GAA grading: you win or you’re wrong

EACH time an inter-county manager watches his side take the field, it’s like he’s back at school sitting an exam that can only produce two possible results. Either he wins, or he was wrong.

It’s the GAA’s variation on a pass-fail system that includes heavy negative marking for managers who come up with the incorrect answers. There aren’t any real alternatives where a loss doesn’t instantly depict him as some sort of an incompetent buffoon in the eyes of many on the terraces.

It was Stephen Rochford who got the hardest of it last week, but it’ll be Éamonn Fitzmaurice and Mickey Harte in the next few days for the anaemic display produced by their charges at the weekend.