haka was a killer. It was like: ‘Ye stand there like sheep while we work ourselves into a physical and psychological lather. And then we’ll wade in to ye!’
The timing of it was perfect for them. The Haka didn’t happen before the anthems, but after. So the second they signed off with the last, blood-curdling roar, it was game-on. We would have loved that leg-up into a contest. How we handled it was top of Jimmy’s to-do list. It dominated our discussion on the way back from the Munster game.
“We can’t let them feel comfortable in any way,” he said. “It has to be a confrontation. We have to change the tone, the whole psychology of this. We want the crowd cheering us, not the f*****g Haka!”
In the week of the game we got some interesting insight from Andy Leslie, the former New Zealand captain. Jimmy knew him well from Ireland’s tour to NZ in 1976. Andy was in town leading a supporters’ group and we met up for a chat. Off his own bat Andy mentioned how the All Blacks loved it when teams wouldn’t meet the challenge of the Haka full-on. Better still if they conceded ground.
“It’s like we’re taking your territory — that’s the mental advantage,” he said.
Andy wasn’t giving us advice. He had no idea what we planned, but the moment the words came out of his mouth I could hear the wheels spinning in Jimmy’s brain.
In an extract from his brilliant new autobiography, co-written with Brendan Fanning, Willie Anderson explains the thought processes behind his infamous march towards the All Blacks in 1989.
2: There was a time when Arsenal was the best run club in the country. That time is not now.
These days it is the work experience club. Just about everyone in senior executive positions at Arsenal is undergoing his first stint in such an important job.
Kroenke has never run a sports institution that was not a franchise; Venkatesham has never before been chief executive of a football club; Arteta has been an assistant, but not a manager; Edu has not been the technical director of a club in Europe; even Per Mertesacker is in his first post as academy manager, although there seems to be no problem with youth development.
Only Richard Garlick, the director of football operations, can be considered to possess significant experience having spent eight seasons in a similar role at West Bromwich Albion until their relegation in 2018.
Unsurprisingly, then, Arsenal appear callow. They make rookie errors, then repeat them. Their signings make little sense.
There is little point being a columnist unless you have something to say. Martin Samuel has never suffered from shyness but what sets him apart from practically every other opinion writer in the business is his ability to back up his points of view with fresh, hard evidence. Here he explains clearly how Arsenal have gone from great to grate.
3. There comes a time either to win or get off the pot. There comes a time to convert plans and ambitions and progress reports into the hard currency of goals and points on the board. Five months after the humiliation against Luxembourg in Dublin, another deeply embarrassing result for Irish football enters the annals.
It doesn’t matter that Ireland battered the Azeris. It didn’t matter that Portugal battered Ireland when it came to much of the post-match analysis. Ireland had been heroic at the back and progressive on the ball in Faro, therefore there were loads of positives to be taken away. But there was a large element of denial about that position. It ignored the fact that Portugal had enjoyed 70pc possession, that they had 29 shots on goal and 14 corners to Ireland’s three. They’d launched some 50 crosses into the Irish box. But in the ongoing search for green shoots of recovery in Irish international soccer, most of these inconvenient statistics were brushed under the carpet. Indeed, the result itself was almost brushed under the carpet.
Like Martin Samuel, Tommy Conlon has never been afraid to make his point. His ability to do so with wit and wisdom makes him one of Ireland’s finest sportswriters. Here he conducts a post-mortem into yesterday’s events at the Aviva.
4. For the third successive year, Kerry’s interest in a championship has been ended by their loss in a street fight, Saturday’s extra-time defeat following on from extra-time defeat to Cork in Pairc Ui Chaoimh last November and an All-Ireland final replay to Dublin in 2019.
It’s a recurring theme now, Kerry coming out on the wrong end of epic battles. For good measure you can go back even further for other common threads: the ‘super eight’ draw with Donegal in 2019; the ‘super eight’ loss to Galway a year earlier; the draw with Monaghan in Clones at the same stage of the competition, courtesy of David Clifford’s late goal that salvaged the result but still had another attack to nick it after that but wasn’t exploited; the semi-final draw and replay with Mayo in 2017; the 2016 semi-final with Dublin when they led by five at half-time but lost by two.
When it comes to unearthing the evidence, Colm Keys is always the first on the scene. His ability to find fresh angles always makes him a compelling read on the day after a big Championship match. This piece on Kerry hits the nail on the head.
