Larry Ryan: Can England ever find a way back to controvassy?

How will England ever again get worked up about an arm in an unnatural position?

Fri, 09 Jul, 2021 - 16:30

Glory and talent and genius have their places in sport, but the week reminded us of the intoxicating flavour of the special sauce that spices the pot — our old friend ‘controvassy’.

When James Owens stretched his arms wide last Sunday for a Tipp penalty and crucifixion, it triggered one of those great outpourings of outrage and revulsion.

And when Brian Lohan emerged for media duties, seething, at the Gaelic Grounds, it brought to the boil one of those special 24 hours in sport.

A single-issue day, a day of accusations and recrimination. The kind of day that once melted message boards but now overheats WhatsApp and scandalises social.

Experts were sought to make some sense of what we had seen. Creative geniuses plotted the foul’s proximity to the Ennis Road. Articles poured onto the internet to satisfy the torrent of clicks, podcast records were broken.

Our heatwave was over but the summer temperature soared.

We were almost in Joe Sheridan pushover goal territory, from maybe the only Leinster football final in living memory anyone remembers.

We were briefly back in the fevered summer of ’98, lost in persecution complexes and state-of-the-nation addresses. Could there have been three priests in the referee’s earpiece?

It’s hard to define what makes a great controvassy. Why some disputed refereeing decisions catch a wave of hysteria. Why those three points for Tipp mattered more.

Sometimes it’s the size of the stakes, the depth of the disappointment, coupled with the invisibility in plain sight of the offender — Henry’s handball.

Or it might be the ease with which the injustice fits a narrative, a jigsaw piece in a bigger picture, like Pedro Mendes v Roy Carroll and the flexible Old Trafford goalline.

Then there are the novelty acts. Clive Thomas blowing for full-time as a corner swung over that Zico would fruitlessly head home.

This was one of those, a delicious freshness to the indignation.

A penalty for a foul on the sideline! It was a deus ex machina, a contrived plot device. It was jumping the shark. It was Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars.

Condemnation was pretty unanimous, even if some of us with more sympathy for the Tipp cause might have been better able to see shades of gray. From that perspective, it was easier to pore over the fine print of this new legislation and it was possible to have a little more sympathy and understanding for James Owens.

You’ve seen them given, even if you’ve never seen anything like it.

You could picture Jake Morris skipping on a few yards unimpeded and rifling one to the rigging. And you could convince yourself that even with a 15% goalscoring chance, there’s still a chance. So by the letter of the bad law…

So some of us are better placed than others to see where the English were coming from on Wednesday night.

We could empathise with their diligence in identifying ‘contact’ as Raheem Sterling fell in the box for the match-winning penalty.

But still, it was surely a landmark night in the spiritual home of controvassy. A night from which there may be no way back.

At the start of extra-time at Wembley, Sam Matterface — the ITV commentator who seems to think England is the only land blighted with Covid, so richly did it deserve this salve — signalled 30 minutes that “could change your life”.

And it turns out he had a point, because how can the English football commentariat ever return to a rich diet of outrage having made so little of the decision that sank the Danes? How will they get worked up again about an arm in an unnatural position? How will they ever find their way back to controvassy?

Of course they had other things on their minds. They had songs to sing and a homecoming to plan.

But the penalty was the story. It was a gallant Danish journey cruelly diverted. No matter how many times England had knocked on the front door they eventually had to break in the back window.

And it wiped out at a stroke the strides VAR had made this past month in gaining trust.

Some ransacked the euphemism larder. Barney Ronay wrote in the Guardian of a “wafer thin foul, one for the foul-connoisseurs to sniff and pore over and praise for its gossamer qualities”.

Or “a little nibble” if you were Jermaine Jenas.

Despite Harry Kane having just delivered a masterclass in collapsible chocolate legs under the slightest duress, others, such as Jason Cundy, were still pointing to the malign influence of Johnny Foreigner: “The Italians are brilliant at it, the Spanish have done it for years. The Argentinians, the Brazilians, the Uruguayans.”

The likes of Gary Lineker pointed out these things even themselves out over a lifetime. It was a small lodgement against the vast debt owed for the Hand of God and the Crossbar of Frank.

Meanwhile, the international media was in full Ennis Road meltdown.

Former Fifa referee Urs Meier found the decision “absolutely incomprehensible”. “Scandalous,” agreed Didi Hamann on RTÉ. “They won with a penalty that was a blatant dive and this is not in the spirit of the game.”

Even Tipp followers largely accepted Aidan McCarthy’s punishment was hardly in the spirit, whatever about the letter, of hurling’s new rule.

Suddenly a people who have made debating refereeing decisions a thriving industry were uncommonly philosophical, turning their backs on the habits of a lifetime to find natural justice for possession stats and shot counts.

Meanwhile, in exile in Qatar, one of modern football’s founding fathers was finding it easier to dissent against his own people. Richard Keys was tapping into the hunger for outrage that made the Premier League great.

First leading the inquest on beIN Sports with an equally scandalised Arsene Wenger, Keysey later produced his own suitably histrionic verdict for Twitter.

“Anyone that doesn’t condemn Sterling for his dive is kidding themselves. Denmark deserved better. VAR failed the game tonight. Or does it suit Uefa to have England in the final?”

If they ever want to revive controvassy after this, it may have to be Keysey coming home.