Brolly: Gooch not doing the hard yards
August 21, 2013
Colm Cooper leads out Kerry. INPHO
Age old rivals Dublin and Kerry are due to cross swords in the All-Ireland SFC semi-final on Sunday week and, speaking on FQfm digital radio station, the RTE pundit questioned Cooper's suitability to the number 11 jersey.
"Cooper at centre half-forward is good in the sense that it frees him from the restrictions of the full-forward line but the problem is he's looking for easy ball around the half-back line.
"He's not doing the primary role of a centre half-forward. If you look at Brian McGuigan or Greg Blaney, players like that, they could also win the breaking ball, the hard yards.
"A centre-forward must do the hard yards and that's just not the type of footballer Colm is. He's looking for easy ball and it's going to be very, very difficult for him."
Comparing the 'Gooch' to up-and-coming Dublin star Kilkenny, the 1993 All-Ireland Derry winner said: "He's (Kilkenny) proper, he's powerful and he's a battler.
"Colm is peerless in terms of his skills but I'm on record as saying that I don't believe he cane lead a team in adversity and I've never seen him lead a team in adversity. There's a huge burden on his shoulders and he's not just that type of person."
Brolly also raised doubts over Paul Galvin's stamina and Kieran Donaghy's role in the Kingdom game plan.
"Paul Galvin's engine is nowhere near where it was. He's happy now to pick up a breaking ball in or around the half-back line and hand-pass it off, a wee nice kick-pass.
"The modern game, the wing-forward template, is Paul Flynn or Mark McHugh etc., workaholic flying machines who can play from box to box for 70 minutes.
"They don't know how to use Kieran Donaghy. Are they going to kick the ball or are they not going to kick the ball? Because they've been so defensive it's difficult for them to get the ball forward quickly. Declan O'Sullivan is not a natural corner-forward.
"James O'Donoghue looks very, very good but aside from that they have wholesale problems. Eamonn Fitzmaurice has clearly decided that he wants to play like Donegal and that's been the template and you can see that." Tweet
