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29 August 2011

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Dublin v Donegal – Matt Treacy's view

Matt Treacy

THERE IS A PHRASE in Latin that perhaps best sums up the Donegal approach to football – reductio ad absurdum (reduction to the absurd).

All we need now is for another team to follow their example and we will, in time, have the first scoreless Gaelic football match in history.

Pat Gilroy was magnanimous in victory and had Donegal won I would not be saying any of this. Dublin scraping over the line, however, allows me some grace.

Pragmatists will argue that the way Donegal play – or don’t play to be more accurate – is effective. Fair enough. It is to a degree. If they are ultimately successful and they win the football All-Ireland by rarely actually kicking the ball, time wasting and diving to have players sent off, then hats off to them.

That day would also be the day that the GAA might as well scrap Gaelic football entirely and come up with another game because the logic of all teams playing in that way would be that the game as it has been known will have been made redundant. All that would be missing would be to replace the short hand pass with an actual throw and to institute one-on-one scrums for ‘tackling.’

It's called rugby league.

Wigan look out.

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