Questioning advantage
It provided a first glimpse of the new rules, and contrary to general expectations, the introduction of the black card did not provide a host of controversial decisions.
There were three last weekend in the Cork-Kerry game and, according to my understanding of the rules, they all looked fair enough calls.
The new advantage rule, however, looks ripe for abuse.
It’s clearly intended to counteract the very real threat of cynicism among defenders, but how easy will it prove to adapt the new dispensation as a vehicle for attacking cynicism?
Take a forward who’s bottled up at the corner flag, going nowhere.
The referee spots a foul and gets the hand out to signal the advantage: suddenly there’s no incentive for the forward to make an effort any more.
The obvious retort here is that the whole point of an advantage rule is to give a referee the chance to ensure the player isn’t penalised by calling the play back too quickly. But in the above case it’s the opposite: there’s no advantage to the forward because he hasn’t a hope of scoring from the corner flag. The best outcome he can hope for is a free from the 21 which the team sharpshooter can duly convert.
The issue here for this observer is twofold: for one, the advantage is meaningless. The forward should just get a free, full stop. For another, how aware are players of the advantage? Canvassing opinion for the last couple of weekends, players didn’t seem aware when the advantage was being played, which seems counter-productive.
If the player being given the advantage can’t tell it’s being played, then he’s unaware that he’s playing under a different set of rules to everyone else on the field, and his marker is probably in the same boat.
If the player being given the advantage can tell it’s being played, then apart from the rare occasions when he’s clean through with the goal gaping, why should he bother continuing to play?
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the impulse to bring this rule in was heavily influenced by Seán Cavanagh hauling down Conor McManus last year, which is a bad move because a) McManus was grounded and in no shape to avail of an advantage and b) legislating on the basis of one incident is never a good idea (You’re not going to talk about Anthony Nash again, are you — ed. Nah, there’s always next week).
Finally, the big danger here is that it encourages lazy thinking in referees — the advantage rule may soon be helping GAA officials to defer calls by a few seconds rather than making up their minds.
A few weeks ago Nigel Owens, the best rugby referee in the business, said in these pages that the television match official option was an easy out for rugby officials and robbing them of decisiveness.
How long will it be before we start saying the same about this advantage rule?
Saturday night. No more House of Cards episodes on Netflix. The Guardian Review has yielded all its wisdom.
If yours truly is idly working out how his name looks in Rockwell or Wing Dings, then the depths have been reached.
The column idea shop has shut for the weekend.
In desperation I reached out to Steve Rushin, the acclaimed author of Road Swing, columnist for Sports Illustrated: how does he write his column?
Does a seed germinate for days or is it a last-minute panic?
“A little bit of both. Something I think of in the car may strike me as a terrible idea, but when I’m in the shower and I’ve come up with nothing else, I start thinking, ‘that’s not so bad’.
“The challenge is that the magazine likes the column to be topical every now and again, and you can say to yourself, ‘well, I have a week, something’s bound to happen’, but with the news cycle moving as fast as it does, everyone’s written about something as soon as it happens.
“Take the Dennis Rodman trip to North Korea as an example. That’s topical. But absolutely everyone’s written about that, so unless you have something different to bring to the subject, you rule it out.”
Rushin helped by pointing out the need for a columnist to be a glass half-full personality. You never know when a column topic will fall into your lap like a TD at a late-night sitting.
“I’ve never yet sent in the letter of resignation I keep for the week when I have nothing to write a column on.
“I’m always pretty confident something will come up, but there’s that tension between what’s timely and what’s timeless.
“But yeah, you have that panic sometimes. And it’s not a case of responding when the editor says ‘Think! Come up with an idea!’, because your brain doesn’t work like that.”
No. Not mine, anyway.
By the way, file under Coming Soon: Steve’s memories of a work trip to Antarctica with a lady called Kate Upton.
Yes, I thought that would get your attention.
You may be aware that a lady named Beth Tweddle was the victim of some horrific abuse on Twitter last week.
If not, the facts are as follows: Tweddle, an Olympic gymnast, was invited by Sky Sports to take part in a Twitter chat with sports fans and was rewarded with some vile comments by assorted knuckle-draggers with access to a keyboard.
I mention this because it was very interesting to see that two people who showered equally disgusting abuse on another lady recently were found guilty in a British court last week and sentenced to jail.
The judge said it was “hard to imagine more extreme threats” than those sent by the two geniuses in court before him, and he duly gave them twelve- and eight-week jail sentences.
By the way, their victim, Caroline Criado-Perez, was abused for having the temerity to take part in a campaign seeking an ultra-inflammatory result: namely, to get a woman’s picture on a British bank note.
Mentioning Mallow, as I did elsewhere on this page, kudos to the club in North Cork for their handling of the McGrath Cup games over the last three weeks.
The weather didn’t play along for my first two visits, and the attendance was sparse, but there was a good turnout last Sunday on a pleasant enough afternoon; the crowd’s size was evidenced by the lengthy wait to get out of the grounds afterwards — I suppose a second exit onto the main road would be pushing it ...
I include this because, like every other sports reporter in the country, yours truly is quick enough to complain when things aren’t as amenable (it’s the first lesson in Sportswriting 101: cultivating an air of irritation, they call it).
In any event, the folks in Mallow gave a masterclass in running inter-county games off-Broadway.
Many thanks for making this hack’s day a little easier.
