Match-ups are match-winners, and Errigal Ciaran boss Enda McGinley has never been in a quandary like the one that has dominated his preparations for Sunday’s Al-Ireland Club SFC semi-final against Dr Crokes.
He has some of the best man-markers in the game, but how best to deploy them is the call he must get right.
Along with his management team, he has been gathering as much information about the Munster champions as possible, but building a deep understanding of the individual threats they carry is impossible.
“One of the things you notice, the Munster teams and Kerry teams will know Dr Crokes much, much better than we do,” said McGinley.
“The video tapes will be analysed, we’ll try to get a few closer sources to try and add a bit of colour into what we’re seeing on the video.
“But at the same time, you still haven’t seen your players up against them. Certain people you might think match up on paper but then when you get into play them, suddenly they don’t match up and vice-versa.
“You know that experience coming up through underage ranks within your own county, a lot of those wee match-ups, and the players all know each other, you know who matches up well and who doesn’t match up well.”
Well-known Kerry attackers Micheal Burns and Tony Brosnan, as well as line-breaker Gavin White, are the most straightforward threads of the puzzle, but it’s the supporting cast that could blossom on the day and play a starring role.
“You’ll always know the named players, the star names, they’re easy enough to identify because their names are up in lights,” McGinley added.
“But it’s the second level within a club side that particularly at this level, they’re fantastic footballers, and it’s those players that can quite often dictate and control a game. Their opponents within Kerry and Munster, because they know them so well, those players will be well-identified and will be shut down.
“So when you’re looking at videos, two, three, four videos of games, those players may not be prominent because the opposition have put so much effort to shut them down or maybe the opposition do certain things on kick outs and know not to do a different thing because that would be Crokes’ Plan A, and if they get to play their Plan A, they could hammer you out the gate.
“Most teams will try to force them to Plan B. When we look at videos, they’re winning games by their Plan B so it’s very easy for us to focus on stopping their Plan B, and potentially unleash their Plan A on us.”
A network of well-informed contacts throughout Ulster helped him build intelligence dossiers on St Eunan’s, a Cargin team that contained his two brothers-in-law, Clann Eireann and Kilcoo en route to a first provincial title in 22 years, but infiltration of the southern province hasn’t been so easy.
“I’ve been very lucky this last while, there’s plenty of people in Errigal who have plenty of knowledge on various teams in Ulster and that’s been a massive help to me all along in terms of the Ulster run.
“Crokes pose a different challenge geographically, they’re a long way away, we’re struggling for any inside lines.”
The opening stages of this weekend’s tie at Portlaoise could be somewhat chaotic as Crokes and Errigal size each other up with some quick thinking on the hoof and respond accordingly with the tactical adjustments that may give one or the other of them an edge.
“No matter what you learn, off either the people surrounding Kerry football or from the videos, the first 10, 15 minutes of this game is going to be such a learning curve, to try to identify what you’ve got right, what you’ve got wrong, and trying to make the switches and changes to try and put yourself in the best position to push on and make something of it.”
