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7th June 2017
09:57pm BST

"When you're a half forward in Gaelic football now, you have an obligation to defend," the Derry native said at the time. "You have an obligation to go back and sometimes that invites the attacking player onto you and sometimes there's very little you can do because you can be caught tracking someone else."https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/831416338421780480 In Down, Caolan Mooney is the latest beneficiary of moving further back down the pitch. The forward-turned-midfielder-turned-defender was absolutely deadly from wing back against Armagh. He scored twice but he was the driving force - quite literally - for a dynamic display from the Mourne men who put to bed 25 years of hurt against their neighbours. It's going alright.
"This is my first year being thrown in there but I don't mind it, I enjoy it," Mooney said on The GAA Hour. "To be fair, you sort of look at half backs now as more of an attacking forward from deep because of the way Gaelic Football's gone. But wherever you're put, you have to get used to it."Mooney was so dominant that Armagh's Mark Shields was eventually moved up to man mark him. Man mark the back.
"I don't think it's too often you'll have a defender being man marked," the Down man laughed. "I'll take that in my stride. He scored 1-1 but his goal, he just got the rub of the green in that it fell his way but fair play to him, he took his goal when that happened. "But I was on a warpath after it to try and rectify it and I feel like I added some crucial scores when we needed them to get us over the line. "I did my bit in defence and, in the second half, I don't think he had a big impact so I was all-round happy enough with my performance."That's the reality of it now though. As Colm Parkinson put it: "For players with your type of speed and your ability to break, in the modern game it's pretty much the only position for you really." Listen to the full, brilliant interview below from 22:00.
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