Cathal Daly and Tullamore focused on doing what it takes to win

TULLAMORE stalwart Cathal Daly, now a coach, has heard the critics but has no apology whatsoever to offer about the way they play their football.

Competing in their fifth Senior Football Championship final in a row on Sunday, Daly is aware of the people who complain about the way they hold onto the ball and engage in a patient build up. Aiming for their third title in five years against Ferbane, Tullamore are masters at controlling games, dictating their pace and the coach grimaced when asked about their game plan:

“Look, it's as simple as this for us in our group, when we don't have the ball we're working as hard as we possibly can, 1 to 15 to get that ball back and when we do have it, we're working as hard as possible to get it back up that field and get that score. It might sound simplistic but when you have very good opposition players against you, it's not as simple any more and you have to sometimes bide your time, you sometimes have to recycle the ball, you sometimes have to slow it down, but that's the way the game is and you have to play within that. You can't be naïve either.

“Teams are so well prepared in the transition now that if you give the ball away at the wrong time by making a mistake you could be leaving yourself wide open. So if you work so hard to get it back, why should you easily hand it back to the opposition again. There's no point in that.”

They allow players to try things, but only in the right areas and at the right time.

“We can only speak for ourselves here in Tullamore and I'd like to think that a player can play off the cuff in the right moments but we need to be aware of where and when we're doing it. If it's on and we can have a go, absolutely, but if it's not on and the wrong moment, well then we need to stick to the plan.”

Players did take on long passes and try the unexpected in their semi-final win over Edenderry, some of them just missing the target by centimetres. Daly said:

“Yeah, and that's something I think we can encourage in the game. It's not the end of the world, losing it up there, it's not on your own full back line or half back line and leaving yourself exposed, it is deep. And we have the opportunity of going after that ball again and trying to win it back. And those passes were within millimetres, one or two of them, of being absolutely excellent. So should you criticise a player for trying that? Absolutely not.”

A brilliant defender in the 1990s and 2000s, Daly won Leinster Senior Football Championship and National Football League medals with Offaly in 1997 and 1998. He was an All-Star in 1997 – his selection at number 4 meant that Offaly became the first county to have an All-Star in every position in football and hurling. He was in sensational form in those years and was the star man on the Tullamore team that won senior football titles in 2000, 2002 and 2007.

He is now in his second year as a coach with Niall Stack and is enjoying every minute of it:

“It's not a hard group to click in with and work with so when the opportunity came I was definitely happy to do it and I can't say it was a bad decision. It's great to be involved with them because they're such a good group, they go after everything to the best of their ability so you can't but be happy with that.”

He finished up playing in 2009 and looking at Tullamore's current health, it is hard to believe that their 2000 triumph ended a long 23 year famine. How difficult was it to win that one?

“As a player sometimes you don't see that. It's all about getting to that final and winning it. I don't think you really take the baggage. I had played in '96 and lost to Shannonbridge and you used it as fuel but you didn't really use it as baggage or the big weight. I think it was after we won it we realised maybe, this is how special it is but in the moment as a player it was just about bloody well getting a county medal, winning the final.”

Daly had played in his first county final in 1994, losing to a Ferbane side about to head into an unexpected 25 year famine themselves – he played in a 1992 minor final defeat to Clara.

He agreed that a 23 year famine was an extraordinary one for Tullamore.

“Yeah, and that's where you can't take it for granted. If you take your eye off the ball or you get unlucky or an unbelievable team comes along and you don't get a look in, your Walsh Islands, your Ferbane's and then Rhode, so when you get your opportunities you've got to go after them. You've got to take them because you just don't know what's going to happen in the future.”

A couple of years ago, people were talking about Tullamore embarking on a Rhode type run of dominance but that talk has subsided now.

“Underage success is no guarantee of future success. I can reference Kilcormac Killoughey for a long, long time, going back to when I was a minor they were winning everything underage and it took longer than I'd say they expected for it to click into gear. Now I know they are a very successful club but it doesn't always follow straight lines so you have to always be on it and going after it in the right way and try and take away anything from the equation that might get in your way.

As a coach, he has to instruct in a much different way than he played. Was that challenging?

“Yeah, it's so different than playing obviously. You have to be aware of the fact that you're dealing with multiple different personalities, different people but still try and give the same advice, in maybe, different ways. You're ultimately trying to get the lads to do an awful lot of the same things together so it's definitely a challenge as a coach, but it's a good one.”

Daly wasn't a fan of this year's championship format with every team qualifying for the quarter-finals.

“I felt it unusual to be honest. When you're playing championship matches and it feels like there's nothing at stake but then you get out onto the field and there is something at stake there is kind of mixed emotions. In the back of your mind, if we get beaten, it's not the end of the road or we're not putting ourselves behind the eight ball. But then, do you want to go on a run, get confidence going, get the group into a good place, yes, so you want to try and win all those games. And there was better games than we thought.

“We want to win every game, it's as simple as that. I don't think any of the other teams necessarily went out and didn't care if they won or lost. It maybe took a little bit of edge off how they might approach it but at the end of the day we can only take care of ourselves in how we approach game and that's what we did.”

Tullamore did use the group to blood new players, including taking players who would have made a difference to their intermediate team. He explained:

“An awful lot of those guys played during the league when we didn't have our county lads so they kind of had been in the shop window and to be fair to them if they got picked to play senior for us it was on merit. It was as simple as that. Did we want to strip an intermediate team? No. But you have to allow lads to progress as well. You have to give them the opportunity. To be fair to them if they are putting in the effort and putting their hand up and they've played a load of league games and we have faith in them, then we have no problem in letting them up.”

Senior is very much priority for Tullamore and an intermediate title would be a bonus rather than a big target.

“Would I love to have our boys in an intermediate final? Absolutely. I can see the effort that they have put in the whole year as well and they went after it with everything they had so for them not to be in it is a huge disappointment for those lads because they would have trained with us all the way up through it. So we kind of found ourselves, we were all one big group to be honest, so it was unfortunate that they didn't get to the final but c'est la vie too.”

He is aware of all the talk about Tullamore not having retained the title since 1926. Does that type of history matter?

“It does and it doesn't, to be honest. The honest thing about it is, if it so happens that we do put two together, great. But it's not our motivation, it's not what we're thinking about, it's not what we're looking at. We're just going after this game squarely on its own merits because I think that's the only way you can attack a game. I think that's the way as a club or as a team we've gone after this championship, it has just been game upon game upon game.”

Daly is also aware of the criticism that Tullamore haven't retained or had a go at a Leinster club championship.

“Yes, we're aware of it absolutely but there's not much we can do to change it. It's a fact... so I don't think we need to overly worry about it or dwell on it and hopefully we can change that come Sunday. That's our aim, go after that game and win that game on its own merits and if that so happens and we get a back to back, that's great. It's all about that game, it's not about what went before or anything that happened previously in history.”

For all of that, the positives far outweigh negatives and Tullamore have been remarkably consistent.

“It's a great credit to the bunch of players, and the management. I wasn't with this management at the start so there's a good lot of other coaches have come in through and put their shoulder to the wheel along with all these players to get to this milestone which is fantastic. But it's about winning it now. Consistency is absolutely brilliant but we have got to go and win. Our objective is to win.”

Tullamore don't have the same volume of dual players as Ferbane but it is a factor for them.

“We have dual player and of course it creates challenges. The lads are on the pitch a huge amount but what I always say about the dual players is they don't mind a bit. They chose it, they turn up. And have any one of them not put their shoulder to the wheel? Absolutely not, they come with a great attitude every night and give it everything they have. Whilst you'd love to have every player at you disposal all the time, the fact of life is you're down four or five when it's a hurling week, so be it, we get on with it.

Were you surprised at how comprehensively Tullamore won the quarter-final and semi-final?

“You go into every match and you prepare as if it's going to be a battle and there's going to be nothing in it. Probably in both games Durrow and Edenderry had some chances that if they'd taken at critical stages could have flipped the game on its head and made it a hell of a lot closer than they ended up. It's a hard one to answer. When you're on the sideline you're kind of living in the moment and fearing the next... I do, as a coach anyway, you're always looking, my mindset would be, where's the next danger. So you don't ever feel comfortable, no matter what the scoreline is, you're living in that moment, how are we defending, how are we attacking, where are the bodies at, where are the dangers. So I don't dwell on the result, overly. Because as soon as it's done you're flipping to the next page, you might enjoy it, you might go for a couple of pints that night but you're flipping the page and going on to the next game.”

Another comment regularly made about Tullamore is that they sometimes don't kill off teams when they have them on the ropes but they had the quarter and semi-finals won earlier than normal. Daly repeated:

“For me, I don't relax until it's over and I don't think any of the lads would say any different. It's a concentration thing and we need to be able to feed that into the lads as well, that there's 60 minutes so we concentrate for 60 minutes and it's grand if we're winning and you have to be a little bit cognizant of the scoreboard but if we're winning, we're winning and if we're not we're going after it in the same way.”

Tullamore experimented with John Furlong at centre half forward in their group games but it didn't really work out and his influence has returned to its normal levels since he went back to centre half back for the knockout stages.

Daly explained that they were missing Michael Brazil in the group stages and decided to take the opportunity to have a look at Furlong up the field. “He is such a comfortable footballer, he can do a job anywhere but when Braz came back, it made sense for him to go back to where he is comfortable and he has done very well since.

“It is not that he played poorly at centre half forward but you can see the comfort levels he has at centre half back.”

Daly himself played almost all his Tullamore football at centre half back. It was suggested that playing Furlong centre half forward would have been similar to Daly playing there in the 1990s and 2000s – he might have done a job but his influence on the team and game would have been diminished.
“The more time you spend in one position, the more you know it. It is no harm to sample somewhere else, it gives you a more rounded view of the game and the way it is played but if you want to be most comfortable, it is where you have spent most of your time.”

Furlong has got into better scoring positions when centre back than centre forward. “When you are in a position, you are not totally comfortable with, you are thinking about where you should be and what you should be doing than when you are in your natural position. You are not over thinking and you are letting it flow when you are in your natural position,” summed up Daly.

It was suggested that Tullamore are very good at what they do.

“All I can say on that front is, that's credit to the boys, they work hard at it, they drive those standards. We can come and we can set up sessions and game plans but the boys drive those standards and among themselves they keep that group moving and in some respects I suppose that's why we're back in a final because of the lads that tog out from 1 to 40 now, when you consider the panel that we've had for the last number of years, that train together, day in, day out. They bring that commitment to training that we can execute on a big day.”

He steered away from any cliches about the final being just another game.

“It is, but it's also a county final. And we're well aware of the hurt Ferbane had last year because we'd have had the hurt in a number of the finals we played in over the last few years so while it's just another game in one sense it's still a big, big game. And there's a huge prize at the end of it. I don't think there's any harm in knowing that because you'll remember all the hard work and why you've got there. And I'm sure there's a hell of a lot of other teams that would love to be in our position so we don't take it for granted. Look, it's just another game per se, even though obviously the cliché is, it's just another game but it's a case of, it's another game, but a little bit more.”