A senior club coach blames his side's exit from the SFC on "our centrefield partnership. They are good players but one is big and too slow, the other is small and not able to compete for high ball." This coach has no midfield alternatives and asks: "How can I work with what I've got?"

We spoke to former Mayo midfielder TJ Kilgallon about centrefield partnerships in the modern game. Since his playing days in the 1980s and early '90s, Kilgallon has coached St Mary's in Sligo to a county title, served on the Sligo inter-county coaching panel with Peter Ford, as well as working with Brian McEniff on the International Rules squad in the early part of this decade. Today he is involved with coaching the next generation at St Mary's.

Kilgallon believes playing midfield is about working on your weaknesses as well as playing to your strengths.

"A smaller player always needs to get in front of the bigger man he is marking. It's okay to play a small man in midfield as long as he's paired with a bigger man and the smaller man is quick to the breaks," he says.

"Also some smaller guys can compete for high ball. In my time Eugene McKenna of Tyrone was very impressive. He had a tremendous spring and won lots of ball in the air, without being huge. Smaller players can work on their timing and lower-body strength to get up to those high balls."

By his own admission, Kilgallon wasn't the speediest man around the congested central battleground of the field. Nowadays speed is something that can be worked on much more scientifically with fitness and conditioning trainers. Today's players are lucky. Twenty years ago you had to cope with whatever natural pace you had.

"I was fast enough over distances of over 20 yards because I had a long stride," says Kilgallon, "but that long stride meant I was slow over five or ten yards. Today I would have to work very hard in training on my stride and make it much shorter to improve mobility over shorter distances.

"Footballers today are athletes who can play in any one of a number of positions. This is important but it is still vital to work on the skills of the game. Fitness is essential but we shouldn't neglect the basics, the most important being to be strong off either foot."

Questions: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Comments (0) »

Show/Hide comment form

Name

Email

Title

Comment

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment