ON WITH THE GAMES

Cloughie had the right idea when it came to pundits and TV — just shut up and show us more of the action

AFTER THAT Jim Gavin’s effort at cutting up rough on RTE has the feel, as the late Denis Healy once put it, of being savaged by a dead sheep. But Clough was from an age when plain speaking was deemed a virtue rather than a vice and that exchange with the BBC’s John Motson was from a time when television sports punditry was still in its infancy.

In truth, Motson did his profession a service under that barrage by framing questions which pushed the powerful case that punditry instructive, educational and devoid of prejudice could only benefit sport.

That interview is almost 40 years old now but it is not in the least dated because it cuts to the core of the distrustful dynamic between those who walk the walk and those who talk the talk.

This week has illustrated that and not just in Gavin’s RTE snub last weekend with others happy to validate his stance.

None more forcibly than Galway manager Kevin Walsh who spoke about how ‘wild’ the post-match talking game had become, of how ‘amateur journalists’ were motivated by the reaction they could generate rather than by shining an instructive light on a topic and on how the ‘person inside the jersey’ was sacrificed in the name of entertainment.

And we were not shy for that last Sunday night when Dessie Dolan and Joe Brolly were accused of throwing Pat Spillane ‘under the bus’.

That generated its own outrage industry as if somehow loyalty among pundits was an honour to be treasured. Hell, we would settle for consistency but there is little stock placed on that.

Within minutes of poor Pat being fed to the broadcasting fishes, Brolly paid a gushing tribute to the great ‘anarchists’ of Ulster football Down in honour of their Ulster semi-final win over Monaghan.

Championship football is all about ‘extremism’ Joe advised and to illustrate his point a clip rolled to show Monaghan’s Conor McManus felled by a reckless tackle from Down’s Niall Donnelly, which was followed up by Niall McParland sliding in with his knees directed at the body of the prostrate forward.

Striking or attempting to strike with the knee is a red card offence – David Coldrick flashed a yellow – but Brolly’s outrage extended to no more than a forced admission that it was ‘not legal’, which was qualified by that well-known loophole ‘but sure that’s what everyone is at.’

Indeed, Coldrick was complimented for refereeing with such a

You are setting yourself up as judge and jury and you keep going over the dividing line where you have a contribution to make to the point where you have become dogmatic, overbearing and boring. Show us the football and don’t bore us all to tears with your lecture – Brian Clough 1979

light touch to enable Down to play with the ‘madness’ that facilitated a stricken player to be targeted while he lay unprotected.

It was an interesting take by a pundit who memorably told the world that he had lost ‘respect as a man’ for Sean Cavanagh when the Tyrone man pulled McManus to the ground a few years back in Croke Park. That we assume is because cynicism is a vile stain on the game while extremism – even if it takes the form of gaining an extra inch by sliding into an unprotected opponent with ones knees – is a just another kind of glory.

Make sense of that if you can, but you might understand why some of us struggle.

Or for that matter, why some of us find it deeply ironic that he could have insinuated that Spillane’s analysis of the Diarmuid Connolly incident had been framed by the latter’s Kerry prejudice.

So if it was a Tyrone or a Kerry footballer who had slid into an opponent, would Brolly have been eulogising about the undiluted glory of their madness, rather than condemning it as a vile and dangerous act?

Sure he would… just like Spillane would have demanded that the full weight of the law be brought to bear had it been a Kerry finger that touched the fabric of a match official’s jersey.

Instead, though, the consensus this week is that it is Gavin who overreacted and that ultimately it could back to haunt.

This qualifies as an insurance policy of sorts for the feigned outraged; if Dean Rock misses a last minute free to gift Kerry the All-Ireland someone out there is going to steeple the fingers, purse the lips and trace Rock’s breaking-point back to Gavin’s refusal to grant RTE a oneon-one post match interview.

Trust us we have seen crazier dots joined.

Gavin was merely taking a stance against what he felt was imbalanced and prejudicial coverage of an incident far more complex – the failure of the match official concerned to bring the incident to the referee’s attention made this anything but an ‘open and shut’ case – than it was deemed to be.

He was entitled to make that point.

And RTE might do well to heed it and not treat sport as if it was, in media lingo, the toy department.

It should seek balance and where that cannot be found on a studio panel, its anchor should be strong enough to provide it.

It should seek to educate and illuminate rather than just agitate and irritate.

And if it can’t manage that… well it’s best to leave the final word with Clough.

‘I suggest you shut up and show more football. Now if that’s not putting it in a nutshell, I don’t know what is. Good man.’