From jersey tuggers and trash talkers to body checkers
Six weeks since Championship 2011 began in New York, and we’ve have a lot to talk about. We’ve had one great game (Armagh v Down), two decent ones (Tyrone v Monaghan and Kildare v Meath), one surprise result (Leitrim v Sligo) and one near miss that would’ve shook preconceptions to their core when London took Mayo to extra-time just two weeks ago.
If there has been a sense of a missing ingredient in this year’s championship, it could be the regular drone of disciplinary controversies, which has tended to form the background music to far too many summers recently. Of course, it could yet become one of those championships that reinforces former Uachtarán, Nickey Brennan’s pronouncement about the GAA always being one bad match away from a disciplinary crisis. So far however, the disciplinary debate has centred on the rules rather than on the individuals and maybe this is to be welcomed.
I’m not sure, however, that the increase in good behaviour and the reduction in foul play has had as positive an effect as the rule-makers and supporters would’ve liked. Indeed, I wonder if we’re any closer with all the rule changes and modifications to actually arriving at what all disciplinary systems set out to achieve i.e. a better game, an increase in good behaviour, a reduction if not an annihilation of foul play and a greater awareness of sportsmanship. I suspect that the environment where the disciplined skilful player can flourish is not nearly as enhanced in 2011 as we would like to think.
It is nearly six years since I played my final game at inter-county level — a game where the most skilful player on the field had his influence curbed by a sly poke to the face early in the game and a rugby tackle from an opposing player with a minute to go. Watching the two headline games in Croke Park last weekend, where there were seven yellow cards and one red issued, I doubt any of the seven yellows would have been handed out five or six years ago and I’m sure the foul that earned Brian Farrell a red would not have constituted anything near foul play around the same time.
Perhaps players new to the game in 2011 can have a realistic expectation of having each and every indiscretion over the course of their careers punished thanks to the referee, his linesmen, umpires, assessors and analysts. But is that what we want and is there any guarantee the ground won’t shift under their feet again in a few short years? And what about the experienced player who has 10 years under his belt and who is suddenly having to reconcile himself to playing the game a particular way?
If you have become accustomed to playing the game in a certain way it seems the GAA world now, and your part of it, is operating on the basis of flawed assumptions about how things should be; and that these assumptions mainly derive from the acceptance by many in the game of the prevalent representations of how things are. Simply put, it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks; it is even more difficult break the habits of a lifetime and to be ill-adjusted to a deranged world shouldn’t be a mortal sin!
In fairness to the sometimes erratic agencies of the GAA’s disciplinary process, they have made some strides in providing more consistency and the recently adopted amendment to the rule book — relating to the enforcement of specific match bans for indiscipline rather than the traditional time-based suspensions — is one such example. If the authorities were to go a step further and introduce a cumulative points system where serial yellow card offenders and tactical fouling is punished, then each player would know what to expect. There is an innate reluctance in the GAA world to adopt too much from other games but the logical outcome of a points system is irrefutable — a reduction in indiscipline.
A latent fear that all managers and players have of changes to disciplinary systems is that anything that promotes fair play may in a roundabout way handicap their team. How many times have we heard of the top teams in football and hurling (Kerry, Cork, Tyrone and Kilkenny) having a few players whom advocates describe as ‘sailing close to the wind’? Very few of these players are considered liabilities to their teams? In the recent national league campaign, Kerry finished top of the fair play index but yet not many teams inspire as much existential angst when it comes to indiscipline as Kerry.
Much like any other group, the top players have stepped over the line and in many instances are rightly punished but there is a sense that the real snakes in the grass have yet to be smoked out by the rules and sanctions as they are currently constituted. The jersey tuggers, trash talkers, hand pullers, and body checkers are still flourishing in Championship 2011 and those who visibly allow their frustrations to overwhelm them are getting caught. The age-old GAA solution to the GAA problem of “if in doubt, book the two of them” is all too prevalent as well.
The logos on the referees’ shirts since the start of this year — Give Respect, Get Respect — is an obvious manifestation of a determined effort to alter perceptions of referees and rule-makers in Gaelic games. All fair-minded people involved in every level of the games will want to support such an initiative. But talking about it is like trying to rope the wind. It’s like the writer said: “you don’t have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not”. Unfortunately, it’s much the same with referees and respect.
This time last year, the referees’ cause célèbre was the illegal handpass (whatever happened to that?) and once the initial crusade had subsided, it was largely forgotten about. For the rest of championship 2011, I would like to see officials abandon the barren structures of obedience imposed upon them by their assessors and for them to retrieve what they previously intuited about the game.
For many watching games these days, it is hard to understand why, for example, the ref cannot do a quick tick on the back of his yellow card where the number of each player is and let play flow, rather than the drawn out process we currently have. When was the last time you saw a quick free being taken and the ref coming back to do the booking during the next break in play? In many of the games so far this summer the team that is penalised is the team in possession because the opposition have had the opportunity to regroup during the booking process. If Giving Respect and Getting Respect is to be more than just a cliché, crime and punishment need to be more closely aligned. Then, and only then, will the perspectives of players merge with those of us trying to make sense of it all!
