Current Hurler of the Year TJ Reid believes that Kilkenny may have to look at deploying a sweeper in the future. The All-Ireland champions drop players back to supplement their defence but have never embraced contemporary defensive systems.
"We'll have to definitely look at it," said Reid, speaking at the launch of Cúl Heroes, the official trading cards and magazine of the GAA/GPA. "We've never had a sweeper, and even against a strong breeze we've never had a seventh defender but yeah, I definitely think it's something we'll have to implement in training and get our heads around it.
“Just to try and have a game plan and make sure we’re not hitting their seventh defender and we’re not looking around asking questions. So we’ll have to sit down and try to have a tactic on the day.”
Kilkenny were beaten by Clare in the AHL semi-final earlier in the month, a defeat Reid ascribed to their being “still at league pace,” whereas “Clare were at championship pace. All over the field they seemed to be winning breaking ball and a lot hungrier on the day.”
He pointed out though that his team "were missing five starting figures: Paul Murphy, Mick Fennelly, Conor Fogarty, Colin Fennelly, and Eoin Larkin – five big players to be missing against a good Clare team."
Conquerors
He has a preference for Kilkenny’s conquerors in Sunday’s final. “
Waterford
are going well as well, but going on the performance against us I probably would be going slightly with Clare.”
As the top forward in the country last year he said that playing against sweeper defences is a challenge.
“As a forward you’re always looking for space like, that’s common sense. So when you do turn around looking for space and there’s a defender there blocking it off, it is difficult but we played Waterford in the All-Ireland semi-final last year and they had a sweeper so we did fairly well that day.
“It does make things harder on a forward of course when you have a lad breathing down your neck and he has no interest in the ball and they have a defender behind things sweeping up things.”
Although he is impressed with Clare, Reid said that Kilkenny would be a different proposition in the championship back at full strength and with plans properly laid.
“Ah yeah, definitely it would be preparation I suppose. We’d probably be better as well because we’d probably be away on a training camp, preparing for them, sitting down in front of a lap-top looking at the game and studying the form that way. We didn’t do that for the league semi-final . . .”
