CONOR NEVILLE: Careful what you wish for with consistency

The cry ‘consistency’ has become an unlikely clarion call in recent years.

Mon, 20 Jul, 2015 - 01:00

Conor Neville

All the intercounty Gaelic footballer asks for is some consistency from referees. All he craves is a regular, impersonal, robotic application of the rules. Is this a big ask? In the context of Gaelic football it is a rather tall order.

For one thing, absolute consistency is an impossibility. Referees are not robots and thus don’t see every incident exactly the same way. Not every example of inconsistency arises from a wilful misapplication of the rules.

When Michael Cusack, Archbishop Croke, and the rest sat down for a bite to eat in Hayes Hotel in 1884, they no doubt hit upon the issue of the tackle. How is one man going to dispossess another of the ball when the other has the ball gripped to his chest?

Some 131 years later and managers are still pleading with the the authorities for a ‘defined tackle’. The Football Review Committee did come up with one two years ago, but their definition forbade what they described as “deliberate bodily contact”, leaving it entirely up to the referee to adjudicate on whether something is deliberate or not. Sligo manager Niall Carew was still bemoaning the absence of a defined tackle during this year’s League.

The vast ‘grey area’ that reigns in the tackle area renders consistency a near impossibility. In that context, decisions on what constitutes a foul and a legitimate tackle are inevitably arbitrary.

Then there is the GAA public’s long-standing love affair with ‘common sense’. As a concept, common sense enjoys a large reputation with the general public — excluding social scientists and academics, of course.

If only things were governed by the rule of common sense then we could all properly enjoy ourselves. From the barked shouts one hears on the terrace, one gets the impression that the rulebook is merely an obstacle getting in the way of a good game.

Arguably nothing is more destructive to consistency than the lure of common sense. Once common sense butts its oar in, consistency is mortally compromised.

Consistency is cruelly indifferent to sentimentality. Consistency requires a man get sent off in the opening minute if his foul merits a red card. Consistency requires that Aidan O’Shea find it as easy to get frees as the Sligo full forward at the other end, no matter how far his team are ahead.

Man of the Match awards — unseen and otherwise

The Andy Townsend whipping boy of the weekend award goes to Martin Carney.

Carney has been a co-commentator on RTÉ for many years now, during which he has successfully avoided attracting much in the way of public scorn.

He had a slight brainfart late in the Kerry-Cork replay when he decided that James O’Donoghue’s contribution was such that he deserved the Man of the Match award.

He didn’t even defend his selection by employing the explanation used to justify Kevin Hughes winning the Man of the Match award in the unbearably grim 2003 All-Ireland final.

Hughes, eggheads among you may remember, was awarded Man of the Match that day as a reward for his ‘unseen work’, that is to say, the kind of selfless, invisible work that only guys with PhDs in GAA tactics from Queen’s University could spot.

Of course, Hughes’ work on that occasion was not so invisible that he avoided winning Man of the Match on the back of it. One could actually adduce from this, that, in the field of ‘unseen work’, Hughes had a bit to go to perfect his art. The true masters of ‘unseen work’ don’t win Man of the Match ever.

In fact, they frequently get abuse from the crowd on account of doing nothing.

And then their old school manager, who probably came of age before Queen’s University were offering PhDs in GAA tactics, would proceed to drop them off the panel. This is the classic career timeline of the true master of ‘unseen work’.

Maybe the lesson from this is, if you’re going to specialise in the humble business of ‘unseen work’, you should choose to emphasise the ‘work’ bit rather than the ‘unseen’ bit.

As a rule, corner forwards aren’t associated with ‘unseen work’ - any work they do tends to be of the flashy, high end variety.

Nonetheless, James O’Donoghue was exalted for his ‘workrate’ and this saw him pick up the coveted clump of post-match crystal.

He won Man of the Match in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final replay too, ahead of David Moran, a popular candidate for Saturday’s MOTM award, who got his hands on the ball on 47 occasions.

David Moran is going to have to lobby for the benching of James O’Donoghue if he’s ever going to win Man of the Match. Either that or develop the unseen aspect of his game.

Two managers make a point of retiring

Two managers handed in their notice on Saturday and both had pointed statements to accompany their resignations. Tipp manager Peter Creedon wanted his dual players to devote themselves to football, a dangerous request in a county which is chasing Liam McCarthy every year, while an altogether angrier Brian McIver was keen to lay his misfortune at the referee’s door.

In this he wasn’t short of sympathy. Wexford’s Mattie Forde, a presumably disinterested observer, lashed the referee Conor Lane for ‘doing Derry’ and ‘giving frees for nothing’. It was far from an isolated view. A quick perusal of the online commentary revealed much anger at the supposed ‘epidemic of soft frees’, much of it coming admittedly from Derry sources.

In the lead-up to half-time, with Galway leading 0-7 to 0-3, we even glimpsed the possibility of a team winning a championship match without scoring from play.

However, Derry could also curse their cumbersome and one-dimensional mode of attack, those crab like hand-passing medleys that dominated the early stages.

Galway will take much from it. Had this game been played three years ago, they would assuredly have lost by a point. They are finding a way to win matches now.

Carney shipping off-the-ball Twitter tackles

Following his James O’Donoghue-man of the match faux pas, social media declared open season on Martin Carney, and everyone piled on.

His many blameless years as an RTÉ co-commentator counted for nothing as folk queued up to express their opinions in bracingly salty language.

His every utterance was merely the cue for a snarky comment on Twitter.

There were the spate of jokes predicting James O’Donoghue as a suitable candidate for man of the match. Then, his description of Monaghan as ‘frenzied but measured’ produced a fresh round of head-scratching.

However, it was his analogy shortly before half-time that put the crowning glory on his weekend.

“Colm McFadden was waiting for the ball, but he was eaten the way a crocodile would eat a human being”.

Chilling.