Still a Man's Game?

   January is a very economical time for a lot of newspapers and magazines. Readers get treated to a steady diet of reviews of the year gone by, a few predictions for the year to come, and rehashed articles about the pet topic of the journalist in question. Enda McEvoy will give vent to the lack of concern for hurling shown by the GAA decision makers, Eugene Magee will talk of the plight of the club player, Martin Breheny will throw some numbers together that will support the opening of Croke Park, and Tom Humphries will talk of either Dublin Camogie, or in an interesting twist, rehashed newspaper articles. The frost starts to bite, the Gyms have their most profitable time of the year, the time is unmistakeably January.

   This month has seen the GAA literati caught on the hop however – because there are real developments afoot. The new playing rules that are being tried out in the provincial cups (other than McKenna in Ulster) are causing quite a stir, with the new sin bin rule in particular proving hugely contentious. Nowhere more so has this been the case than in our own county, where Kevin Kilmurray has made no secret of his, shall we say, “disappointment”, at the new system, with the heavyweight opinions of Mickey Harte, Colm Coyle and Séan Boylan among those who also feel that the changes made have not been for the better. Even Mick O’Dwyer, who sat on the committee responsible for creating these changes has been back tracking, suggesting that perhaps three ticks might be a fairer level at which to issue a card rather than two, or that the period in the bin could be halved. Indeed this is the opinion which is most likely to carry some weight, since other opinions could all be considered to be vested in some way. Coyle and Kilmurray would certainly have been players that would have seen a fair share of bin time if the system was around in their playing days, while Harte and Boylan have both managed All Ireland winning sides that were happy to live on the edge of the law when it came to physical play – by fouling tactically, in the case of Tyrone, or to intimidate, as many opponents of the Royal County in the late eighties and beyond will testify. But O’Dwyer, whose teams usually play a subtle hybrid of football and basketball will greatly benefit from tactical fouling being sucked out of the game, is most likely to be listened to when the time comes for deciding on how the rule is to be applied or adjusted going forward. The reason Lone Shark is concerned at this is that the current system is clearly the best way forward for our games, and the authorities responsible for these changes are, in my view, to be lauded for having the resolve to address the ugly developments in our games in recent years. 

   Like so many other debates involving our games and beyond, when you set about really dissecting the argument and seeing the wood from the trees as it were, a big step is always to see the truth outside of the cliché. The title for this piece is particularly relevant, because opponents of the sin bin are invariably those who love the physical aspect to Gaelic Games, and see every step such as this as another move towards a non contact sport. The fact that both hurling and football are seen to be “A man’s game”  is vital to the appeal they possess. That’s the cliché – the truth is that just like Gaelic Games, the very nature of men has evolved. Lone Shark was not around for the big breakthrough in Offaly GAA, the All-Ireland football wins in 1971 and 1972. However I’ve read enough and seen enough on these teams to know that these teams were built around a back line that was very aggressive, and to run at them was the equivalent of taking your life into your own hands. Even throughout the forwards, epitomised by our current manager, there was an undeniably tough streak. However the game we play nowadays is a distant relation of the game played back then. The Kerry and Dublin sides of the 70s and 80s raised the bar, Sean Boylan’s two generations of Meath changed things again, and the Ulster revolution we are now in the midst of has altered things further. Paddy McCormack, an All Star full back would find himself in acres of space with long low ball coming in in front of him, and the modern full forward would fill his boots. If Offaly had progressed in Leinster last year he would have had to line out against Glennon, then Sherlock, then Forde, then Parkinson. It’s a far cry from his annual battle with Jimmy Keaveney. The GAA player of the early seventies was a sinewy mountainy man who spent his day doing manual labour and his nights smoking and drinking in the local, before getting a married at 24 to the barmaid. The GAA player of today works in IT, doesn’t drink between February and September, and has a different blonde on his arm each night. These aren’t the same men – of course it’s not going to be the same game.

   The current rule does not take any physical contact out of the game that wasn’t there before – it just penalises transgressions more strictly. There is nothing new that constitutes a foul in 2005. Yet we seem greatly upset that offenders are being punished more regularly and more severely. The game had evolved to the point where the increased fitness of players meant that time on the ball was limited, and space became the hardest thing to find on a football pitch. Entire systems were being created to enable the scorers on a side to find room to do what they do best. Defensive systems were trying to deny teams that space, and the truth of it is that up until now, the easiest way to do that was to repeatedly foul, allowing your team time to funnel back and suffocate the attacking side. A yellow card was no sanction in itself, it merely served as a warning to the sideline that the fouler had to be rotated. This led to what Lone Shark considers the nadir – in the 2003 All Ireland final, Peter Canavan was brought on as a sub late on. Possibly one of the finest exponents of the game we’ve ever seen was brought on, and his first two acts were to ambush advancing Armagh players with a manoeuvre more of wrestling than football origin. It was cynical, it was deliberate, and it worked. He knew what the penalty was going to be – a free kick in the middle of the park, where instead of an Armagh player being in open play where he could run or pass as he saw fit, now he could only pass and the Tyrone team would have time to cover all the potential recipients. A great player had contributed to his team’s success by fouling. It was disgusting. The current system would have seen Tyrone reduced to fourteen the second time – and who knows, maybe the extra space would have been where Ryan McMenamin was when he made that late block on Stephen McDonnell.  

   In theory at least, the system is supposed to allow for when a player makes a genuine attempt to legally play the ball, but a foul results. This is one area where there are teething problems. From the limited evidence so far, referees don’t seem hugely willing to allow for a player making a genuine effort to obtain the ball by fair means. Rafferty’s sin binning against Laois in particular was an example of this. However it’s not for no reason they are calling this a trial period. Bugs like this need to be ironed out – that still does not mean we abandon the whole system. Kevin Kilmurray, in this observer’s eyes anyway, let himself down here when he said that he “doesn’t know whether to tell his players to go in hard”. Surely it should be obvious that you go in hard; but fair?! A shoulder to shoulder charge is still acceptable. By the rule book, that is the only physical contact allowed, now as it was thirty years ago. Lone Shark is highly concerned that our manager is out of ideas now that fouling no longer seems to be an option to him.

   With a doffed cap to Kieran Shannon of the Tribune, let me put it this way: if the current rules were in place, and we were experimenting with the old method, what would we be saying? We’d be in a situation where a team could foul their opponents every two minutes, and as long as they held them outside scoring range they would benefit from doing so, where creative full forwards could be stifled by their jersey being repeatedly grabbed and tugged where a player going through on goal in hurling with just the goalie to beat, which nine times out of ten results in a green flag, could be brought down from behind where now only a point results and no other punishment is likely. Micko and his cronies would have something to be up in arms about then.

   To finish, let’s look at some of the low points (from a GAA rather than Offaly perspective) of the last year or two, and see how the current system could have improved things. The awful spectacles that were Kerry vs Tyrone and Armagh vs Tyrone in 2003 would have been greatly improved. James McCartan’s defence for his reprehensible attack on Kenny Larkin was that he was being pulled and dragged regularly. If this was true, then Larkin would have been binned for doing so, or if not, at least McCartan could have waited as there was some hope for retribution within the law. Whether he would have waited or not is another matter. Above all trainers would be spending their time teaching kids and adults alike how to defend legally, rather than making them play the system.

   It’s probably true to say that the sin binnings have had a huge effect on games so far. It’s plausible that they may have had too much effect. But don’t let the words fool you – the sin binnings don’t come out of nowhere – they came from fouls. So essentially the next time someone says that a sin binning cost them a game, rephrase it to say that fouling cost their team the game. They’ll find it a bit harder to claim the high moral ground then.