Cahair O’Kane: Kilcoo and Errigal’s commitment to attack says they’ll both be even harder to beat in next year’s new game

THE public perception of Kilcoo’s style of football is baffling.

They are often characterised as this ultra-defensive outfit that grind their way through Down and then multiply the plague when they break out into Ulster.

There was a time when that might have been a fair assessment.

But not any more.

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Let’s just do some bare numbers.

Between 2012 and 2020, Kilcoo played 17 games in the Ulster Club. They scored 19 goals and averaged 1-10.

Since Covid, they’ve played 10 games in Ulster.

They’ve scored 21 goals, and are averaging 2-11.

They are a goalscoring team.

This year’s quarter-final with Crosserlough was the first time since 2017 they had failed to find the net in a provincial club game.

Firing a blank has only happened them three times in their last eight campaigns.

They are the definition of being able to lie to dinnertime because their reputation is that of an early riser.

You might look at Kilcoo with one eye and see this ultra-tight unit that doesn’t concede goals and gets men behind the ball.

But if your other eye isn’t prejudiced by their reputation it might see a team whose commitment to attack is their actual point of differentiation.

When they go, they go hard.

They go in numbers.

And they go straight at the black spot.

Scotstown played into their hands in the semi-final, going for a full-court press without the pace to protect themselves. Kilcoo’s five goals could have been eight, nine, ten.

Errigal have been pressing high all year.

Enda McGinley has done a brilliant job, turning a team that had the potential to be in an Ulster final into a team that is in one.

And he’s done it by playing to their strengths.

At various times over the last decade, they’ve tried to go the defensive route. It doesn’t suit them.

They’re a team full of ball players. From numbers 5 to 15, they have some incredible technicians.

When you saw them come out against Trillick and go pretty much man-to-man for as much of the game as was reasonable, the expectation was that at some point, it would fall down, that they’d get opened up and beaten.

They haven’t been beaten yet.

It will make Sunday’s Ulster final compelling.

Kilcoo are going to look at Errigal and see the high press.

They are going to spend this week highlighting the opportunities that it will present, a scenario they are extremely familiar with.

Errigal will look at Kilcoo and know that they are doing this.

McGinley will also be aware that to get to an Ulster final and suddenly rip up a template that has not only taken them there but works for the players at his disposal would be dangerously close to waving the white flag.

There will be people who will watch Sunday’s game and only see the negative they wish to see.

But there will also be people who will revel in its inevitable second half excitement, arm their thumbs and come out squealing about how the game doesn’t need new rules.

What I see when I look at the two Ulster finalists are two teams that will be even stronger in 2025.

You could not say that about any team that is starting this week wondering how it will cope when Jim Gavin takes away the straitjacket that they told themselves complimented their figure, that they’d grown to love even though it made their ass look fat.

If you’re a player who finds himself back in the dressing room over the next few weeks and your coach starts giving out about the rules, I pity you greatly.

You are in for a long year.

There will be coaches who are sitting down trying to work out ways of manipulating the new rules to their advantage. That’s grand.

But what you really want is your manager to stand in front of you and embrace what will be a completely different game next year.

These rule changes will be the death of lazy coaching. Only being able to defend with 11 outfield players and the looming threat of the two-point arc has no obvious workaround.

There is too much space to close down and not enough bodies.

A certain type of coach will see the negative in that, wonder what he’s supposed to do, cry on to everyone about how it’s stupid and it’s not fair and the game’s too open.

The other type of coach will know he just has to make his players better one-v-one defenders.

The role of the coach, the responsibility he has, will be altered.

If your coach starts whinging about it, he is signalling that he either can’t or won’t help you as a player.

Save yourself the year. Leave. Go back when he’s gone.

A changing room will know quickly if a coach is up to the task or if they would rather run like Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch when he sees Paul Reynolds and his bright blue mic coming.

For the past decade, the collective has overwhelmed the individual and shut out all the light.

We got afraid of the dark just in time to avoid crowds getting as bored at Gaelic football matches as they are at rugby.

If the GAA had allowed for bars to be open at games, the Aviva Shuffle would have infiltrated every ground in Ireland.

This is not, and never has been, about going back to the way things were in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

It is about the late 2020s, when footballers are better, stronger, faster, fitter.

The rule changes will unlock the incredible potential of Gaelic football.

That places the onus firmly on coaches to help unlock the potential of their footballers.

Kilcoo and Errigal Ciaran are doing that under the existing rules.

You cannot look at either team and say that the 2025 version of Gaelic football won’t suit them.

Maybe you could make a case that some of Kilcoo’s older hands will be another year on and that bit more exposed by the space. We won’t know.

But the Kilcoo of 2024 would have no bother with the game of 2025.

Both them and Errigal Ciaran will, all things being equal, be even harder to beat next year.