Eddie reveals true intent of ‘concerns’
In the moment, bouncing with the atmosphere, the Gaelic Grounds was a great venue to be in last Saturday week.
However, looking back at those games on the recorder during the week it struck yours truly how dirty a game Mayo-Kerry actually was.
James O’Donoghue could have had his leg broken by the sliding tackle which blocked him for a Kerry penalty: a dubious call? I think not.
The debate over whether or not Aidan O’Shea was concussed might have picked up on the late, late hit he took setting up that goal for Cillian O’Connor. In one of the melees a player was lifted out over the barrier on the Mackey Stand side of the field, and towards the end a Mayo player was actually red carded for drawing what is known technically as an “unmerciful” kick on an opponent.
I note quite the tributes to the awesome physical confrontations involved in the game, but we’re a bit better than that, surely? Awesome physical confrontations occur with some regularity outside the country’s nightspots on Saturday nights, come to think of it — but you’d imagine discipline has a part to play somewhere in a field game.
The carving up of referee Cormac Reilly subsequently was harsh but unfortunately justified, as the official had a nightmare on the Ennis Road.
Observers should beware of laying everything at Reilly’s door, however. He didn’t slide in to send James O’Donoghue up into the air at any stage; he didn’t take Aidan O’Shea out after the Mayo player passed the ball off either. With that in mind it was interesting to see former Kilkenny player Eddie O’Connor out during the week worrying about Barry Kelly, the All-Ireland hurling final referee.
Apart from the image which suggests itself to your mind immediately — people walking around Kilkenny, brows furrowed and heads shaking (“What’s up with you?” “I’m worried, man, worried!”) — it turned the heat up for Kelly on what was already a big day.
To be fair to O’Connor, at least he wasn’t mealy-mouthed, suggesting and implying, or nodding and winking.
“I hope Barry Kelly has a bit of common sense and leaves the game run,” O’Connor was quoted as saying.
“Too often, referees are looking to flash the cards. There will be heavy shoulder challenges in it and he has to referee it but I hope he doesn’t make a mess of the game. The fear I have is he will make a mess of the game.”
In the modern games, hurling and Gaelic football alike, there’s a good deal of spin and suggestion, with heavy hints being dropped as to whether certain referees suit certain teams, or otherwise. Eddie’s wasn’t the most subtle intervention regarding officials but, in an odd way, he has helped us out.
O’Connor has done us all some service by tearing away the curtains to reveal the true purpose of the “concerns” expressed so regularly at this time of year about the pressures placed on officials, though he’s unlikely to get any thank-you cards from Donegal and Kerry.
Why? Expect any comments on officiating from either county ahead of the football final to be doused in scepticism as soon as they’re uttered. The tolerance for referee massaging has been lowered a good deal by Eddie O’Connor’s comments last week.
Unless, of course, you count the focus on awesome physical confrontations, the lack of culpability being assigned to players, and Cormac Reilly’s performance as the overture in that particular movement.
Munster’s secret is out — but it always has been
Ah well. If you have ever known the exquisite delight in mailing someone back with the supercilious opening, ‘It appears you omitted the attachment referred to in your mail’, or, more likely, the soul-crushing disappointment of having to retrieve said attachment when you receive such a mail, then you will have some sympathy with those involved in the Munster Rugby situation last week.
A confidential attachment was inadvertently mailed out by Munster Rugby and seen by people who weren’t meant to see it. Awks is the young people’s description.
Last week I read a piece in London’s The Independent about the 40th anniversary of Jaws, the phenomenon which taught us that sharks can detect a single drop of blood in a million drops of water. You could liken the sharpness of that sense to that of a journalist when the words ‘secret’, ‘confidential’ ‘private’ or similar are associated with any information which comes into their possession.
Look at the gleeful dissemination of the ‘secret’ Dublin GAA ‘Blue Book’ a few years ago; come to think of it, look at the ‘top secret’ Gloucester Rugby plan which ended up in a Limerick taxi a few years before that...
The legal/employment/contractual ramifications of the revelations in the now-infamous attachment I leave to those qualified to discuss them. I submit that the big mistake was not so much in circulating the attachment, but conveying the impression that its contents were secret in the first place.
There was a delicious irony in the Donegal performance last Sunday, or there was if you could recall the men from Ulster being heralded as the outriders of the Gaelic football apocalypse a couple of years ago.
Remember that — the ultra-defensive alignment against Dublin that had sensitive football mavens mopping their brows like Jane Austen heroines?
Compared to the jagged, often cranky battle in the Gaelic Grounds the evening before, Dublin-Donegal was almost like Holland ’74 versus Spain 2010. It sets up (what I’m sure nobody at all has identified as) a fascinating tactical battle for the decider.
Unlike their counterparts in Mayo, the Donegal management will hardly look on as their full-back get barbecued by his man in two consecutive games and do nothing about it; unlike Dublin, the Kerry management are probably going to insist on their half-back line actually, you know, marking their men.
This could get interesting.
As I lived for a while in the Bay Area, the Oakland Raiders were my American football team of choice. It was disappointing to see the Raiders in the news last week, then, for settling a lawsuit brought by their cheerleaders which accused the organisation of cheating them out of their wages.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the Raiders required the cheerleaders to rehearse unpaid two to three times a week, to perform at 10 charity events per season, to participate in the team’s annual swimsuit shoot, to pay the costs of travelling to those events — and withheld their wages until the end of each season, which is illegal. The cheerleaders’ pay worked out at $5 (€3.86) per hour, by the way, well under US minimum wage. That case was settled but similar suits are pending against other NFL teams. The glamour of professional sport, eh?
