Weekend Talking Points: 'That whole appeals committee is an absolute farce'
Michael Langan of Donegal with Rian O'Neill of Armagh
Postmortems tend to be definitive, so with Declan Bonner’s side easing to a more comfortable victory over Armagh than many might’ve envisaged, talk filled the air in Ballybofey yesterday that Donegal were right to keep their eye on the ball.
Whereas Armagh successfully appealed their suspensions of Stefan Campbell, Aidan Nugent and Rian O’Neill in the fall-out of the feisty Allianz League Division 1 clash in Letterkenny last month, Donegal took their oil as they say and lined out without Odhrán McFadden Ferry and Neil McGee in their 1-16 to 0-12 win.
Bonner, whilst not wanting to overly dwell on it, did give his thoughts in a brief manner.
“I’m not gonna get involved in it now,” he said. “I know you're looking for a bit of controversy but you're not gonna get that. You see it yourself, if you’re getting players off… They have to look at it, that’s for sure, but it’s not for me, I’m not part of it.
“Yeah, surprised, but listen, in terms of the CAC or CCC or whatever it is, there’s a lot of questions to be answered because that whole appeals committee is an absolute farce, to be quite honest. Not that we dwelt too much on it, we did the job we had to do.”
John Kiely and Liam Cahill admit they are perplexed by the throw ball situation in the game. Largely upsetting Limerick, on Saturday referee Seán Stack whistled on five occasions when he did not see a clear hand-pass action by a player.
Kiely, who seemed frustrated on the sideline, believes teams should have been briefed by refereeing administrators at the start of the year: “I can’t say a thing about any of those ones that were pulled tonight because I haven’t seen the tape back. My view, I’m 60/80 yards away so I wouldn’t contest any of those handpass calls and I didn’t contest any of those handpass calls.
“Obviously, it’s something they’re trying desperately to make extremely deliberate. That’s going to be a big challenge. I think it’s something they should have approached each team about at the beginning of the year and said, ‘Listen, we have identified an issue in the game that we’d like to rectify’.
“I think if we’d known at the beginning of the year that this was going to be a significant issue we could have brought that into our training from the very outset. But it became an issue during the league and we just haven’t had a lot of time to adjust.
“At the same time, it’s a tough one. I referee our in-house games and I know how difficult it is to call the handpasses. The boys are so good and so fluid at getting the release in and contact in so it is very, very difficult.”
Stack is known to be sharp on the handpass, but Cahill believes it is not being followed through across the board. “You get breaks sometimes, sometimes it goes against you. I suppose it’s inconsistent, which is the big problem with everybody.”
Kiely is reluctant to advise his charges to change what they are currently doing. “It’s something that we’re speaking to the players about but like you don’t want them to be getting too conscious about it either. Otherwise, fellas are going to start to stop handpassing and start hitting the ball.
“I think you will see more ‘Brick-passing’ (named after the former Waterford player) going on as a result of the way the handpass is. Maybe the onus is on us, we’ll have to have a look at the tape and see.”
To be fair to all concerned - the weather gods, mostly - the scene was perfect yesterday in Thurles, with the sun shining and the ground hard, all the accoutrements of a championship Sunday.
Yes, April. Yes, strangeness.
One thing that was missing, however, was a curtain-raiser. Granted the timescale is unkind to the minor games that traditionally form the undercard at these events, but when a couple of hacks wandered into Dr Morris Park (searching for the Clare manager, long story) they stumbled upon the Galway and Tipp minors warming up for a challenge.
Would it have been so bad to play that game before the Tipp-Clare senior encounter? Match organisers are fond of the opening game as a means to filter spectators in gradually as much as anything else. If there were issues with ticketing it would also help to counter any potential bottlenecks around access points for a big game.
That’s what we’re all about, offering constructive solutions.
he years pass and the statistics get a little bit more uncomfortable for the Armagh management.
Kieran McGeeney has now taken Armagh into eight Ulster Championships as manager. His only wins came against sides in lower leagues than them; Down, Derry and Antrim.
Three wins in eight years tells it as starkly as it can and there is no point dressing it up any nicer than that.
In that time, he has also gone through several goalkeepers. At the start of his tenure, he tried Paul Courtney between the sticks, with the Ballyhegan man previously on the county panel as an outfielder.
The plan was to involve him in playing the ball out from the back, the first sweeper-keeper perhaps, but you could always question the wisdom of Courtney trying it out for the very first time in an Ulster Championship game against Cavan.
Anyway, they lost that one, and Courtney soon disappeared off the map. But it established a pattern whereby McGeeney could work his way through a number of different goalkeepers and all of them felt like they were on borrowed time.
The idea of converting Ethan Rafferty into a goalkeeper was hatched this year, but the decision seems baffling. With Donegal pressing high up the pitch, Rafferty never let fly to clear the defensive line and set Armagh on an attack.
It’s not being unkind to say that Armagh don’t just lose games in the Ulster Championship, they manage to lose them in ever more inventive ways. And they badly struggle against a team who have a firm defensive base.
And they keep making the same mistakes over and over again. A run in the backdoor might not have the same appeal any more for supporters.
No wonder they refused to speak to the media after the game.
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