Fogarty Forum: Good riddance to the water break
Armagh selector Ciaran McKeever speaks to his players at the water break during the Dr McKenna Cup match against Cavan. Picture: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
Goodbye water break. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
You halved our halves, artificially transformed games, pilfered momentum. You shanghaied our clichés (welcome back “a game of two halves”), annexed those of other sports (farewell “championship quarter”).
You were an inconvenient ad break. The Frodo storyline in “The Lord Of The Rings”. “Elizabeth My Dear” on The Stone Roses’ debut album. You would have been so at home at any of those yawning Champions League draws.
You were a bad referee who arrested the flow of a game. A player feigning or making the most of an injury in an attempt to wind down the clock. A goalkeeper or forward taking his sweet, sweet time to go up or down the field to take a free.
Sure, you arrived on the scene with good intentions but you abused your position with the power you gained, didn’t you? Your introduction underlined the law of unintended consequences but you were only supposed to blow the bloody thirst off.
Instead, you became an opportunity for a recharge. A chance to slow things down. A time to take the good out of a game. And people know it. When the GAA’s Central Competition Controls Committee shortly confirms your demise, many will line up to blacken you.
But you’ll have your mourners, of course. Chief among them will be the junior players for whom the extra breather you provided was graciously accepted. Who could easier digest 60 minutes of action when it was broken into smaller segments.
And there will be the odd manager who will be sad to see you go. Who will regret not having you to impart their words of wisdom to the players but that might say more about their own insecurities and lack of trust in their players than anything else.
Following the death of the maor foirne, you inherited his estate. Studies showed you were given an inch and took a mile. Players took on more words than water, more advice than aqua. Instead of a minute per half, you averaged over two minutes per stoppage - two minutes and 18 seconds, to be precise.
Your indulgence knew few bounds but your ego was massaged by referees who turned a blind eye to how the cessations were being used. One notable exception to that was Seán Laverty who in the 2020 Antrim SFC commenced play after a water break without St Gall’s who remained in a huddle after the 60 seconds had passed. As a result, Naomh Éanna scored a goal. If only there were more like him.
Never mind that in the small ball game there were hurley carriers to pass messages into players, your official status made certain that yours was the only medium when tactics could be discussed.
It wasn’t you that won Limerick the last two All-Ireland SHCs but allowing Paul Kinnerk to take out a flipchart you took credit for it. In case you misinterpreted him, John Kiely was being flippant on Sunday when he rued your passing: “Well, by all accounts it's going to be a major setback to us.” You’re going to miss Limerick a lot more than they miss you.
Let’s be honest, yours has been a charmed existence these last few months when the temperatures have dropped and the need for hydration has not been as immediate. “It was a nice sunny day but very cold and it just seemed ridiculous calling the players off the pitch for a water break after 16 minutes,” Ennis-based Maurice Walshe wrote to us last month of the Munster Club SFC quarter-final between Éire Óg and Loughmore-Castleiney. “I would say some of them had barely warmed up at that stage.”
The GAA only entertained you for appearance purposes and that awful expression “abundance of caution”. The more we learned about Covid, the more we realised it was airborne transmissible. Congregating players for water at the side of the pitch was as inadvisable as one player sharing a bottle of water with another.
Now that your diplomatic immunity has expired, there will be few tears shed. You were a necessity that became an evil. You’ll have to be replaced, obviously. The maor uisce you succeeded will return possibly with a reminder not to be as intrusive as he was in the past, not to enter the field and fill space during restarts, but then nothing could be as meddlesome as you.
But deep down it’s what you symbolised that is most offensive. You are of a period we truly wish never to experience again. Not that we are shortsighted to believe you won’t be required in the future but we truly hope not.
So skedaddle. Away with you. Vamoose. Be a warning to us of what might happen if we take things for granted again.
If you are to read much into his successor’s words, Jack O’Connor needn’t be worried about what reception he receives in Newbridge this Sunday.
“It’s a great position that Jack has left Kildare in,” said Glenn Ryan in October. “Some people would say, ‘You’re better off to be at the bottom and work your way up.’ Absolutely not.”
But Ryan can’t speak for everybody who will be in St Conleth’s Park, and there are bound to be some Lilywhite supporters keen to see O’Connor’s new team sent packing, given the nature of his exit from Kildare.
Guiding them to Division 1 and reaching a Leinster final in his second season in charge, there is a strong argument to be made for O’Connor leaving Kildare in a better position than he found it. With the benefit of a qualifier system, who knows what further advances he’d have made.
Still, O’Connor will have upset some in the county when they took a perception of his podcast interview last September that Kildare was a handier gig. He said of the Kerry position: “It’s a very challenging job but would you want to be anywhere else in many ways because the tradition is here; everything is built towards the Kerry senior football team, the players are coming through. If you want an easy life, you go coach somewhere else.”
What some Kildare fans can’t understand is if he interpreted the role as easy, then why was driving from south Kerry to Hawkfield and Newbridge so taxing and, as he would later explain, a reason for him stepping away?
As O’Connor said in October and something that was later established by the previous Kerry executive in a legal situation, he was not promised he would be appointed as Kingdom manager for a third time.
There are plenty of coincidences attached to the story, just like Kildare hosting Kerry on opening day, but most are just that.
Last month, this column suggested the GAA could avoid a major scheduling issue by staging the All-Ireland senior hurling final after its football equivalent.
As the Allianz Football League gets underway this weekend seven days prior to the start of the hurling competition, it would appear the foundation is already ready in place to make such a switch.
What the Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC) may also keep in mind is giving the All-Ireland Club SHC final top billing if, as expected, it is part of a Croke Park double bill on February 12 or 13.
We’ll hazard a guess and suggest the clash between Ballyhale Shamrocks and Ballygunner will provide more entertainment than the two teams that make the football final. That’s not a slight on the four clubs fighting it out this weekend but they favour pragmatism over pageantry and “The Battles of the Ballys” has the hallmarks of a classic.
The fixtures body also have to take into consideration a plethora of factors such as the distance travelled by the teams involved and surely allowing the Ballygunner and Shamrocks’ supporters, who will all be using the M9, as much time as possible to get to the game makes sense.
Four years ago, the hurling final between Cuala and Na Piarsaigh was scheduled after the Corofin-Nemo Rangers game, which wouldn’t have attracted massive travelling crowds. One team not having to travel outside the county afterwards would have come into the CCCC’s decision-making process but for fare and fairness it’s something they should repeat irrespective of Kilmacud Crokes making club football’s last two.
Email: john.fogarty@examiner.ie
