SHANE McGRATH
DON’T BLAME PLAYERS FOR PLAYING BY THE RULES
IN calling his book The Warrior’s Code, Jackie Tyrrell has eschewed subtlety just as he did through his decorated career as a Kilkenny defender. He revels in his image as a hard player, to the extent that it seems Tyrrell’s idea of himself was shaped by what others said about Brian Cody’s fearsome teams.
He describes in apparently unfettered detail how he marked Lar Corbett in the 2011 hurling final.
‘I tried to drive Lar mad. He always has his socks pulled up but I kept trying to pull them down. I was standing on his toes, kicking at his heels. I was never into verbals but I dialled up the heat that day. Nothing personal. Just business.’
Of the 2008 final incineration of Waterford, the greatest performrepeated ance by the sport’s greatest team, he writes: ‘Ken [McGrath] was a superb hurler but he never recovered from that hiding. We did what we set out to achieve that day – to win and to psychologically scar in the process.’
His book is interesting. It will be one of the better sports stories that fill up book shops like snowdrifts between now and Christmas.
It is also useful after a week like this one, when cynicism is the word that has lingered longest following the most exciting football final of the era.
Tyrrell commits to paper the attitudes that prompted some of the distasteful incidents in the closing stages of the Dublin-Mayo epic.
Throwing a GPS unit is quite the escalation on trash-talking in the sphere of gamesmanship, but is it any more objectionable than forwards fouling in concert, or interference with kicking tees?
A scale on which cynical incidents can be mapped is actually irrelevant, best left to social media, where fans of Dublin and Mayo have tirelessly engaged in circular arguments about who did what and why.
More germane to this controversy, and the possibility of trying to tackle cynical play in a meaningful manner, is the necessity of accepting its central place in Gaelic games: players see it as another duty to be implemented, another means to an end.
Their take is not coloured by morality or fair play. That is obvious from Tyrrell’s book but also from the reaction of players to the denouement of the football season.
‘I did what I thought was the best decision for the team at that moment,’ said Ciarán Kilkenny, responsible for a foul on Lee Keegan as Mayo prepared their last kick-out, which brought a black card for the Dublin forward.
Interestingly, he was speaking on behalf of the ‘official statistics partner’ of the GAA at one of the commercial engagements through which access to inter-county players is now regulated.
This was a high-profile event promoting the sponsor through the popularity of the GAA, and at which Kilkenny talked about cynical play as if it was merely a tactical nuance.
That is not to single him out, but to underline how mainstream this problem has become.
Paul Geaney was speaking at a relaunch for the All-Stars when he said: ‘I would expect it from anyone who has ambitions of winning an All-Ireland: kill or be killed.’
‘What would you have done?’ Kilkenny asked one reporter who pressed him on the topic.
It was an understandable retort. We savour football and hurling for their intrinsic sporting quality but also as exemplars of the uniqueness of our culture.
The popularity of the games brings commercial possibilities and so the environment becomes more disciplined, demanding and ruthless.
Flapping about how awful the cheating was might make the righteous feel unburdened, but managers and players now believe the stakes are so high that doing what is necessary to win is what they see as their only duty.
Addressing cynicism will be difficult; a black card is no deterrent, as we know. One suggestion was punishing it by awarding the opposition a free on the offending team’s 20-metre line.
A first step must surely be to recognise how pervasive the problem is in the game, and for players and their mentors to drop the pious bunkum about trying to win in the right way.
‘We are always trying to do the right thing,’ claimed Jim Gavin after the final. ‘Do we do the right thing always? Absolutely not. But once they put the jersey on they are playing for Dublin the best way they can.’
No, they are trying to win any way they can – just like Mayo footballers, Kilkenny hurlers and every other ambitious participant.
That is what begets cynicism – and why eradicating it will be a daunting job.