Lies, damn lies and dubious team news
So the existing rule remained: managers obliged to release teams for the directive of the programme by Wednesday noon prior to a match. Whether they want to publish the teams to the media is up to themselves.
Cork had a part in play in the proposal’s demise, PRO Tracey Kennedy backing the idea in principle but correctly pointing out that were it come into rule it would exacerbate the dummy team problem.
The Cork County Board know better than most about the issue: the footballers among the biggest culprits for looking nothing like they appear on paper when the ball is thrown up.
Conor Counihan is not a Ger Loughnane or Justin McCarthy, though. He doesn’t intend to deceive. It’s well known he and his selectors don’t pick their team until after they are requested to send it to the publishers.
The issue of dummy teams came to a head last weekend when a defiant Wexford manager Liam Dunne made six changes to the side he named to face Dublin.
Dunne’s “I’ll run this team any way I want” line privately angered Croke Park but his reasoning for the multitude of personnel and positional changes (Dublin recruiting their video analyst earlier this year) was an understandable one. Yet there are repercussions. Newspapers have already minimised the amount of column inches they would have previously dedicated to team news while match programmes have been devalued to the point of becoming mere souvenirs.
Promotionally, the GAA are losing out so we asked some questions.
THE GAA
As with 2012, Duffy wrote to every senior inter-county manager this year requesting their assistance in engaging with the media as a means of promoting Gaelic games. For the same reason, Croke Park have communicated with every county every week of this year’s Championship asking that they put their teams into the public domain at the earliest opportunity.
The GAA’s head of media relations Alan Milton explains why: “There’s an argument to be made that we should just put panels into the programme. I don’t necessarily agree with it. I think we should preserve the practice of having teams accurately named for as long as we possibly can simply because it helps us generate interest and publicity for the games. Even allowing for the fact we have amateur players, they prepare professionally and even allowing for injuries in all sports there’s a good chance they would know their teams by Thursday. Friday evening announcements don’t help us from a publicity perspective and I’m glad to say there aren’t too many.”
For several years now Kilkenny have released their team on Friday evening yet e-mailed to the publishers earlier in the week. That requires a tight level of confidentiality with the man on point being Tadhg Twohig, the general manager of DBA Publications.
“We’re very stringent about where the teams go when they come in — I don’t even see them all of the time,” reveals Milton. “Tadhg communicates on our behalf, DBA would have communicated with the counties at the start of the year. We don’t even give them to the big screen (at Croke Park) until the last possible moment. We have had very few incidents where that trust or confidentiality has been broken and I wouldn’t expect it to be any other way. When we give our word that it won’t leaked we mean it because the key person in this is the player. If the player hasn’t been informed it’s not fair for him to be reading it in the paper and that’s where we’re coming from.”
Milton says the GAA are willing to make exceptions for one or two changes to a named team but anything more is unacceptable.
“Programmes are important to us as a communications tool. If the information isn’t accurate it doesn’t help us. You can live with one or two changes because they naturally happen and there’s a degree of a team trying to get one over each other and to an extent I can understand that. It’s not ideal but it’s when you get into the realms of four, five or six changes and beyond that it just makes a farce of the teams that are selected. People won’t go to the match programme as a credible source.”
THE ALTERNATIVE?
The European Rugby Cup’s (ERC) stipulation for Heineken and Amlin Challenge Cup matches is that each club must name their starting 15 and eight replacements by noon on the day prior to the fixture.
“The slight difference is teams and replacements must be in by Friday noon for all matches on Saturday and Sunday,” explains ERC communications manager Mark Jones.
The only changes permitted between the named team and that which takes to the field are exceptional ones, usually medical or family reasons.
If a player is unable to take his place in the team because of injury, a medical certificate must be presented.
Each team has the option to alter their team under those circumstances up until an hour before kick-off with both having to be submitted at the same time. Jones reckons 95% of the time the named team starts with the rule brought in so as to ensure nobody gleans a tactical advantage. There were incidents in the past when it occurred and the perception was regulations were contravened if not broken.
“What you’re doing by asking the clubs to announce their starting 15 and replacements well in advance of kick-off is protecting the integrity of the tournament and promoting it as well,” says Jones.
“You’re thinking about the broadcast partners and the media representatives. Once you’ve asked them to submit bona fide teams and substitutes what is written and broadcasted about them is valid.
“The promotion of the games is then done in a meaningful and accurate way. You have media representatives across the spectrum talking about players they know will be playing.”
Clubs often issue their teams to their publishers prior to the ERC so that they can be included in the match programme with spectators given the option of filling in the numbers from the away team from their squad list.
THE MANAGER
Whether it was with Monaghan or Meath, Seamus McEnaney routinely held an in-house game the Tuesday before a Championship match. “We would always change one or two players,” he recalls. “I always believed in picking players on form. If they did well on that Tuesday night they would get themselves into the team or go from 25 in the panel to 19. That was the carrot.”
By the time he sat down with his selectors to pick the team and informed his players of the selection, it was the final session on Thursday with the team issued to the media either that evening or Friday morning. “The players had to be told first, that’s always been my belief. They are the jewels in the crown and more important than any county board, Croke Park or the press. What the problem is with teams being released on Friday I don’t understand.”
McEnaney understands the need to promote the games but they conflict with the requirements of a manager.
“If that means naming a fella at full-back and you know he’ll play elsewhere or there’s a trump card and you only announce him in the team on the day then so be it.”
He also has an issue with managers being required to submit teams on Wednesday morning during the qualifiers. “You’re out every weekend, you’re carrying injuries and you’re trying to rehab players during the week... there’s not a chance you’re going to be able to name an accurate team on a Wednesday even if you wanted to.”
McEnaney’s answer to the issue? Friday announcements. “Who would it hurt? You have two days of talking and writing about the team.
“I don’t know who makes these rules. Have any of them ever managed an inter-county team? I’d say the answer to that question is no.”
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