Why it’s time to show red card to hurling’s cheats
Drastic action is required when ‘taking one for the team’ means killing the spirit of the GAA
‘Being hard a and fair team should never become dated’
PROOF that cynicism is a no longer seen as a cancer but as a characteristic of Gaelic games is to be found every time a pundit opens their mouth.
Indeed an act of cynicism is not only not deemed to be shameful any more, but there is a certain warped kind of glory now attached to those players who commit dirty deeds, dirt cheap for the collective good.
In doing so, a player is deemed to have ‘taken one’ for the team.
This is not a new concept. When I was playing, ‘taking one for the team’ was a given but it meant something completely different.
It meant putting your hands into places where your knuckles might never emerge, well not intact anyway.
Or putting your shins in the way of manically wielded sticks to ensure that the ball was protected even if the price to be paid would be an evening spent plucking splinters of wood out of broken flesh.
But ‘taking one for the team’ never involved resorting to grabbing an opponent who had beaten you fair, and jumping on him to bring him to ground by any means necessary.
Indeed, when I was Limerick manager that was a foul that would not be entertained, even though the emphasis was always on the physicality of our hurling.
I am not bragging about that because players, then, didn’t need to be told that catching opponents around the waist and flinging them to the ground wasn’t acceptable. They knew better. If you were beaten by a man to the ball, then your defensive skills were based on your ability to get in a hook or a block. And if you failed in that, then there was an inevitable consequence. That is why back then being beaten ‘fair and square’ was not something to hang your head in shame over.
In four years of Championship hurling our average free count per game was under 10 and we never had a player sent off in that time.
Again, there are those who will look at those stats and declare that we were too naïve and nice for our own good, but I would like to think that those who played against us would give a more flattering testimony. We were hard to play against but we were fair.
Those are values that should never become dated no matter what sport you play or follow. That, sadly, is no longer the case with hurling, Limerick included.
In last weekend’s All-Ireland club All-Ireland semi-final, Brendan Rodgers, the impressive Slaughtneil full-forward, twice broke through on the Na Piarsaigh goal but before he could get his shot off he was rugby-tackled to the ground. Both Na Piarsaigh defenders Mick Casey and Niall Buckley picked up yellow cards which were not only ‘good’ cautions to pick up but were profitable in that they potentially prevented the concession of two goals.
I am not hammering those two defenders for committing those fouls because in the modern game the morality bar is set so low, that is what was expected of them.
It does not, however, make it right. Any reader of this page over the last decade will know that I am no supporter of referees dishing out cards for the sake of it, often leading to players being sent off cheaply.
The inevitable consequence of that is that it has diluted the game’s natural physical intensity and left us in a poorer place.
Yet, the irony is that while players are often sent off on the cheap they are also allowed to stay on the field while committing fouls that undermine the spirit of the game.
Diving full-length to execute a tackle from another code qualifies as one of those fouls that should see a player sidelined.
The black card has hardly been an unquestionable success in football, leading to a lot of confusion and unhappiness but on the flip side it has almost rid the game of cynical body checks. The problem for hurling in not introducing the black card is that it amounted to a declaration that cynicism is not an issue in hurling but we all know that is a lie. I am not sure that the answer in hurling is to go down the black card route — God knows we have had enough issues with the yellow variety — but what I am absolutely certain of is that we cannot stand idly by and do nothing. There is, of course, an obvious answer staring us in the face. Why not show a red card to a player who denies an opponent a scoring opportunity by going outside the rules and spirit of the game and dragging a player to the ground. In soccer, the professional foul is frowned upon to the degree that when a player is found to have committed a deliberate foul to prevent an opponent, who is in a clear goal-scoring position, he is red-carded.
It can be argued that in the GAA, goals are not as definitive in the outcome of games but that matters little when the spirit of the game is betrayed by such cynical fouls.
Twice last week, through his own good play, Rodgers created two goal opportunities but was fouled by different players to ensure that the fouling team would not pay in any significant way.
It meant that not only were Slaughtneil cheated but so were those of us watching on. The game was diminished as a spectacle as a result.
If only a generation ago such a foul was deemed so shameful that it would not even be contemplated, then it’s hardly a stretch to suggest now that the law should move, in the absence of that shame, to protect the game by sending players off.