Call full-time on it while ye still can lads
Ever since, nearly two decades ago, a slightly extravagant tumble was rewarded, not with the penalty I was surely due, but with the former advice, I’ve nourished a healthy scepticism about the good character of referees in all codes.
Gas men altogether a few of them might be, but not for me. Christmas card list unbolstered.
At the same time, the plight of the modern Gaelic football referee would, in a weak moment, bring a tear to a — still unconnected — hawk eye.
Like Depp in The Tourist, these are men who have unwittingly got themselves mixed up in a bad, crazy business.
And the best they can really hope for is to get out alive.
The GAA’s guidelines insist on an optimistic 17 basic requirements for match officials. Fitness, alertness and decisiveness, thorough knowledge of the rules, and an ability to remain calm are chief among the prerequisites.
Reading on, the proviso that officials must “enjoy refereeing” would seem to restrict the application process to lunatics. But then, in case you were still on board, comes the rub; the role of the referee is, seemingly, to “apply the rules in order to create conditions for our games to be played well.”
By apply, of course, they mean bend and mostly break.
Within the opening one minute and 39 seconds of Sunday’s second Leinster SFC semi-final, Johnny Doyle and Denis Bastick wrestled at the throw-in, Paul Flynn pushed Emmet Bolton, Rory O’Carroll mauled Tomás O’Connor, Alan Smith embraced Paul Conlon and Conlon dismissed these affections with a judicious handoff.
During the introductions, Cormac Reilly engaged his whistle just the once, when Hugh McGrillen shunted Diarmuid Connolly from behind and Mick Foley tag-teamed from the front. “Handy free enough,” observed Kevin McStay.
In truth, it had been a grand, free-flowing opening with only the odd collision inevitable in a sport with an ill-defined tackle. Reilly was perfectly right to let them drive at it. To give us any chance of a game at all, he was doing what every football ref must; let 90% of fouls go unpunished.
But what’s sauce for the goose in the opening minutes of a championship game is stuffing for the gander when things hot up down the track. As games wear on, a referee keen on self-preservation would have to sift that tricky 10% of fouls through a complex matrix of questions before electing to blow.
Is it a soft free? Is it a scoreable free? Who was fouled? Would he have driven it wide anyway? How many scoreable frees have I given to the other crowd? How many soft frees? Did they miss them? (Nobody remembers the soft frees they put wide). Who’s in the studio — Spillane or O’Rourke? Ref every foul on its demerits? Are you mad?
To compare it to soccer, it would be like officiating at a 90-minute corner kick. Where do you start with the shirt-pulling? And where do you stop? The multi-tasking and decision-making capabilities demanded of a NASA astronaut could scarcely prepare you for it. Though the experience with confined spaces would come in handy when the dark day finally dawns and you are locked in the boot of a car.
And then, last Sunday, when Reilly whistled for what looked, to me, a foul on Bernard Brogan, albeit one that might ordinarily be filed with the 90% ignored, McStay had one more question to ponder for the man in the middle.
“If you know the game at all, how can you call a free at 14-all with seconds left in it?”
How would you feel about that if you were one of the referees accused for decades of playing for draws? It bate Banagher double scores.
In his autobiography, Pierluigi Collina, who seemed to have the exact right type of madness to excel at the whistling, described the best referees as the ones who have the courage “to take difficult, important decisions, so important they put the referee in a situation where he does get noticed.”
“Refereeing isn’t about playing hide and seek,” said Collina, a man whose GAA career never got started.
Earlier on Sunday, Colm O’Rourke had a better idea. Let’s play hide and seek and count to a billion. “If the referee got out of the way, we’d have a great game.”
Go with it lads; for the love of God, get out. You’d be better off in the circus.
THIS week, the Eircom Sportshub website carried some reminisces from Liam Brady about the summer he left Arsenal. When Brady packed his bags for Juventus 31 years ago, it was in search of big prizes, something he felt wasn’t on offer at Highbury, even after three FA Cup finals and one victory.
“We should have kicked on from there. If we had a stronger manager who had a hold over the board in terms of spending, that said ‘we could have a team that could be at the very top for five or six years if you give me three or four players.’ On our day we could beat anybody but we weren’t good enough to be at the top of the league.
“We couldn’t challenge the likes of Liverpool week in, week out and I felt it was never going to happen.”
If Brady left for glory, the following summer Frank Stapleton was on his way for the greater wages Manchester United were prepared to offer. Arsenal would go 10 years without lifting a serious trophy, eight if you count the League Cup. This summer, the Gunners again look certain to lose two of their biggest stars, with Cesc Fabregas looking homeward for silverware and Samir Nasri looking anywhere for silver.
The trophy drought already runs to six years, League Cups included.
Could it be that, this time round, Arsenal needed a stronger board who had a hold over the manager in terms of spending?
THE Women’s World Cup might be studiously ignored in most media quarters, but gradually the ladies are earning parity of esteem with their male counterparts — at least on Twitter.
England striker Eniola Aluko copped a flood of online flak for spurning three presentable chances in the 1-1 draw with Mexico. And she wasn’t happy with the tweet nothings.
“It’s intrusive and it’s poisonous. If you’re an England fan and you want me to improve for the next game, and write ‘You’re shit’, I don’t appreciate it and I don’t need it.”
While the red-tops might not yet be interested enough to superimpose root vegetables on the head of gaffer Hope Powell — though the odd No-Hope headline has surely been readied — this brush with the blame game was a real sign of progress for the women.
And once she calmed down, Aluko, a lawyer, was smart enough to realise that.
“I think we all got a taste of what it’s like for the men.”
One of these days, the ladies will finally be loathed and reviled by the masses. Only then will they have truly arrived.
THE ACCUSED: The GAA’s parish rule.
THE RAP: Breaching the right to freedom of association.
THE CASE: A Kerry family were in the High Court this week seeking clearance for their boys to play for the club of a nearby parish rather than the one where they lived.
DEFENCE: The parish rule is the bedrock of the GAA. How would small clubs survive freedom of movement? CROSS-EXAMINATION: The rule is widely ignored in many counties and not applied at all in places like Dublin or Waterford.
PROSECUTION: A GAA Strategic Review Committee argued in 2002 that the rule was outdated.
“If participation is to increase, flexibility will be required, particularly at underage level, where schools create new community boundaries.”
INADMISSABLE: What will happen when all these nearby parishes have to amalgamate anyway due to the shortage of priests?
VERDICT: Guilty. Surely loyalty should come from the heart not the ordnance survey?
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