DEPENDING on which estimate you work off, there were somewhere between two and four thousand people in Owenbeg on Friday night.
The MacRory Cup rivalry of St Pat’s Maghera and St Mary’s Magherafelt has become a big event in the Derry footballing calendar.
It was an evening made of hot tea and hypothermia.
Everyone knew that when they left home but still thousands came and abandoned cars down almost as far as Duffy’s Filling Station.
For supporters, there’s some level of emotional investment that dragged them there.
Families, friends, classmates, alma mater, clubmates or just interested observers, something got each of them up off their sofa on a freezing Friday night to go and watch a game of schools’ football.
Part of the decision to go is based on the expectation that there will be a level of entertainment provided.
The reaction locally to the spectacle in Owenbeg was fairly visceral.
Social media turned into a jury that hadn’t the time nor want for a trial.
It was decided that these two schools alone had ruined football and there was nothing else to it.
Everyone involved must be dragged out to the Castledawson roundabout and stoned at dawn.
Recriminations were swift and brutal.
St Mary’s joint manager Ronan Devlin, who takes the team with Kevin Brady and the school’s new full-time Gaelic Games coach Killian Conlan, was understandably irked by it.
Early on Saturday, he Tweeted: “Before gubbing on twitter, look a bit deeper, or gather some facts. Horrible place at times.”
Newsflash people: Nobody in Owenbeg on Friday night broke Gaelic football.
Schoolteachers invest an awful lot of time in coaching young players.
Maghera and Magherafelt are no different from any of the others. A small group of individuals pick the baton up and are left to run with it for twenty years.
The industry standard for a MacRory team is at least three sessions a week.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to stand on the ditch and tell them they’re doing it wrong when you’re not staying those evenings and coming in on Saturday mornings.
Colleges football in Ulster is top-end stuff.
Ten of the last 20 Hogan Cups, including three of the last four, have been won by the MacRory champions.
There have only been five Hogan Cup finals in the first quarter of this century for which the Ulster representatives have failed to qualify.
Had the finishing been better on both ends on Friday night, the same game ends 1-12 to 1-10 and everyone just files out quietly.
None of this is to disguise that the game was unattractive and slow, because that’s what it was.
But it was no different to almost every game you see now.
I watch an unhealthy amount of football. It was sitting in the crowd in Healy Park a few months ago that it dawned on me that pretty much every game now looks exactly the same.
The attacking team work the ball up the field, get themselves into an arc shape with a few men inside as decoys, and they move the ball side-to-side trying to open the gap for a runner. He’ll either have nowhere to go and turn back, be fouled or shoot.
Then the other team takes the ball and they do the same thing.
There’s no atmosphere because there’s nothing for the crowd to get their teeth into.
That’s not a criticism, just the reality of the picture faced by supporters who continue to attend in their thousands, praying that today is the day that the two teams just decide to have a go.
Players are miles better than they’ve ever been but they’re also more cognisant and scared of the risks of thinking outside the box.
I always think of Stephen O’Neill’s score in Croke Park, the one where he dummies the diving Kildare defender and then points from near the sideline. Nobody, absolutely nobody, takes that shot on now. And that’s a pity.
You want players to be able to run about free-range but the game’s tactical direction has led to the mass-production of a load of battery hens.
There’s nothing to incentivise risk-taking. You get the same reward for a 13-metre free as for a Stephen O’Neill special. So why would you take the risk?
We cannot change the sport by pulling at threads. Unless you truly incentivise freedom of expression, nothing will change.
Carry the arc of the ‘D’ around to the endline and anything inside that is worth one point.
Another arc that bends out to 35-40 metres, anything from play inside that worth two.
Beyond that marker, a score from play is worth three.
The distance on the scoreboard between a point and a goal is too shallow. Make a goal worth four or even five.
It’s radical but it’s simple.
Because no matter how many forwards a team is made keep up the pitch or how long the shot clock runs for, none of it will change the desire to get as close to goal as possible before taking the shot.
We cannot keep on hammering coaches every time there’s a bad game.
Their job is to win and to develop senior footballers.
To be doing anything else would be plain naïve.
Two schools trying to win a MacRory Cup didn’t break Gaelic football.
But it is broken, and it does need fixed.