WE MUST NOT DRAG GAME BACKWARDS
GAA cannot bin black card without a replacement...it cleaned up football after that ugly 2013 campaign when Seán Cavanagh became a poster boy for cynical play
WHEN Dublin wing-back James McCarthy was issued with a black card for an innocuous collision with Cillian O’Connor just 24 minutes into the drawn All-Ireland final, Seán Cavanagh surfed the public mood online when he referenced his infamous rugby-style take down of Conor McManus.
‘Ridiculous black card,’ tweeted Cavanagh. ‘Horrible for McCarthy & huge loss to Dublin. I should never have made that tackle in 2013...’
The five and a half thousand online who liked the sentiment showed the level of support out there.
That was the 2013 moment when, in an RTé studio, a certain pundit’s head began to spin like the memorable scene in the Exorcist, Tyrone’s threetime All-Ireland winner suddenly becoming a poster boy for cynicism in Gaelic football.
Last Saturday, Cavanagh caught the general mood once more in responding to Maurice Deegan’s harsh decision to black card Footballer of the Year contender Lee Keegan, another Rolls Royce wing-back.
‘I apologise again!! Black card inconsistencies shouldn’t be the biggest talking point on our biggest stage...’
He’s not wrong there. But there seems to be a collective amnesia about the level of cynicism and foul play before the black card came in.
The GAA can’t afford to simply bin it and go back to the way things were before.
The only question is how to make it work better via a Television Match Official or use a sin bin for similar offences.
Cavanagh’s take-down of McManus was far from an isolated incident in the 2013 Championship. Just look at that year’s showpiece final between Dublin and Mayo. This was another bruising, intense, frenetic encounter – but one that degenerated into a foul fest in the final quarter. It was a contest with a cynical, mean streak running right through it. Because players knew they could get away with it.
That was around the time when Mayo manager James Horan took issue with what he felt was RTé ‘bias’ against his team, his public comment a response to the self-same Joe Brolly who accused the Connacht champions of a strategy of systematic fouling in the build-up.
His post-final analysis only added fuel to the fire.
‘In the first half, Mayo committed 13 professional fouls. By this, I mean they made no effort to tackle, rather they just grabbed and held the Dublin player, then obstructed the free-kick.
‘In the second half, they repeated this a further 14 times. Of this professional foul count of 27, 21 frees were awarded, the advantage was allowed three times and three instances were missed. No yellow cards were awarded.’
And yet Dublin were just as culpable. If there was one moment that summed up where Gaelic football was right then, it was in the 68th minute when Kevin McManamon sized up the threat posed by Lee Keegan and felt compelled to rugby tackle him to the ground.
That was the type of blatantly cynical offence that the black card was introduced for. If James McCarthy and Lee Keegan have every right to feel aggrieved over the interpretation of the rule that removed them from the field on the game’s biggest day, well, there was a sense of bad karma about it all.
‘So much for Dublin’s “playing the game the right way” philosophy. Their last quarter display was a master class in cynicism,’ was how Mayo’s biggest RTé critic shared the blame around.
One thing Sean Cavanagh wasn’t quite right about. It wasn’t his tackle that helped push through the black card; the decision to introduce it was taken at GAA Congress in Derry the previous March.
The current problem is not so much with the card per se but its misapplication.
In the drawn final, James McCarthy was wrongly sent from the field on the basis of what linesman Joe McQuillan flagged to referee Conor Lane who didn’t see the incident himself. Dublin were actually in possession of the ball, Ciaran Kilkenny looking for options and runners on the Hogan Stand side. McCarthy actually looks to make a supporting run but Cillian O’Connor spots him and stands his ground in front of him. Cue McCarthy running full tilt into him and knocking him over. The black card was introduced to combat deliberate, cynical play, the deliberate ‘body collide’ one of the offences. What McCarthy did was so far removed from that, especially given his own team were in possession of the ball.
Similarly, Lee Keegan fouled Diarmuid Connolly last Saturday, tugging him back after Rob Hennelly’s misplaced kick-out put the defence under pressure, and then catching him around the neck but he didn’t deliberately pull him down, Connolly going to ground as if to make a point as to being impeded.
AFTER the controversy of last Saturday over incidents involving Jonny Cooper, John Small and Keegan, it’s reached a stage now where one of rugby’s doyens is telling the GAA to borrow from the code he graced with such distinction.
Even Brian O’Driscoll got in on the act, summing up what many are now thinking.
‘The GAA need the sin bin instead of the black card. You want the best players playing the big games, Dublin bias aside.’
Eugene McGee, the architect of the black card as the chairman of the committee who came up with it, has admitted that it’s time for a review. The use of a television match official is one option to make sure contentious black card calls are correct on the biggest days. A sin bin is another.
Ditching the rule without a ready replacement though is not an option.
Because what was there before was an environment where one of the footballers of his generation Sean Cavanagh felt compelled to reduce himself, and the game, without the threat of severe sanction.
CAVANAGH’S TAKE-DOWN WAS FAR FROM AN ISOLATED INCIDENT