Aidan O’Shea sideshow focus a mistake
Then again, after a week in which the Great Aidan O’Shea Debate convulsed the nation, why not?
Everyone seemed to have a tuppenceworth to throw in and they did.
But first, Match of the Day 2 last Sunday night. It’s an interesting programme because, with fewer games to feature, it has the luxury of attempting to reach the parts its big brother
cannot. Match of the Day shows. Match of the Day 2 tries to tell.
Six nights ago it had Jermaine Jenas and Ruud Gullit chewing the cud from Spurs/Chelsea at Wembley. Jenas has been a TV find.
He’s bright and enthusiastic and always keen to illustrate his points with relevant evidence. As for Gullit, well, who better for an existential chat about the sport than a Dutchman? They invented the genre.
And existential the conversation did indeed get, uncommonly so for a soccer show on BBC, on foot of the fact that Spurs lost 2-1 despite having had the bulk of the possession.
Jenas: “People have this (mis)conception that if you win 2-1 you deserved to win the game. Football isn’t like that. Sometimes you don’t get what you deserve.”
Gullit: “Football isn’t fair. It’s a sport of mistakes. The less mistakes you make, the more possibility you have to win. It’s also about taking your chances.”
There’s a PhD subject in that exchange alone, not least in Gullit’s view of fairness. What, pray tell, is ‘unfair’ about winning by virtue of making fewer mistakes than the opposition?
Jose Mourinho, after all, has made a career out of ruthless pragmatism and, when necessary with Chelsea and Inter Milan, unapologetic minimalism. Too much possession = too many passes = too much scope for things to go wrong.
Which brings us by what Julius Caesar would have called circuitous routes to Aidan O’Shea and to Stephen Rochford’s decision to deploy him on Kieran Donaghy last Sunday. An imaginative piece of thinking, yes. But did it work or did it blow up in Rochford’s face?
Here — roll of trumpets, please — is this observer’s opinion: it made not a blind bit of difference one way or t’other.
Leave aside the whole Peter/Paul transaction and the degree to which O’Shea’s absence may have weakened the attack because this debate can only take place within narrow parameters. The great man was despatched to the edge of the square for one
reason and one reason only. To prevent Donaghy wreaking the kind of aerial havoc he’d wreaked against Galway.
Viewed on these terms, the move worked — clearly so because Donaghy didn’t wreak havoc. If that was largely because Kerry didn’t opt for the bombardment route, so be it.
People who chose to broaden the issue found plenty of ammunition with which to condemn Rochford and O’Shea.
The number of strings
Donaghy pulled from deep, his hand in Kerry’s two goals and so on. But this is to change the terrain of the debate. O’Shea wasn’t moved back in order to put a stop to Donaghy’s playmaking, he was moved back in order to win the bullocking match under the dropping ball.
A midfielder converted into a full-back for one afternoon cannot be expected to do his marker for subtlety as well as for strength.
Mayo blew it on Sunday
alright but they blew it miles away from their own square. Nothing —
— to do with Aidan O’Shea.
Cillian O’Connor missing a tap-over free in the opening minute. Three balls dropped short to Brian Kelly. Seamus O’Shea selling Tom Parsons short in midfield for Kerry’s first goal.
David Clarke putting Keith Higgins under pressure from a kickout and Higgins, in turn, giving away a lineball: cue Kerry’s second goal.
The very next kickout turned over for a point by Paul Geaney, Mayo going from three up to one down in less than 60 seconds.
Add it up. That’s 2-2, at the very least, missed or handed over, not to mention Kerry’s
0-5 from frees to Mayo’s 0-1 or the 23 frees Rochford’s team conceded. And on days like last Sunday these things always add up.
In this era of saturation TV coverage, phone-ins and social media overkill we dwell not so much in an echo chamber as at a Wailing Wall. Sunday Game experts tweeting their verdicts, print
journalists providing links to their articles, Joe Public chiming in with his say.
Agendas to be constantly set or commandeered.
Yet in the rush to loudhailer our opinion most of us are guilty of overlooking the most basic truism of all.
Somebody has to lose and usually it’s the inferior team. It is the way of sport. But sometimes it’s easy to miss the wood for the Aidan O’Shea-type sideshow.
Failing that, put your money on the team that makes fewer mistakes.
Trolls now calling shots
In case you missed it, the following episode took place during the week. Fortunately it wasn’t quite the whole story.
Robert Lee was scheduled to commentate on a University of Virginia gridiron game in Charlottesville for ESPN.
Now Robert is a blameless young man of Chinese extraction, in no way related to General Robert E Lee, and we can take it that his ancestors didn’t commit any depredations during the American Civil War.
But you’ll remember the recent unpleasantness in Charlottesville, the “many fine people on both sides” who got involved and whatnot. As a consequence ESPN were moved to take Robert Lee off their coverage of the University of Virginia game.
Political correctness gone mad? You couldn’t make it up?
Not so, according to ESPN president John Skipper. There was never any concern, Skipper declared, that Lee’s name would “offend anyone” watching the Charlottesville game. The worry was about a potential backlash on social media.
“Among our Charlotte production staff there was a question as to whether – in these divisive times – Robert’s assignment might create a distraction, or even worse, expose him to social hectoring and trolling,” Skipper elaborated. Lee duly expressed “some personal trepidation” and was assigned to cover the Youngstown State/Pitt game instead. Simples.
Political correctness hasn’t gone totally mad just yet. Phew.
