CORK ATTACKER PATRICK Kelly has described Donegal’s football philosophy as revolutionary but admitted that the Rebels poor conversion rate and handling errors proved detrimental to their hopes of success in yesterday’s All-Ireland football semi-final.
“Donegal’s tactics work, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, it’s not fun to watch and it’s not fun to play against but fair play to them, they’re in the final. Most people wouldn’t be fans of it but you have to credit them. They’re revolutionizing tactics.
“They played exactly as we anticipated they would but they’re very hard to handle. It was fairly frantic out there but to be fair they played orthodox enough early on. We were getting the run on them at times. Our conversion rate wasn’t as good as it normally was though. We were aware that we were going to have to take shots from further out. We were comfortable with that but we’d expect to get a high conversion rate.”
Kelly believes Cork had demonstrated in the first-half how Donegal could be prised open but their standards fell in the second-half.
“The game plan was to try to push them down the wings, suck them back out and hit them on the other wing. We maybe could have switched the ball faster and recycled it better. In the second-half we started doing sloppy things when kicking the ball and panicking a small bit.
“We showed in the first-half, there was a way of getting through them if you run hard. But we made some awful mistakes with our handling errors. We stayed for the Donegal and Kerry game a couple weeks ago and it was clear that you had to be patient and recycle possession. But it’s far easier said than done.”
Murph’s Sideline Cut: “Tomás Ó Sé said last week that you can’t train yourself for a match against Donegal – you have to experience it.”
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