Carlow football coach Steven Poacher has defended his side and his tactics against pundit Joe Brolly's criticism of their defensive aspects.
Speaking to Off The Ball AM's Ger Gilroy, Poacher referenced Brolly's criticism of a coaching session Poacher ran at Skerries Harps GAA club, in which he targeted the coach's supposedly defensive games.
"Obviously some people in the media have had a pop at me for some game or something I put up when I was doing coaching clinic a few weeks ago, the name of the game or something like that. It's quite ironic that people would be quick to criticise these things when they've actually never seen them, which always makes me chuckle".
"Joe was very much much critical of the whole defensive aspect of things. There was nine games, and all nine of them hand a scoring element in each one. Young players love to listen to the name of a game, you can call a game any name, but the reason we're playing this game is because it's stereotypical of something that might happen in a game. So you're playing games that are relevant to game situations".
Poacher went on to critique the work of Brolly himself for an article he penned in Gaelic Life about Dublin's lack of transition play, which Poacher believes couldn't be more wrong.
"He wrote an article where he said that Dublin don't transition. What nonsense is that? That's nonsense, pure and utter nonsense".
"Dublin don't play man to man, Dublin have a very, very rigid defensive system, but they break with so much pace and flair that it looks really, really offensive. Anybody who has any sort of analytical eye for the game and anybody who knows anything about coaching will know that and respect that".
Poacher also refused the defensive criticism of the Carlow footballers, who won the Division Four of the National Football League with a record of 6-0. He noted that while the side deployed a defensive system against Dublin in their 0-19 to 0-07 loss to Dublin in the championship last year, he noted the impressive scoring figures the players have recorded throughout this season during their promotion clinching campaign.
"The offensive end of things has improved massively this year. We've scored 107 points, we've scored 10 goals, we've a plus 35 scoring difference. I think we've averaged about 18 or 19 points per game this season".
Download the brand new OffTheBall App in the Play Store & App Store right now! We've got you covered!
Subscribe to OffTheBall's YouTube channel for more videos, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest sporting news and content.
