STILL A GREY AREA
Black card remains an unknown quantity
AS THE curtain falls on Gaelic football’s pre - s eason t hi s weekend, one question remains. Are we witnessing the calm before the storm, or seeing the game bow its knee to life under the black card rule?
Pre-season is never really about the competitions, or even the football, but about experimentation and rehabilitation.
This year it has not been so much about providing a laboratory for managers to tease out the possibilities that fringe players may offer without risk, but rather it is the game itself which has been splayed on a table to see how it reacts to an injection of new law and attempted order.
For now, we remain in the dark, although the superficial evidence would suggest there has been little trauma visited on it and the game’s pulse remains steady.
Sixty-four games in and 65 black cards later, the new rule seems to have focused minds and modified players’ behaviour rather than incited the fury of managers in the face of a fevered application of the new rule.
However, the real test lies ahead, something that was clearly on GAA director general Páraic Duffy’s mind when he issued an ultimatum in his annual report this week.
‘There will be an inevitable clamour for an about- turn when players r eceive black cards in the early rounds of the Allianz Football League. But let one thing be clear: there can be no turni ng back,’ he warned. Monaghan have suffered the most in the last month — they have had five players sent off in their four games under the black--
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card caution — and their manager Malachy O’Rourke has claimed it has caused confusion and fear in his dressing room.
‘You now notice players at different times on the field, where they would be going in tacking, are now getting out of the way and putting their hands out which is really not what Gaelic football is about.
‘We have got five now, and there i s not one that I would have thought was for a serious, cynical foul,’ argues O’Rourke, whose assertion is hard to credit.
Last Sunday in Brewster Park, he lost two players, Dessie Mone and Colin Walshe, with the former sent to the line after umpires called the referee Ciarán Brannigan’s attention and the player was cited for ‘remonstration,’, something that should leave little room for doubt. Walshe’s dismissal for a trip on a Cavan player appeared less clear-cut. Brannigan ruled it was deliberate.
Having said that, almost at the exact same time up the road in Omagh, Derry goalkeeper Thomas Mallon gave up a penalty for tripping Tyrone’s Mattie Donnelly. He remained on the field because referee Shaun McLaughlin ruled the foul not to be deliberate in its execution. With the inevitable TV scrutiny which will come with the League, the search for consistency as to what is deliberate and what is accidental is likely to prove inexhaustible.
In that unforgiving environment, the new rule will face a severe stress-test, but there has been signs of what is to come.
Referees actually appear to be erring on the sign of caution when flashing the cover of their black book. Figures suggest that an average of only one deliberate cynical foul per game (over a spread of five infractions) has been committed over the last month.
In showing that restraint, it has led to frustration from spectators while there are deliberate fouls, cynical in nature, which do not fall under black-card infractions.
Donegal’s Michael Murphy committed a high tackle on Tyrone’s Shay McGuigan in the opening round of the McKenna Cup, but because the challenge was outside the remit of the black card, he stayed on the field and was shown a yellow card. Rory Kavanagh was sent off for a deliberate, but less--
black cards handed out in 64 pre-season games so far.
aggressive body-check.
Ultimately, the success of the black card will be measured not on the number of cautions shown, but by how behaviour has modified.
The blight of the third- man tackle has been curbed to a large degree, free counts appear to have dropped (although the new advantage rule has helped this) and there has been evidence of changing mind-sets.
‘What you are after telling boys for these last 10/15 years about forwards getting back and tackling, stopping people running out of defence, you are now nearly telling them not to do that now because if someone stops a man coming out of defence it is a black card,’ admitted O’Rourke. ‘Boys’ mind- sets have to be completely changed now,’ he added.
Supporters of the black card believe such a sentiment will take the game to a better place.