GAA Angry Fans

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Saturday night’s events in Semple Stadium have left Cork hurling fans not so much angry – though they are a bit of that – as fretful and worried about the future and they are trotting out various remedies to get back on the winning trail.

AFR thinks our sometime staid games need more colourful characters like Mayo’s Conor Mortimer but his Michael Jackson ‘tribute’ during the Connacht senior football final has angered fans.   It certainly beats John Mullane’s crest kissing!

Just when we thought no more stadiums could be added to the List of Shame, the GAA’s showcase headquarters comes in for stern criticism from a disgruntled wheelchair-bound fan who feels people like him are treated unfairly in Croke Park.

Many fans got on to us in anger at RTÉ’s online service showing the space shuttle’s manoeuvres rather than the star-studded action at the Limerick v Laois hurling qualifier.    Finally, at least one angry fan wants to take the ‘Gaelic’ of out Gaelic Athletic Association!

Get in touch:   Give your views and comments to An Fear Rua himself at GAA Angry Fans in ‘The Irish Examiner’    Just drop an email to gaafans@examiner.ie and get AFR’s reaction to what you have to say.

TICK IN THE BOOK   AS I WAS leaving Thurles on Saturday evening, I said to myself it was obvious that this is the end of the road for many of our senior Cork players.   What tremendous players they’ve been, many of them since 1999.   But with no real talent emerging, the future for Cork hurling looks bleak.

Rebel Mick

TICK IN THE BOOK  CORK HURLING IS in transition.   It’s time to take stock and rebuild.  The older Cork players have given great service.  One wonders have they gone to the well once too often?   Let’s pick a panel of thirty players excluding the present squad.  Train once, maybe twice, a week during the months of September and October and also have one or two coaching weekends away.   Assess the players at the end of October.   Then, revise the existing

squad and bring some of the ‘second’ thirty on board.  The perception in Cork is we win All Irelands every couple of years.  Cork hurling has fallen behind at all levels – schools, minor, under 21 and senior.

Concerned Fan

I WAS VERY disappointed with Denis Walsh's team selection on Saturday night.   He would have been better off to start a few new players like O’Leary, McGann, Hartnett, Johnson and Canty.   Never before have I seen a Cork team failing to win so many puckouts.   Maybe having ‘The Rock’ in the forward line wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all!  Cork need to change their style of running play and return to more direct hurling.   Let the ball do the work.  

Aiden O' Connor

WHAT DID THE Cork hurling strike achieve?  The record reads: beaten by Tipperary, beat Offaly, beaten by

Galway.   Was it all worth it just to get a victory over Offaly?   Last year’s record under Gerald compares more than favourably with this year’s results.   Could it be that the players are no longer good enough and that they must shoulder some responsibility for what has happened? 

Pog Mahone

DUBLIN SENIOR hurlers are still in the championship but Cork are gone. Who would have thought it?  The strikers achieved nothing and Saturday’s result showed that they were utterly wrong.  They were a great team in decline who refused to accept it and who blamed their decline on someone who was patently not to blame.  They had their chance to prove us all wrong but didn’t. 

Dubliner 2

WHAT HAPPENED on Saturday night in Thurles is a disappointment but it could have happened under Gerald as well.   This is a team in decline and we don't have very good young forwards to fill the gaps. Galway have improved considerably since last year.  Obviously the strike didn't help and I didn't support the players in what they did.    The Board and the players both were both in the wrong in my opinion. There is still a lot of bitterness and unease down here about what happened and the fall out will take some years to abate.

Denis Walsh will try to build on the limited positives that have happened this year and will continue to work with the players and with the support of most Cork people.  The gloating at this defeat by some is expected. We move on.   Others will not, I'm sure. I'm off to a match

Like

UNFORTUNATELY, THE strike and all that went with it has delayed the team rebuilding that Cork needs with many of the current squad having provided many years of great and entertaining hurling.  I am not from Cork but there are few enough really competitive counties in hurling. The sport needs the weaker counties improving not the traditional ones going backwards.

Blue Blaa

AFR’S SHOUT:   Let’s hope Saturday brought the red curtain down on the last Act of Cork’s sporting tragi-comedy.   For Cork’s sake and for the sake of the wider GAA.   This group of hurlers may indeed have reached the end of the road, but what a road they travelled!   In the decade from 1999 to this year, they won five Munster finals, made four consecutive appearances in All Ireland finals and won three of them.  

RED CARD  WHAT WAS CONOR Mortimer up to in the Connacht final after he scored his goal?    I don’t care how he feels about Michael Jackson’s death but showing us a t-shirt expressing ‘RIP Michael Jackson’ was objectionable.    This wasn't the platform to show these emotions.  After you score a goal in the Connacht Final, the first thing you think of shouldn't be ‘Oh I know, I'll make a tribute to Michael Jackson!’

Dubh agus Buí

AFR’S SHOUT:   I spotted Conor’s t-shirt alright and it was a pretty poor homemade effort.  He obviously hasn’t cottoned on that he can get a much better class of t-shirt at a very reasonable price from our friends at Puckout.com.   I notice he spelled the first name in Irish way as ‘Micheal’.   So, maybe it was in honour of a Meehawl Jackson who may have died recently up Glencorrib way?

I WAS TRYING to watch the Limerick v Laois hurling match on the RTÉ web site but all I got was a live ‘feed’ from NASA and some space shuttle.  What a crowd of plonkers!  

Doras

AFR’S SHOUT:   Montrose, we have a problem.   First it was ‘The Sunday Game’.  Last week it was the Radio 1 coverage.  Now it’s their web site.   It seems not a week goes by without some element of the station’s GAA coverage coming in for fair criticism.   I wonder if the shuttle crew had flown over Aughrim at the right time of the evening would they have been impressed by all the people shouting ‘Come on Down!’

SO WE HAVE had to endure yet another poor season for Cork’s minor hurlers.   It further highlights that our teams are not properly prepared to take on the top teams in the country.   Also, I ask are we fielding the strongest possible teams?   I welcome the new development squads structure but we need to set up a hurling academy for minor and under 21 teams.     The GAA must do more to promote and develop hurling, especially as rugby continues to be a huge threat
 Scobby

AFR’S SHOUT:   For a county where fans are used to a conveyor belt of underage success as a prelude to winning senior titles, there’s no doubt that 2009 is a cause for worry for Cork.  When was the last time the county failed to even contest a minor, under 21 or senior Munster hurling final in the same year?    Of course, an academy may be part of the answer, but the real hurling academies are colleges like De La Salle (Waterford), St Kieran’s (Kilkenny), Thurles CBS (Tipperary) and St Flannan’s (Clare).   In my view, Harty Cup and Croke Cup successes are the real foundation for future inter-county triumphs.

YELLOW  FOR ANYONE TO suggest as ‘Hurling Man’ did (Angry GAA Fans 7th July) that the new rule that requires all players to wear a helmet will result in people turning their back on hurling is madness.   Maybe ‘Hurling Man’ was referring to Diarmuid O'Sullivan's decision to quit the game?  I think that having to wear a helmet is nothing to do with his decision.   Having to abide with certain Cork players who took a stance against the county board and the previous Rebels’ manager may have something to do with it.  You would also have to wonder is the decision by others to call it a day also down to the stance the players took.

Deise Abú 2009

AFR’S SHOUT:   I think we should just take Diarmuid’s stated reason at its face value.  Interestingly, on our web site an online poll is showing a strong trend among fans against the new ‘helmets’ rule.   The traditionalist in me wants to go with me, but the realist says maybe the new rule is a good idea.

WITH REGARD TO the recent death of John ‘Thorney’ O' Shea, Seán Kelly in a recent column stated that John was probably the first player to score a goal with his head in the time of ‘The Ban’ on foreign games.   I thought that ‘honour’ belongs to Gerry Davey of Dublin?  

However, it is interesting that Seán forgot to mention what ‘Thorney’ was most noted for.  That is the fact that himself and his brother Derry, also both top class basketball players, are the only set of brothers to be put off (in the same game) in an All Ireland Football Final.   It was the Kerry versus Galway 1965 final with Galway winning 0-12 to 0-09.    Galway went on to make it ‘three in a row’ in 1966.  A Galway player also received his marching orders.   He was John Donnellan who later became a Fine Gael TD and who made the famous remark about Alan Dukes and ‘raining soup’.   John was the winning captain in 1964 but, sadly, his father Mick Donnellan TD died at the match.

The O'Shea brothers were on the great John Mitchells Tralee team that won five Kerry senior titles in a row from 1959 to 1963 and added another in 1966.   Surely the unique sendings off are of greater note than a headed goal?

Gerry Ryng

AFR’S SHOUT:   I hope my colleague Seán won’t mind me handling this one.   I think the great Seán Óg Ó Ceallacháin in one of his books claims a headed goal in a League game in Croke Park for a Dublin player, possibly the brilliant Gerry Davey.   On the issue of the former Fine Gael ‘Ceannaire’, Alan Dukes, holding out a fork while it is raining soup, I’d guess that’s not something Seán will be mentioning to colleagues in his new role as a Fine Gael MEP.

AS A WHEELCHAIR fan I and all my friends find the facilities in Croke Park a disgrace.   When the Park was opened to other sports so much was written about it.  There were claims that it was the greatest ground in Europe and it had everything.  Even the proposed extra work such as LCD televisions and signs add nothing to improve access.    We pay the same for our tickets, so WHY can we not get the same view of the game?   It’s an insult to the more vulnerable people and it appears that all the GAA are interested in is the money.    As a disability campaigner I would like to meet someone to discuss this.   Otherwise, the GAA will end up being taken to court on an allegation of discrimination against many angry supporters out there. 

A Mayo Supporter

AFR’S SHOUT:    This is a shocking indictment of Croke Park.  As ‘Mayo Supporter’ righty points out, it is a question of equality.   Disabled people pay the same cash, so they should get as good a view as anyone else.   Maybe wheelchair accessible platforms, accommodating ten or twenty fans at a time, could be added in a number of locations at appropriate levels of each stand?

RED CARD    THOSE GAA ‘diehards’ and others like the Fianna Fáil senator, Mark Daly, who expressed annoyance at British soil being laid in Croke Park need to cop themselves on.   It is bad enough that Irish landscaping companies were not considered but the real damage that was done to Croke Park was the day they allowed rugby and soccer to be played on it.

Croppy Boy

AFR’S SHOUT:    Whatever about Senator Daly, what about those old school GAA mentors over the years who urged bewildered players to be ready to shed their blood for the county ‘on the sacred soil of Croke Park’?   Somehow or other, ‘the sacred soil of Scunthorpe’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

AT A TIME when hurling referees are coming in for a lot of criticism, it was refreshing to watch John Sexton, Cork, in his handling of his first Munster Senior Hurling final in Thurles.  He only awarded twenty-one frees in the whole game.   He used his common sense and knew when and when not to implement the ‘advantage’ rule, as witnessed when Eoin Kelly scored Tipperary's third goal.   I hope his first All-Ireland senior hurling

IT IS LONG OVERDUE to develop an advantage rule in GAA similar to that in rugby, which allows the referee to let play develop before calling it back for the original free if necessary.   It’s mystifying that, despite all the tinkering with various fiddle faddle rules through countless league campaigns, a trial period for an ‘advantage’ rule never took place.

SLR

AFR’S SHOUT:   The absence of a formal ‘advantage’ rule in Gaelic games is a bit of a mystery.   It could be easily applied in the relatively slower game of football but would also work well in hurling and would end a lot of unnecessary controversy in big games.

There’s simply no contest for ‘Comment of the Week’.  ‘A Mayo Supporter’ has highlighted what sounds like a very unfair anomaly about where wheelchair users are located during games in Croke Park.  He wins his choice of a ‘His or Hers’ GAA t-shirt from our pals at Puckout.com, the website where you can design your own GAA leisure wear online.    We think this is an issue the Croke Park officials would be happy to try to resolve and maybe they should get together with the Irish Wheelchair Association?

CATCH UP with more great conversation, controversy and craic on ‘An Fear Rua – The GAA Unplugged!’  at www.anfearrua.com

 

a d v e r t i s e m e n t

 

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Thursday, July 23, 2009