GAA must play their cards right
Perhaps, we wouldn’t go that far but it’s most surely a pregnant time for the game.
A nervous one too, of course. The black card will inevitably bring its fair share of mistakes. Patience will be preached but it will hardly be practised, especially if managers get their way.
On the evening of January 4, Louth and DCU will become the first competitive game to be played under the Football Review Committee’s rule changes comes into operation.
The following afternoon, 21 pre-season matches throw-in at 2pm — and that’s excluding the challenge fixtures Clare, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford will possibly organise in the absence of the McGrath Cup, which their players are boycotting. That’s a lot of games where things can go wrong.
Pick of the games will be Tyrone’s trip to Donegal. Mickey Harte had made no secret of his opposition to the black card while Jim McGuinness’ attitude hasn’t been all that supportive either.
The pair will be expected to provide sound bites aplenty on the new disciplinary stream and their words will be gratefully received from journalists not because a newspaper refuses ink but because they are two incredibly articulate men.
That’s not to say their opinions should be accepted, though. In fact, their words and those of their colleagues should be openly questioned. They are two of just many managers who have vested interests. Their philosophies, their teams, come before everything else.
Jim Gavin is the same although we might have thought differently earlier this year when he said the reintroduction of the sin bin was a more punitive form of punishment for cynical play. He was right on that count but his own side are not beyond reproach, as the All-Ireland final showed.
Managers, the majority of them, don’t want the black card. There’s no problem there. Some of them quite correctly point out it will add to the burden on referees, and consistency could be an ongoing issue in administering it next season.
But there will be those who will want it axed from the game as soon as there is the slightest error by a referee in making a right call in determining what is and isn’t a deliberate foul. You can almost see the headlines some of them will attempt to generate: The Black Plague, The Black Peril.
The sin bin, this column believes, would have tackled cynicism better than the black card, but any measure designed to stamp out a blight on the game should be welcomed.
It will have teething problems, that there is no doubt, but the GAA must stick to their guns. If a tweak here or there is needed then that’s fine but caving into the cult of the manager is the last thing they want to do.
The fact the rule changes are permanent should bolster their resolve.
Anyway, it’s likely it won’t be until late February or March that an initial assessment can be made on the black card. We’re not talking about how it fares in the opening half of the National League but when it comes into operation in club games around the country.
The feedback from the clubs will provide a more rounded and representative analysis than anything uttered by an agitated manager after a defeat.
He has the bigger name and the higher platform therefore his voice will carry the loudest but that doesn’t mean it will ring the truest.
Looking out for No1 is his priority. On that issue, context is everything.
Season’s greetings to one and all.
Email: john.fogarty@examiner.ie
At this stage, it’s only the All-Ireland senior finalists in each code who are not permitted to return to training.
Under the phased winter inter-county training schedule, they can recommence on Sunday after the Christmas break from December 21 to 28 concludes.
U21 football panels are not permitted to return to collective training until January 1, but that hasn’t stopped some counties from beginning their preparations already.
Strong anecdotal evidence points to one prominent squad organising a training camp this past weekend.
Whether it’s an illustration of just how desperate or determined the manager in question is to succeed, the fact is it has already given him an unfair advantage on his counterparts who have abided by the rules. It also raises the question of burnout for players.
Three years ago this month, this writer reported having seen a senior county team training when they shouldn’t have been. No punishment came their way. If the GAA are earnest about their rules being heeded, they should do their damnedest to enforce them.
Clare were the public’s choice as RTÉ’s Team of the Year on Saturday night yet we can’t help feeling Dublin were more deserving winners.
We made the point following the decision on Twitter and were confronted with a repeated sound argument about the surprise element of the Banner’s victory in 2013.
Yet this was only Dublin’s second All-Ireland title in 18 years as much as it was their second in three seasons. They lost just one game across the National League and Championship. They cultivated a style of football so pleasant on the eye discounting the last 10 minutes of the All-Ireland final when they were virtually down to 13 men. We can’t help feeling the choice of Clare was grounded in those two fantastic finals they offered up in tandem with Cork and the high entertainment value of the hurling championship.
Dublin truly dominated the football season yet, as Enda McEvoy of this parish validly stressed to us, a more peerless team (Kilkenny) never won such an accolade.
One tweeter added the public vote was indicative of an anti-Dublin bias that will get stronger next year. We would argue it says more about the nation’s grá for the romance in sport rather than their admiration of excellence.
