Rule-makers must tackle football’s dark arts
We were talking about the 2003 All-Ireland semi-final between Kerry and Tyrone and a collision that involved Mike McCarthy and Peter Canavan. Coming from behind the Kerry defender, Canavan ran into McCarthy’s outstretched arm. Peter went down holding his face. McCarthy got booked.
Five years later and the incident was still playing on Mick O’Connell’s mind.
“Do you think he was really trying to get him booked?” he asked in a near whisper. “Would he actually have done it on purpose?”
I understood the great man’s dilemma. In Canavan, he recognised a fellow peer of the realm, a kinsman, a two-footed artist.
Mick O’Connell is not stupid. He is an absolute purist. Mick knows that middlin’ forwards often compensate for deficiencies in other departments by play-acting and diving.
But such antics are not for the princes of the game. It’s not for the O’Connells and the Canavans of this world. Or so Mick O’Connell would like to think.
I could have bluffed. But given Mick had the decency to answer my questions, I felt it was only right that I answered his. So, I gave it to him straight. I said what needed to be said.
O’Connell, an islander, received the news like a man who had just learned the body of a loved one had washed up on the shore. It was something he long suspected but preferred not to believe. There can be comfort in denial.
But there are more people like Mick O’Connell living in denial. After watching Saturday’s qualifier between Kerry and Tyrone, it’s impossible not to confront some harsh truths.
There were no moral victors in Fitzgerald Stadium. We know Tyrone players dive. We know they trash talk. We know they niggle and provoke. Kerry, however, matched and often surpassed their Ulster opponents in the dark arts. What should have been a wonderful occasion turned into an exhibition gallery for every wart, pimple and pile in the game.
In Kerry, the Kingdom, they like to believe they are above the baser activities. Kingdom by name, aristocrats by nature, Kerrymen consider themselves the game’s spiritual leaders.
But if that is the case, football is in dire straits. Winners of 36 All-Ireland titles, the genius of Kerry football has been its ability to identify what is required for success. They are superb at recognising the tactics and skills that will make them better.
And that’s why Saturday’s match was so depressing.
Having examined the landscape, Kerry have drawn their own conclusions about what is required for silverware. Evidently, they have decided they need to con the referee, commit tactical fouls and deliberately obstruct players so frees can’t be taken quickly.
Of course, the really sad thing about all of this is that Kerry are totally correct.
The gains from bending and breaking the rules completely outweigh any benefits accrued by obeying them. The GAA rule-makers are trailing so far behind the rule-breakers it’s lamentable.
There is practically zero deterrent for committing fouls that break-up the game.
Saturday provided further evidence of this farcical situation. The game produced 16 yellow cards, one red card and 47 fouls. There were 10 substitutions. That’s a lot of stoppages. Yet, there were just three minutes of added time. That is lunacy on a grand scale.
The statistics from last year’s championship are damning. Performance analyst Robert Carroll studied 29 games. His research revealed the ball was in play for an average of 34 minutes and 38 seconds. That equates to 46% of the game.
In gaelic football the ball is out of play (56%) for more than half the match.
All the better teams are now adept at protecting a lead by what coaches call ‘killing the game’. Never has a description been so apt.
Yet, the solution is so painfully obvious that it defies belief. An independent time-keeper would assassinate the game-killers. If the clock is stopped when a foul is committed, the incentive to disrupt the match is eradicated.
There is also an easy remedy for the scourge of play-acting. Retrospective punishment. If a player does a swan act, gets up and runs about like an Olympian, he deserves to be suspended.
The GAA takes great pride in stating football is a ‘manly game’. That’s a lie. All those old values have been eroded.
And when Colm Cooper joins the morass, the end is nigh.
At the weekend, we saw Gooch writhing on the ground, affecting an agony that he wasn’t experiencing.
Watching the Gooch’s cameo on the sideline, I experienced a sense of grief not just for him, but for Kerry, and for the demise of a game and how it used to be.
And maybe, in that moment, I understood how Mick O’Connell must have felt.
* Contact: p.heaney@irishnews.com.
