TONY CONSIDINE: Black only adds to farcical card game
He now wants to see the black card introduced to hurling – what next, blue cards, green cards? Any one of these days I expect the GAA to run out of colours. ‘Twouldn’t do to be colour-blind anyway would it, for either a referee or a player?
It’s becoming farcical, completely and utterly farcical. All the genuine issues in the GAA and we’re down to this. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, if the GAA wants to introduce something between a yellow and a red card then let them go back to the sin-bin.
Look at the problems we’re facing if this is brought in. What of those clubs who are struggling to field 15, then suddenly find themselves with a few guys getting black cards – what then? And there are more and more of those clubs out there.
What of the inconsistency in the referees themselves? What one guy will see as a black-card offence, another won’t. Things are bad enough now with inconsistency, why introduce another layer that they can get wrong? And remember, the effect this might have on a team, on a result, can be massive.
I wonder how do these proposals come about? Is it just a case of a bulb lighting up in the head of someone in Croke Park and then they decide to throw it out there?
I thought this was already decided, that it wasn’t to be applied to hurling. We keep hearing Liam O’ Neill is a hurling man, from a hurling club in Laois, grew up as a Kilkenny hurling supporter – if he’s from such a small club, surely he should know better than anyone the effect this could have?
If you want to get your discipline right on the field, look at rugby. It’s not one of my favourite games but one thing you have to admire about it is the discipline. In rugby the referee can have an even greater impact on a game than in hurling yet his decisions are respected and so is he – on the field anyway.
There you have the sin-bin, no nonsense. A player is off the field for 10 minutes, no replacement; his team is put under additional pressure for that 10 minutes and even when he comes back on, they can still be under pressure, fellas having put in a lot more effort in that 10 minutes than they’d otherwise have done.
It penalises the offending player and the offending team but it doesn’t cripple them, which is what this black card could do. It works well in rugby, but then of course that could be why the GAA didn’t go with this.
The GAA should be focusing on real problems — what’s happening at club level, for instance. We have all this concern about burnout, players having too many games at the top level – well you can take it from me, there’s no fear of burnout at club level.
It’s a disgrace what’s happening, no real action right across the summer, club players unable to plan, getting no games. That’s where Liam O’Neill should be focusing his energy. That is now the most pressing concern in the GAA. Go to any county, to any club in any county, and they’ll tell you the same thing but I wonder, does Croke Park have any interest in hearing what the clubs have to say?
Start the All-Ireland senior hurling championship earlier and end it much earlier; give the clubs a few free dates during the summer and ensure the county releases the players to play.
With the club championships, have an open draw, first out of the hat gets home advantage, play the games in smaller stadiums right up to the final, and finish the whole thing out in the same calendar year. Give all club players real competition, give all club players a real break – the GAA isn’t just about the elite.
As far as I’m concerned that’s what Liam O’Neill and Croke Park should be talking about. But all these cards? It’s gone beyond a joke.
