Enough to make a grown man cry

THE powers that be placed the black cap on their head Saturday afternoon. The approval of the ludicrous black card proposal is quite simply the execution of the already ailing game of Gaelic football.

I am absolutely outraged by that vote i n Derry, which will do nothing to reduce the cynicism in a game that has been allowed to slowly die for 20 years or more by inconsistent referees and coaches driven by a win- at- al l - cost mentality.

I remember football when it was played as it was meant to be played and I can tell you cynical fouling is not the problem, it is cynical football introduced by the ‘great coaches’ who developed the blanket defence, the three-man midfield and every other tactical gimmick that i s choking the game.

Yet with all t heir t actical advances, backroom teams and scientific breakthroughs, you still have teams incapable of kicking a point from 20 metres, with matches blighted by teams making 20 moves before daring an attempt on goal.

But, as much as I disagree with the introduction of a third card f or referees who don’t impose the current rules, it was equally infuriating to see how

What was all the emotion in aid of ?

it was pushed through.

I was disgusted with the emotiveness of the whole affair and to see the Football Review Committee ( FRC) chairman, Eugene McGee, crying was just pathetic.

What was all the emotion in aid of? Anyone watching would have thought it was being forced through as if someone was due to be hanged in the morning.

The whole scheme is absolute nonsense anyway — the idea that the same referees who can’t police games with their red and yellow cards will all of sudden get a handle on things with another set of rules and another card is plain stupid.

It’s as if the Government, looking at the parlous state of the country, saw fit to put the very bankers at fault for the mess in charge of affairs. This i s simply giving another line of authority to the referees who are partly to blame for the current problem in football.

It is also coaches, like Jim McGuinness and Mickey Harte, implementing systems designed to stop the opposition rather than enhance their own game that has football in its current state.

Last weekend the buzzword in Derry was ‘cynicism’ and the blight of cynical fouling, but football is a cynical game and has been for the last two decades.

When was the last time you saw a man make a clean catch, bring the ball down and kick it 40 yards? It doesn’t happen anymore.

Now we have all this hand-wring- ing and tears about the future of the game — where were these fellas as football slowly died over the course of the last 20 years?

Look at the Dublin- Donegal arm-wrestle in 2011, look at Jim Gavin the Dublin manager, who seems so bored by the whole thing. It is a sport, lighten up!

Let these lads put in a hard shoulder, send their man spinning, what they need in that game is a bit of manly contact. Instead we get men crying over nothing but a game of sport, thinking they are going to save football.

They need to realise that football as we know it now was created by the strong counties with their ruthless mentalities and while I couldn’t give a damn if another football was ever kicked on this island, I do worry about this polluted thinking creeping into hurling.

We have already seen it in the All-Ireland club final earlier this month, when two Kilcormac-Killoughy players were sent off for no good reason. They meddled enough in Derry by reducing the number of teams competing for Liam MacCarthy, just so they can tighten things up.

If the great and the good want to make a hash of football they have succeeded but leave hurling well enough alone.

Maybe at some stage they will realise changes to our games can only be implemented on the field, with the coaches and the players.

Instead we get grown men crying over rules that will only speed the decline of an already dying sport. It is almost enough to make a grown man weep. Almost.