Don’t chase scapegoats: control your own performance
That’s the message their county board and senior county management seem to be sending out following their decision to appeal the result of last Sunday week’s one-point All Ireland semi-final defeat to Galway.
Wexford have lost more than a game here. They’ve lost perspective. Initially it seems preposterous alright that Galway’s winning point came after six and a half minutes of added time when only four minutes had been signalled.
But it’s not as simple as that. When four minutes of added time goes up, it’s a minimum, not a maximum. Before the fifth-minute mark had passed, Galway won a free out by the touchline. Clearly, the free had to be taken, which took up some more time.
That free went off a Wexford defender for a 45. Clearly, that 45 had to be taken too. By the time the ball was retrieved and found its way to Niamh McGrath on the 45, and by the time she addressed the ball and struck it, the clock had pushed out to 6.35. In other words, once Egan allowed 4.45 of added time, he had to allow for 6.35.
Wexford are also appealing on the grounds earlier Egan incorrectly overruled his two umpires when deeming a Kate Kelly 45 wide that video evidence now suggests was a legitimate score.
But Rule 41.5 rightly doesn’t allow for a replay for such an error. And it happened in the first-half. It was just one score. In Croke Park last Sunday, James O’Donoghue pointed a first-half 45 that shouldn’t have been as the ball came off Kieran Donaghy.
Donaghy scored a crucial point just before half-time, 27 seconds over the allotted two minutes added time. Tyrone could have had another penalty, a player wrongly black-carded. Yet no one in even as besieged a county as Tyrone are looking for an All Ireland semi-final replay.
According to Wexford’s manager Colm McGee, this is “not about Galway” – though this appeal is a possible distraction ahead of an All-Ireland final – or a replayed semi-final. It’s supposedly about a key, higher principle – demanding better officiating. Sorry, Colm, but there’s something loftier again at stake here. Everyone in sport knows it’s an assumed hazard that sometimes you’ll lose because of some dubious calls from the referees, them being human.
That’s why coaches talk in terms of controllables and uncontrollables. That some things like wrong calls by the ref are outside your control, and therefore the outcome; all you control is your effort, performance, execution.
I’m not speaking from an ivory tower. For three seasons, I was involved with the Mayo footballers. I was there in the dugout in Limerick a year ago this week. Yet you or I have never heard anyone in that camp complain a word about Cormac Reilly’s performance. I only watched the game back for the first time a month ago and from that remove was taken aback by just how many poor calls went against Mayo. But still my overriding sense from 12 months ago remained. There were many things that were still within our control that we could have done better. We enjoyed some fortune in other ways; two of our goals came from attempted points.
If McGee looks at the game or the mirror again, he will probably find breaks, even possibly some calls from Egan, that favoured Wexford. He will definitely find ways they could have controlled their controllables more. They were never ahead in the game. Why didn’t they start the second-half as well as Galway; could half-time have been handled better? When Wexford, to their credit, came storming back to draw level, they had as much chance as Galway to then win the game; how could they have played that crucial fifth-added minute better?
Maybe Kerry got breaks in Limerick last year. Three years earlier in an All-Ireland final against Dublin, they didn’t. Tomás Ó Sé still handed Stephen Cluxton the matchball. No one hated losing more but he could take it, knowing neither victory nor defeat defines your honour.
For the last three seasons, Kerry have had a performance coach called Liam Moggan. He also writes a delightfully philosophical column for the Ladies Football magazine Péil.
Earlier this summer he recounted the Irish cross-county schools race in Clongowes. Moggan was the race commentator. The senior boy’s race was 8000m, four laps. He miscounted the laps. As the athletes ran to complete lap three, he was stricken by an athlete wearing a purple singlet, the sole participant from the host school, storming from a remote third spot to challenge for second.
As Moggan’s commentary reached a crescendo, the crowd moved en masse to the finish area. Yards before the finish the athlete in purple pipped second place. Terrific!
Moggan will never forget the drowning realisation that there was still a lap to go. And seeing the boy in purple drop from second to fourth. By the time they came around again the kid would finish seventh. “I wanted to disappear,” wrote Moggan, “and go home.” Later the boy came over to Moggan in full view of family and friends. “I miscounted,” he’d say, shaking Moggan’s hand. “It had nothing to do with you. I didn’t hear you. I’ve learnt a lesson and I’ll look forward to the track season now.”
Moggan knows the kid heard him.
“His opportunity to blame, if he was so inclined, was huge.” But he didn’t.
In the race programme the principal of Clongowes, Fr Leonard Maloney, prophetically wrote: “Competing, representing your school, enjoying success and coping with defeat are all valuable life skills.”
“As coaches,” Moggan would conclude, “we need to take stock and consider how and when we coach such character traits. Opportunities abound.”
This was such a life lesson opportunity for the Wexford management. That while sport aspires to be fair, sometimes it isn’t, just like life itself. Most of us will live beyond middle age. Some of us will sadly be taken way a lot earlier. For those left behind, sporting defeats help somewhat steel us for that devastation; they makes us more resilient, better, people.
The kid in purple, Jack O’Leary – nephew of Michael, as it happens – would come back to win the senior boys 2000m steeplechase this summer. The girls in purple and gold can come back too, just like the men in red and green will to Croke Park this weekend. It’s totally within their control.
