As the inaugural Super 8 series approaches its final weekend, two places in an All-Ireland semi-final remain up for contention. With Dublin and Galway already certain of their place in the final four, Kerry, Monaghan, Tyrone and Donegal will be vying to join them. What some may consider a positive start to this revamped championship structure, former Dublin boss Tommy Carr is less than impressed.
Echoing Paul Scholes' stand as BT's last angry man, Carr, in an interview with The Herald, finds the whole thing to be "boring."
Believing Gaelic football to have all but become a game that can be reduced to the final 20 minutes, the extent of Carr's disillusion with this "atrocious, horrendous stuff" on show was only intensified by his perception of the alternative fare Croke Park played host to last weekend:
I said how many systems of play did you see in the two hurling matches last weekend? No systems. It was absolutely ‘get the ball, hit it’ … now, of course there’s elements of patterns and where you want to put the ball and running off the ball, etc, etc, etc. But we’ve nearly taken it out of the realms of sport and brought it into science.
Something of an unusual (and somewhat inaccurate, bleary-eyed) take from last weekend's two All-Ireland hurling semi-finals, one suspects Carr's entrenched statements regarding the fall of Gaelic football are afforded greater legitimacy with a more entertaining alternative to acknowledge.
Beyond the results of what we witness on the pitch, Carr believes that the flaws of Gaelic football comes back to the footballers themselves. Unlike their vaunted contemporaries, the hurlers; "Footballers care about themselves first, and then they care about the game of football."
Competition (or the lack thereof) also plays a significant role in Carr's outspoken stance. Of the opinion that only Dublin could possibly stop Dublin from winning the All-Ireland again, Carr scorns those who were so quick to announce the "arrival" of Kerry; a team Carr doesn't think "are physically at the pace of Dublin, at all."
Taking to task all the perceived ills of modern-day Gaelic football, you can read more of what Tommy Carr had to say here.
