Managers: let common sense rule
The experienced Gerry Kinneavy will officiate the Division One football final involving Wexford and Armagh, while the adjudicator for the hurling decider between Kilkenny and Clare is Cork’s Ger Harrington.
Kerry’s Aidan Mangan is the man in the middle for the Division Two football clash between Meath and Monaghan and all three will have an unenviable task in trying to apply rules already ignored, and thus scrapped, at Congress this month.
Kilkenny manager Cody, for one, has railed against the new laws since the dark days of January when he claimed the new rules had the potential to kill the game of hurling within 12 months.
“My views on the rules are well known,” he explained yesterday. “The reality of the league as it panned out is that some referees started to drift back to the old rules as much as they possibly could. I just hope, that in Monday’s final, common sense will prevail as well.
“The new rules weren’t even brought to Congress for ratification and we just washed our hands of them essentially. It would be a shame if yellow cards were to flashed next Monday for very technical and minor offences.”
Cody’s words were echoed by his Clare counterpart Anthony Daly. “I don’t want to see three or four guys sent off on either side,” said Daly.
Interestingly, there was little support from any of the four managers present in Dublin yesterday for the idea of reverting to the normal rules this weekend. “We’ve trained for Monday’s final with the experimental rules in mind and to change that now would just upset us to much. We can re-adapt for the championship,” said Wexford’s Pat Roe.
Both Joe Kernan and Cody said they didn’t see anything wrong with their respective codes in the first place, but all four men called for greater consultation between referees, players and managers on rules and their interpretations of them.
It’s a plea that has been made time and again, yet the problem remains.
Three months ago, managers were invited to a seminar to explain the new rules, unfortunately, one of the meetings was fixed for a Thursday, a night when the vast majority of counties hold training sessions. Clearly, communications need to improve.
“There has to be common sense and that holds for the championship as well,” said Kernan. “There has to be more work between the referees, the managers and the players.
“It’s no good arriving on a Sunday and saying we’re going to work really hard on this part of the game or this rule on pulling, or whatever. We need more meetings or maybe referees talking to teams before they go out might help on big days like this.”
When it comes to Kernan, of course, it’s all too easy now to forget how close he was to never enjoying a big day with Armagh ever again. Last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final defeat to Fermanagh cut deep, but how far was he from walking away?
“If you’d asked me that coming back in the bus that evening, I’d have given you an answer right quick but time is a healer. A defeat can work both ways. You can go home and feel sorry for yourself or you can say that shouldn’t happen and then rectify it.”
Sunday may be just another step back towards the heights of 2002 for Armagh, but for Wexford it’s the highest they’ve climbed on their upward journey to date. Are they ready to strut their stuff on the big stage?
“We played a match against Galway in the league a few weeks ago and the occasion got to the players that time,” said Roe. “I myself was guilty of it because we had the players raised to a fever pitch and it rebounded on us. I believe our lads will be fine, we’ll just have to wait and see.”
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