This clash and bash nonsense must end
I went once and once only in the early years and that was enough. I don’t care who wins the battle next Saturday.
If it was happening across the road I would not go outside my front door to watch.
This is a misbegotten bastard of a yoke which has managed to extract the best elements from both Aussie Rules and gaelic football and leave us with nothing to be proud of.
The one game I saw was a dreadful bad-tempered exhibition which stopped just short of a bloodbath in which somebody could have been maimed - almost certainly an Irishman - on the day. I have seen snippets of the more recent clashes on television since and they have not changed my mind.
Some of the games, threatened by public outcries about the foulness of the exchanges, were clearly inhibited by the administrators’ fears that the whole future of the hybrid horror was seriously at risk. So they were all-holds-barred affairs designed to protect a commercial future. Others went to the far end of the scale. You viewed them the way you view the start of a Formula One Grand Prix when anything is likely to happen before the first bend.
Look at it this way. The Irish teams still do not know how to tackle hard but fairly fair the way the Aussies do in their own code. They still have not learned how to openly do the kind of stuff you normally do behind the referee’s back right in front of him. The Aussies, on the other hand, have the perennial disadvantage of playing with a ball of a different shape – a huge penalty – and also (for as long as they remember instructions) have to rein in the power of their tackles. The lovely soaring high fielding which is the prime feature of both codes is largely sacrificed because of the pragmatics of strategies and that is a crucial loss. There is also the underlying reality that these so-called tests are battles between amateur athletes, however well coached and trained, and professionals.
In my view it just does not work, has never worked, and never will work.
International Rules survives because of the natural wish of both parties to add an international dimension to their national games. That is so necessary, and potentially of such benefit to both codes, that the effort to create a new code was laudable in the beginning and deserved to be nurtured subsequently. But that time has passed in this opinion and the effort should now be quietly abandoned. I’m amazed at the reports there is to be a good crowd at the Limerick test judging by advance ticket sales. Maybe I’m in a tiny minority on this front. Anecdotally, though, I don’t think so.
Irish manager Anthony Tohill, as Irish managers always do, has picked a squad of the biggest and most rugged GAA bones around, has appointed the seasoned Steven McDonnell of Armagh as captain, and has a corps of players with experience like Kennelly sprinkled through the ranks.
Is it significant though, in terms of fielding our very best squad, that there are no players from the current Kerry squad selected at all and that the (huge) Cork side which won Sam Maguire Cup two months ago provide only three players to the squad in the inspirational Graham Canty, Daniel Goulding and Michael Shields.
By all accounts available to me the Aussies, captained by veteran Adam Goodes, are bringing plenty of hardened muscle with them for the battles in Limerick and Croke Park.
There is something extremely combative about Australian athletes right across the sporting disciplines. They hate to lose more than most. They are not into the business of being gallant in defeat in any sport. Most of the more objectionable incidents down the years have been caused by Aussie players and that is a fact.
In fairness these have often sprung from not just the permitted harsher tackling standard to Aussie Rules but also because Irish players were ill-prepared to absorb such tackles. The experienced Irish players like Martin Clarke of Down and such as Tommy Walsh and Kennelly will have improved that area but it has been a major problem in the past. And it is always likely to be when the chips are down in the final quarter.
Fundamentally the situation is that if the hybrid code had ever shown any signs that it could create even more thrilling and spectacular games than the originals from which it was drawn then it would have a future.
In my view it has never done that or come anywhere close. The worthwhile drive to create the international dimension has been interesting but fatally flawed. It should be laid to rest as soon as possible, both Up Here and Down Under. And the sooner the better.
* Contact: cormac66@hotmail.com
