Future of black card appears to be doomed
EVERY time I mention the black card a little part of every reader dies. Trust me, I don’t enjoying going on about it either, but there were two examples last week of how one referee — David Coldrick (below) — got it right and another — Derek O’Mahoney — got it wrong which goes to the core of the very confusion which has infected the rule.
Galway manager Kevin Walsh suggested that Kerry’s Shane Enright should have seen black for his frontal shoulder-hit on Johnny Heaney because it doubled as a body check.
But Enright and Heaney coming together was in play. The former arrived late in an attempt to get in a tackle but was rightly yellow-carded for that that hit, however there was no element of cynicism.
If you start showing black cards in instances such as this, then you will thieve the game of its physicality which is not what the card was supposed to achieve.
The previous evening, Kildare goalkeeper Mark Donnellan deliberately body-checked Armagh’s Andrew Murnin as the latter attempted to run into space to provide an option for his goalkeeper Blaine Hughes’ restart.
That was clearly a cynical act and yet he also received a yellow card. The more this happens, the closer this rule is to