Pat Spillane: My long and chequered history with London GAA, including an arrest

Mind you, I have a long and chequered history with London GAA.

In 1979, when secretary of Templenoe, I organised the club’s first trip outside Ireland to London.

One of our lads got arrested in Fishguard, having overindulged on the boat trip over.

It fell to me to persuade the police to release him. I had a lot of explaining to do.

Then, the bus driver took a wrong turn and we ended up somewhere in North Wales.

Having finally reached London, the coach broke down outside Harrods on the famed Brompton Road.

I swear, there is a photograph somewhere of 25 Templenoe lads pushing a bus past the famous department store.

The club made a second trip to London in the early 1990s. We played the Kingdom club on a frozen pitch outside Wormwood Scrubs Prison.

All during the game the inmates kept roaring out the windows ‘Go home Paddy, somebody is with your wife. And we roared back ‘at least it’s not with you.’

Last weekend I had another first. I went to see the Sligo v London League game in Ruislip, making the final leg of the journey via the Central Line underground train from Notting Hill Gate.

Ruislip, the HQ of London GAA, is a lovely, compact ground with excellent facilities.

Having walked on the pitch afterwards I can vouch for the fact there was no better surface on any pitch which hosted a League game last weekend.

As I have written countless times, I have the utmost admiration for the people involved in the GAA abroad.

It takes far more effort and time to run the organisation away from Ireland.

There is free admission to all the Allianz League games they host, which is an excellent initiative.

As for the game, Sligo controlled it but London are no pushovers. Manager Michael Maher is working with a well-organised and coached squad.

I have a sneaky suspicion that London engaged in a bit of shadow-boxing last weekend.

Sligo needed the win to stay in the promotion hunt. They’re back in Ruislip in five weeks’ time for a Connacht Championship game.

I imagine the home side kept their powder dry.

So far the Allianz League has been interesting with some surprise results, late dramas and numerous talking points. Yet I remain underwhelmed.

On average, I watch six games every weekend – either on TV or live. And I have a simple rule of thumb to judge their quality.

If I start reading the paper while watching on TV, it means I have lost interest.

And if I start an animated conversation with those sitting around me while at a live match, it means the action of the field is not capturing my attention.

The Donegal versus Galway game, which I watched on TV in Ruislip, held my interest for ten minutes, at most.

It reminded me of the nursery rhyme about the Grand Old Duke of York.

‘Oh, the grand old Duke of York, He had ten thousand men;

He marched them up to the top of the hill,

And he marched them down again.’

These days games resemble repeat loops.

Once the ball goes dead or possession is turned over, the defending team retreats en masse, while the attacking team begins the long march forward, but not before numerous cross-field hand-passing movements – and my pet hate, the back-pass to the goalkeeper.

The stats don’t lie. There were no goals in six of the 16 Division 1 games played up until last weekend. The average number of goals in the top flight has dropped from 2.5 per game in 2022 to 1.5 so far this season.

The way to watch these kind of games is to tune into the last five minutes, when there is a chance of some action and scores.

The Kerry versus Armagh game wasn’t a barrel of fun either.

Here was a clash between two of not just the best attacking sides in the country, but the best kicking teams, too.

Yet they produced a turkey of a game, save for an exciting finale.

Armagh, in particular, were primarily focused on containing Kerry – and it worked.

They didn’t concede a goal, kept David Clifford and Seanie O’Shea (inset) scoreless from play – and restricted Kerry to 0-12, and only four scores from play.

So, they achieved a kind of moral victory. But in the history of sport no trophies have ever been handed out for moral wins.

I know it may come as a surprise to some GAA coaches, but the team that scores most wins the game.

Armagh’s tactics baffled me – they even conceded the kick-out when playing with the wind, rarely committing players to attack when they had the wind, and appeared clueless about the role their ace forward Rian O’Neill should play.

And this cost them the game. Their six starting forwards got one point from play, and they went scoreless from play for 22 minutes in the second half.

In the dying minutes their only plan was to land a few long kicks into the Kerry goalmouth, in the vain hope of engineering a goal.

I was disappointed Armagh didn’t deploy a more adventurous game plan, which would have utilised their strengths.

By the way, Kerry were not a whole pile better – they played with no tempo or pace, and rarely used their kicking game.

Coaches really need to rethink their tactical approach to games.

Of course defensive systems are important. But balance between defence and offense is vital, too.

Above all else, players need to be inculcated with a culture of being allowed to read the game themselves – and change its direction without recourse to the management.

We have too many pre-programmed players at the moment.