IF SILENCE IS truly the sleep that nourishes wisdom, then Dublin’s induced coma this summer might just have gifted the GAA with the ultimate state of enlightenment.
As pervasive as the cancer of gambling is, it probably does not extend to opening a book on the precise date the GAA’s Central Competitions Control Committee fixes a match for.
Which is just as well, as otherwise Jarlath Burns might stand accused of giving the market the heads-up on Tuesday morning when, minutes after Dublin had come out of the draw drum against Cavan, he offered Brian Carroll, his CCCC chairman, the kind of advice that was impossible to ignore.
“If Dublin are playing on Sunday week, the ban is over and hopefully we can all move on,” declared the GAA president, mindful that should the CCCC have fixed the Round 2B fixture for 24 hours earlier, Ger Brennan would miss a fifth game on the line since literally having the ear of Galway S&C coach Cian Breathnach McGinn in that final round league fixture back in March.
And guess what, when those fixtures were published 24 hours later, Brennan was granted the right to rise and reappear to his faithful on the Sabbath. Who could possibly have seen that coming….
President of the GAA Jarlath Burns. Tom O’Hanlon / INPHO
Tom O’Hanlon / INPHO / INPHO
The odd thing, in a classic bout of Irish whataboutery, was the sense of injustice which simmered all summer beneath Dean Rock’s calm exterior only crystallised when Jim McGuinness escaped the wrath of the CCCC, compliments of Sean Hurson’s referee’s report which acknowledged the Donegal manager’s push on Kerry Diarmuid O’Connor and was therefore deemed to have been dealt with on the spot without sanction.
Referees differ, managers suffer or survive.
Ironically, Dublin found their vow of silence taken in the aftermath of last weekend’s loss to Louth was heeded more than their impassioned pleas of mitigation and mercy for their manager, which bounced off the walls of the GAA’s committee rooms and the DRA for good measure.
In truth, and we have no stomach to go over well ploughed ground, Burns was right in suggesting that there was an “irrational comparison” between what Brennan and McGuinness had done, but the bottom line is that when justice has deemed to be overcooked on one side and undercooked on the other, you can hardly blame those asked to take the soup for spitting it back out. (Earlier today, Brennan issued a lengthy statement calling for clarity around those remarks made by Burns.)
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What frightens is the GAA’s capacity to literally will a perpetual sense of crisis into being.
This would never have come to pass had the GAA put in place exclusively a minimum match-based suspension rather than leaning on a time-based ban – something which in the main they have long moved on from.
Dean Rock didn't speak to the media last weekend. Ryan Byrne / INPHO
Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
Dublin did not need to see McGuinness escape to get a measure of how brutishly Brennan was dealt with, banned for four championship games (and technically any act or part in his team’s preparation) in what may well be no more than a six-game long season at best.
For the over paid, over sexed and over there managers of the Premier League, that would be the equivalent of Pep Guardiola getting about a 26-game ban. Good luck with that.
There is an obvious lesson here, particularly given the construct of a condensed season – with the exception of charges of gross disrepute – time-based punishments should only be a possible sanction when a file has been sent to the DPP and not when a referee’s report has been sent to the CCCC.
But the easy part is heeding obvious lessons which have been hard learned, the more challenging one is failing to see where the next one is coming from, even though it is never too far down the tracks.
In the space of 24 hours last weekend, there were two incidents which escaped match officials, but which an argument could be made had a profound impact on the outcome of both matches.
Monaghan’s Bobby McCaul flashed over a point early in the second half which the television cameras intimated was a point but which was waved wide. There is an ambiguity when using TV images to gauge when a ball has gone between the posts, but a sideline official armed with a TV monitor and the right to engage with the referee, might well have invited David Coldrick to have a gawk.
Mayo ended up winning by a point, and while the heat was taken off the officials by the fact that contentious non-score occurred when the teams were separated by double-digits, in a game of inches, surely every point matters.
There was an even more compelling case for a technology inspired intervention 24 hours earlier when, in the stand-out moment of the All-Ireland U20 final, the outstanding Kerry midfielder Evan Boyle complemented a sublime catch with a clinically executed two-point finish in the second quarter.
Except, TV camera pictures suggested that he breached the 40-metre arc in kicking that score, which meant it should have come at half the price for Tyrone.
Kerry would end up winning by eight points, but that score felt like the game’s defining moment, launching the Kingdom on a purple patch that would yield 11 points without reply, turning a seven-point deficit into a four-point lead.
They might well have won in a canter anyhow, but we should not have to speculate.
If that happens in the closing minutes of an All-Ireland senior final and it proves to be the undisputed difference in a one-point game, how does the GAA “move on” from that?
We know VAR is a dirty word for many, but where it has been an undisputed success is in its intervention in resolving off-side issues in goal scoring situations.
In time, the GAA will have no choice but to travel that same road, rather than ludicrously be just halfway down it as we are now.
Hawkeye has been with us for 13 years, but for the past two seasons it has only been doing half a job, through no fault of its own.
It is set up to measure where a ball has finished when it reaches the posts, but the terms of reference have changed because there is just as much emphasis on when exactly the ball was launched at those posts.
It is beyond ridiculous if at some point soon a sideline official armed with a screen will not be charged to provide back-up (and that could also include where footage is conclusive in the event of the ball crossing or not the goal-line) to the back-up that already exists.
In fact, if that does happen you might even call it irrational.
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VAR is a dirty word for many, but the GAA will have no choice but to travel that same road
IF SILENCE IS truly the sleep that nourishes wisdom, then Dublin’s induced coma this summer might just have gifted the GAA with the ultimate state of enlightenment.
As pervasive as the cancer of gambling is, it probably does not extend to opening a book on the precise date the GAA’s Central Competitions Control Committee fixes a match for.
Which is just as well, as otherwise Jarlath Burns might stand accused of giving the market the heads-up on Tuesday morning when, minutes after Dublin had come out of the draw drum against Cavan, he offered Brian Carroll, his CCCC chairman, the kind of advice that was impossible to ignore.
“If Dublin are playing on Sunday week, the ban is over and hopefully we can all move on,” declared the GAA president, mindful that should the CCCC have fixed the Round 2B fixture for 24 hours earlier, Ger Brennan would miss a fifth game on the line since literally having the ear of Galway S&C coach Cian Breathnach McGinn in that final round league fixture back in March.
And guess what, when those fixtures were published 24 hours later, Brennan was granted the right to rise and reappear to his faithful on the Sabbath. Who could possibly have seen that coming….
The odd thing, in a classic bout of Irish whataboutery, was the sense of injustice which simmered all summer beneath Dean Rock’s calm exterior only crystallised when Jim McGuinness escaped the wrath of the CCCC, compliments of Sean Hurson’s referee’s report which acknowledged the Donegal manager’s push on Kerry Diarmuid O’Connor and was therefore deemed to have been dealt with on the spot without sanction.
Referees differ, managers suffer or survive.
Ironically, Dublin found their vow of silence taken in the aftermath of last weekend’s loss to Louth was heeded more than their impassioned pleas of mitigation and mercy for their manager, which bounced off the walls of the GAA’s committee rooms and the DRA for good measure.
In truth, and we have no stomach to go over well ploughed ground, Burns was right in suggesting that there was an “irrational comparison” between what Brennan and McGuinness had done, but the bottom line is that when justice has deemed to be overcooked on one side and undercooked on the other, you can hardly blame those asked to take the soup for spitting it back out. (Earlier today, Brennan issued a lengthy statement calling for clarity around those remarks made by Burns.)
What frightens is the GAA’s capacity to literally will a perpetual sense of crisis into being.
This would never have come to pass had the GAA put in place exclusively a minimum match-based suspension rather than leaning on a time-based ban – something which in the main they have long moved on from.
Dublin did not need to see McGuinness escape to get a measure of how brutishly Brennan was dealt with, banned for four championship games (and technically any act or part in his team’s preparation) in what may well be no more than a six-game long season at best.
For the over paid, over sexed and over there managers of the Premier League, that would be the equivalent of Pep Guardiola getting about a 26-game ban. Good luck with that.
There is an obvious lesson here, particularly given the construct of a condensed season – with the exception of charges of gross disrepute – time-based punishments should only be a possible sanction when a file has been sent to the DPP and not when a referee’s report has been sent to the CCCC.
But the easy part is heeding obvious lessons which have been hard learned, the more challenging one is failing to see where the next one is coming from, even though it is never too far down the tracks.
In the space of 24 hours last weekend, there were two incidents which escaped match officials, but which an argument could be made had a profound impact on the outcome of both matches.
Monaghan’s Bobby McCaul flashed over a point early in the second half which the television cameras intimated was a point but which was waved wide. There is an ambiguity when using TV images to gauge when a ball has gone between the posts, but a sideline official armed with a TV monitor and the right to engage with the referee, might well have invited David Coldrick to have a gawk.
Mayo ended up winning by a point, and while the heat was taken off the officials by the fact that contentious non-score occurred when the teams were separated by double-digits, in a game of inches, surely every point matters.
There was an even more compelling case for a technology inspired intervention 24 hours earlier when, in the stand-out moment of the All-Ireland U20 final, the outstanding Kerry midfielder Evan Boyle complemented a sublime catch with a clinically executed two-point finish in the second quarter.
Except, TV camera pictures suggested that he breached the 40-metre arc in kicking that score, which meant it should have come at half the price for Tyrone.
Kerry would end up winning by eight points, but that score felt like the game’s defining moment, launching the Kingdom on a purple patch that would yield 11 points without reply, turning a seven-point deficit into a four-point lead.
They might well have won in a canter anyhow, but we should not have to speculate.
If that happens in the closing minutes of an All-Ireland senior final and it proves to be the undisputed difference in a one-point game, how does the GAA “move on” from that?
We know VAR is a dirty word for many, but where it has been an undisputed success is in its intervention in resolving off-side issues in goal scoring situations.
In time, the GAA will have no choice but to travel that same road, rather than ludicrously be just halfway down it as we are now.
Hawkeye has been with us for 13 years, but for the past two seasons it has only been doing half a job, through no fault of its own.
It is set up to measure where a ball has finished when it reaches the posts, but the terms of reference have changed because there is just as much emphasis on when exactly the ball was launched at those posts.
It is beyond ridiculous if at some point soon a sideline official armed with a screen will not be charged to provide back-up (and that could also include where footage is conclusive in the event of the ball crossing or not the goal-line) to the back-up that already exists.
In fact, if that does happen you might even call it irrational.
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column Dublin GAA GAA Jarlath Burns