THE UNPUBLISHABLE MEMOIRS from a GAA press box, Pain and Pleasure, is an earthy yarn of refrigerated benches, cliche-loaded dictaphones, and key-jangling stewards who wanted to lock up and go home to their delayed Sunday dinner.
The only pleasure was in the game — or, more to the point, in the pain of the game. We are thinking of making a film out of it, but only if Bob Dylan does a cover of Peig Sayers for the soundtrack.
The opening scene films itself. It is a National Football League game in O’Donnell Park, Letterkenny from 2015, one in which Monaghan beat Donegal on a 0-9 to 1-4 scoreline.
Monaghan kicked four points from play, while Michael Murphy’s goal was Donegal’s only score not to come from a placed ball.
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Monaghan and Donegal players battle for possession in the 2015 league. Presseye / Michael O'Donnell/INPHO
Presseye / Michael O'Donnell/INPHO / Michael O'Donnell/INPHO
We appreciate it is a game whose memory was so short-lived that it barely survived past the Angelus that evening, but the scourge of counselling is that for some of us it will never stop paying rent inside our head.
Somehow, those impoverished details only serve to titillate rather than frame the lived-in experience. The biting wind that whistled around the ground carried more than the vague promise of pneumonia, but avoiding that fate became a pleasurable distraction from a painful game of ball.
More than the iced gusts, what chilled most on that afternoon was that not once was the ball kicked out in anger. Instead, as All-Star talents Rory Beggan and Paul “Papa” Durcan stood between the posts, it was decorated with a pretty bowed ribbon and gifted to an unmarked corner-back for free.
Fast forward 10 years, almost to the day, and in the immediate aftermath of another bout of handbrake-free football in Tuam last weekend, Malachy O’Rourke — part-architect as the then-Monaghan manager, and long-time survivor of that dog day afternoon in Letterkenny — somehow managed to cast a wistful glance backwards.
Tyrone boss Malachy O'Rourke. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
O’Rourke perhaps felt a tad shortchanged with the single point his Tyrone team had been reduced to as a result of Shane Walsh’s two-point conversion at the death, but his issue with the 40-metre arc was not about the reward gifted from kicking outside it, but rather with the perils of having to kick out beyond it.
“I’m not a big fan of the kickout having to go outside the arc all the time. It is leading to an awful lot of holding and scraps for possession.
“It’d be better if it just went outside the D and gave [teams] the chance to be a wee bit more flexible in their approach.
“They could go short, they could go long,” he argued. History sadly informs that there would be no mystery as to which option would be favoured.
Nothing illustrates how surgically football has been removed from its origins as a ball-propelled sport where contests for possession was an integral element than the very notion that “scraps for possession” is now deemed to be an unedifying slight on the game.
This narrative is also advanced by those who argue that contested kickouts have not led to a wall-to-wall exhibition of graceful high fielding, but football was never intended to be performative art, but rather a primal expression of tribal warfare with a ball.
Treating the ball as something that can either only be gifted by controlled possessions or be secured with a moment of aesthetically perfect play is setting the bar too low on one side and too high on the other.
That huge area in the middle is where the real terms of engagement lie. It is the skin and hair business of getting down and dirty to win breaking, loose ball, in the process inviting contested chaos, and putting in place a very visible tape as to where the intangibles of ‘hunger and desire’ can be measured.
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Donegal and Derry players fight for possession in last Sunday's game. Laszlo Geczo / INPHO
Laszlo Geczo / INPHO / INPHO
In a way, while most of the other changes have been welcome, they have also been secondary. The kickout has complimented the three up/three back because it has changed how teams set up.
The two-point kicking arc has encouraged long-range shooting, but the knowledge that teams now have a 50/50 chance of getting their hands on possession from the opposition kickout has also diminished their fear that the price for taking a shot at the posts is to be starved of possession for an elongated period of time: the kind of time that allowed for a power nap, something which spectators far too frequently were induced to avail of.
The price to be paid for kicking the ball out long is the relinquishing by coaches of game-plans in which their control was in danger of being absolute. That was their pleasure, but it was football’s pain.
No more. The pleasure is now where it was always intended to be, and the only pain is that it took us so long to get here.
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The kickout rule has changed Gaelic football - watching games now is more pleasure than pain
THE UNPUBLISHABLE MEMOIRS from a GAA press box, Pain and Pleasure, is an earthy yarn of refrigerated benches, cliche-loaded dictaphones, and key-jangling stewards who wanted to lock up and go home to their delayed Sunday dinner.
The only pleasure was in the game — or, more to the point, in the pain of the game. We are thinking of making a film out of it, but only if Bob Dylan does a cover of Peig Sayers for the soundtrack.
The opening scene films itself. It is a National Football League game in O’Donnell Park, Letterkenny from 2015, one in which Monaghan beat Donegal on a 0-9 to 1-4 scoreline.
Monaghan kicked four points from play, while Michael Murphy’s goal was Donegal’s only score not to come from a placed ball.
We appreciate it is a game whose memory was so short-lived that it barely survived past the Angelus that evening, but the scourge of counselling is that for some of us it will never stop paying rent inside our head.
Somehow, those impoverished details only serve to titillate rather than frame the lived-in experience. The biting wind that whistled around the ground carried more than the vague promise of pneumonia, but avoiding that fate became a pleasurable distraction from a painful game of ball.
More than the iced gusts, what chilled most on that afternoon was that not once was the ball kicked out in anger. Instead, as All-Star talents Rory Beggan and Paul “Papa” Durcan stood between the posts, it was decorated with a pretty bowed ribbon and gifted to an unmarked corner-back for free.
Fast forward 10 years, almost to the day, and in the immediate aftermath of another bout of handbrake-free football in Tuam last weekend, Malachy O’Rourke — part-architect as the then-Monaghan manager, and long-time survivor of that dog day afternoon in Letterkenny — somehow managed to cast a wistful glance backwards.
O’Rourke perhaps felt a tad shortchanged with the single point his Tyrone team had been reduced to as a result of Shane Walsh’s two-point conversion at the death, but his issue with the 40-metre arc was not about the reward gifted from kicking outside it, but rather with the perils of having to kick out beyond it.
“I’m not a big fan of the kickout having to go outside the arc all the time. It is leading to an awful lot of holding and scraps for possession.
“It’d be better if it just went outside the D and gave [teams] the chance to be a wee bit more flexible in their approach.
“They could go short, they could go long,” he argued. History sadly informs that there would be no mystery as to which option would be favoured.
Nothing illustrates how surgically football has been removed from its origins as a ball-propelled sport where contests for possession was an integral element than the very notion that “scraps for possession” is now deemed to be an unedifying slight on the game.
This narrative is also advanced by those who argue that contested kickouts have not led to a wall-to-wall exhibition of graceful high fielding, but football was never intended to be performative art, but rather a primal expression of tribal warfare with a ball.
Treating the ball as something that can either only be gifted by controlled possessions or be secured with a moment of aesthetically perfect play is setting the bar too low on one side and too high on the other.
That huge area in the middle is where the real terms of engagement lie. It is the skin and hair business of getting down and dirty to win breaking, loose ball, in the process inviting contested chaos, and putting in place a very visible tape as to where the intangibles of ‘hunger and desire’ can be measured.
In a way, while most of the other changes have been welcome, they have also been secondary. The kickout has complimented the three up/three back because it has changed how teams set up.
The two-point kicking arc has encouraged long-range shooting, but the knowledge that teams now have a 50/50 chance of getting their hands on possession from the opposition kickout has also diminished their fear that the price for taking a shot at the posts is to be starved of possession for an elongated period of time: the kind of time that allowed for a power nap, something which spectators far too frequently were induced to avail of.
The price to be paid for kicking the ball out long is the relinquishing by coaches of game-plans in which their control was in danger of being absolute. That was their pleasure, but it was football’s pain.
No more. The pleasure is now where it was always intended to be, and the only pain is that it took us so long to get here.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
column GAA Gaelic Football