Their 32 man strong contingent arrived in a bus and warmed up for 30 minutes before the throw-in. Our 16 man squad of past and present All-Stars took the field a minute before throw-in.

I'm beginning to think that Mickey Harte is over-rated. First of all he was late. Secondly there was no team talk. I was expecting some video analysis or at least a magnetic tactics board, but no. We arrived out on the field a minute before throw-in. We didn't even have a warm-up.
Half-time was a positive debacle. How Tyrone managed to win three All-Irelands is beyond me.

Kenny Dalglish was once asked to define great players. He said they were the ones who always had time and space. In an extraordinarily competitive game, with Crossmaglen fielding their full strength line up (Oisin McConville, Tony McEntee, the Kernan brothers, John Donaldson etc), they survived by forcing an equalising point at the death, leaving the final score at 1-8 apiece.

Colm O'Rourke always says that football is a simple game, but this is not true. Football looks simple, but only when it is played by the very best footballers.

The All-Star team didn't have the pace or work-rate to match the workaholics from South Armagh, and had three or four men the wrong side of 40, but they made it look simple.

We suffered an early blow when Peter Canavan, plump as a partridge, had to retire exhausted after 15 minutes, leaving us with the bare 15. Yet our lads always had time and space. They possessed all the sleights of hand and small deceptions that mark out the best players. Soloing with the right before delivering the pass with the left, wheeling round into the open space, looking one way while passing the other.

Always there was someone available to take the ball. Always there was someone to make the decoy run. Umpteen times, the play was switched suddenly from one wing to the other. Against the massed Crossmaglen defence - with Tony McEntee stationed as a sweeper in front of his full back – defenders were sucked in and inch perfect hand and footpasses threaded through to create scores.

The goal that looked as though it would win it for us started in the full back line and didn't touch a Crossmaglen body till their keeper retrieved it from the net. I cannot remember any of our lads being blocked over the 60 minutes.

The reason for this is that footballers at the top echelon always have their heads up. Take for example those footballers that come along once in a decade, the ones that are more than mere All-Stars.

What is it that strikes you when you watch Maurice or Peter or Gooch? Well, the first thing is that they always, always have their heads up, constantly clocking what is happening around them. As a result they don't get blocked. They don't run down cul-de-sacs. They never get bottled up.

When Maurice Fitzgerald came on to break Armagh's hearts in that famous All-Ireland semi-final, he soloed in from the right touchline. When he started he was running towards a forest of orange jerseys. But because he had his head up and was scanning his options as he soloed, the defenders didn't know whether to come to him and risk the pass over the top, or back off as he toe-tapped left, then right, they dithered.
When he saw Benny Tierney looking to his right, he swiftly drilled the ball into his left corner. Armagh were finally broken. The tightest defence in the country hadn't laid a finger on him.

The Art of Awareness
This time and space that Dalglish talked about comes from watchfulness. How often have you seen Colm Cooper or Peter Canavan do the same, roving left, then right, heads up all the time like meerkats scanning for predators, then opening the defence at just the right time? Watch any clip of them and you will see it immediately.

It is something I have preached for years. I taped a documentary once on the legendary Dallas Cowboys quarter-back Roger Staubach. I still have it, and regularly show it to teams I am coaching.

Roger the Dodger, as he was known, demonstrates, with impossible beauty, the most important quality required in team sport. He watches. A hand comes to trip him up by the left ankle, he lifts his left foot and pushes the opponent' forehead back with his left hand, before stepping daintily over him and delivering the touchdown pass.

He fakes to the left as the defensive end charges him, then pirouettes around to the right before running in for the score. Sometimes he passes two yards. Sometimes 50. He was greater than the others because he never looks down.

He won 17 games for the Cowboys with comebacks in the final two minutes. There is a series on Sky Sports called "America's Team". If you ever get a chance, watch the episode on Roger and his 1972 Dallas Cowboys. When you see him in action, you will finally understand the secret of the great ones.

This watchfulness was what marked out the select at Ballinderry. Players of that quality are largely at that level because it is natural for them to keep their heads up.

Conor Gormley simply cannot be dispossed. Likewise Henry Downey or Brian McGuigan. But 98 per cent of footballers play with their heads down. They watch the ball when they solo-run. They regularly kick the ball into the block. They can see the simple pass but not the one that will open the defence.

The reason this happens is because they are not looking. This is simply a bad habit. I do drills with underage teams where they must keep their heads up at all times. In the games, it is a free against if they don't.

Driving a car for example illustrates how amazingly complex our brains are. We watch ahead at all times. We scan our options, discern speeds of other vehicles, finely judge distances, slow down and speed up almost automatically.

How often have you been driving a distance when you suddenly realise you have been on auto-pilot for 15 minutes, thinking about something completely different. We don't look down at our feet or at the gears when we change them. We watch, constantly scanning our options.

This should be the starting point for coaching the games. After all, as Roger Staubach or Enda Muldoon will tell you, you can only pick the right option if you see it.