TOP FOUR KEEP TRADING BLOWS
Ill-feeling left over from Championship means tensions will continue to boil over in League clashes
EDDIE KINSELLA was given a break from being the man in the middle by the National Referee’s Committee this week. Probably a fair call. The Laois whistler will need a bit of time to recharge his batteries after his attempts to bring a semblance of order on the chaos in Tralee last week.
It was the second League match in little over a year when Kinsella was called upon to police a heated situation between two of Gaelic football’s big guns. He was brought down to Fitzgerald Stadium last February to try and control what turned into a running pitch-battle between Dublin and Kerry.
Even if the atmosphere was more toxic, and events nastier, in Austin Stack Park last weekend, Kinsella was an even busier figure in Killarney in February of last year. Kerry, as All-Ireland champions at the time, were keen to deliver a message to Dublin. Jim Gavin’s side refused to flinch in the face of that aggression. By the end, there were seven yellow cards and four black cards given out as well as the dismissal of Mick Fitzsimons before the end.
Afterwards, a clearly agitated Gavin suggested that Kerry players had engaged in gamesmanship to hoodwink Kinsella. There were echoes of that again in Tralee last weekend when Donegal boss Rory Gallagher was privately seething at Kerry’s tactics although he refused to be drawn publicly on them.
There was a time when the League was about getting rid of the dirty petrol, as they say in Kerry.
No more. Even if it’s shadow-boxing compared to summer fare, it is shadow-boxing where the protagonists can get hurt. Just ask Donegal and Kerry players as they nursed their battered bodies this week.
If a referee drew the short straw this weekend, it’s Rory Hickey. The Clare native has been asked to control Kerry’s clash with Mayo in MacHale Park. Recent history between these teams suggest Hickey will require plenty of help from his linesmen and umpires. He could also do with eyes in the back of his head. But that’s the same for any referee when two of Gaelic football’s top teams meet in the League.
If Dublin, Kerry, Mayo and Donegal currently constitute football’s top four (with apologies to Monaghan and Tyrone), the statistics from recent league meetings between the teams make alarming reading. In 10 Division 1 matches over the past two seasons, referees have dished out 55 yellow cards, 13 black cards and seven red cards. The nastiness and narkiness that left such a bad taste in Tralee shouldn’t have been unexpected.
The naked aggression, and indiscipline, is even more pronounced this year. Already, in only four games this year, there has been 28 yellow cards, five red cards and six black cards. Even in a game as one-sided as Dublin’s comfortable win over Kerry on the opening weekend, with Eamonn Fitzmaurice’s team still to stir from their long winter slumber, indiscipline was a feature as five yellow cards and two black cards were handed out. Things have become so competitive at the game’s top table that nobody wants to flinch or yield to their rivals.
And if Kerry, Mayo and Donegal are best placed to knock Dublin off their perch, they want to show that they are manning up in pursuit of Jim Gavin’s team.
That has created an environment where fireworks go off.
Tension has simmered between Kerry and Mayo since that controversial All-Ireland semi-final replay of 2014. It might not have seemed like that last February as Mayo left Fitzgerald Stadium with two points but this was on the opening weekend, and if anything is known about Kerry under Fitzmaurice, it’s that they take some time to wake up for the National League.
There has been an undercurrent of ill-feeling between Donegal and Kerry since that year’s All-Ireland final. From the moment a Donegal native was found spying on a Kerry training session to Aidan O’Mahony’s shadowing of Michael Murphy for the entirety of the final, there is now an edge to the relationship that didn’t previously exist. O’Mahony and Murphy renewed acquaintances last weekend although it was more Kieran Donaghy’s early body-slam on Murphy, which went unpunished by Kinsella, that set the tone for the game.
On Saturday week in Croke Park, it will be the turn of Dublin and Done- gal. When they met at headquarters last year, referee Maurice Deegan had his hands full for the whole game and eventually dismissed Kevin McManamon and Michael Murphy.
‘They are a physical side and we are a physical side,’ Jim Gavin said after that particular match. ‘And when two physical sides come together, that’s the outcome.’
In other words, if teams want to get physical against Dublin, they can get physical also. We can play football but we can fight too seems to be the subtext. Watching events in Tralee brought to mind an old quote from the eloquent former Tyrone manager Art McRory.
‘There’s no point in me putting manners on my boys if the fella up the road isn’t putting any manners on his,’ an exasperated McRory claimed after a particularly vicious Ulster championship encounter with Derry back in 2001. Fifteen years on and McRory’s wise words encapsulate the attitude among Gaelic football’s big four. The search for an edge continues today in Castleb a r. Cool heads may not prevail in this instance.