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On yesterdays six one news there was a piece about the new GAA rules and how they would effect hurling. They showed a selection short clips as examples of the different offences until the came to the offence of striking an opponent and for this they chose Paul Clearys pull on Martin Comerford in last summers Leinster semi final but this clip was longer and they showed a replay of it.
Why did they choose to show this clip and an extended version as well? The incident wasn't characteristic of the match, Cleary is not a dirty player and there were plenty of other equaly, or more, suitable clips that could have been used instead of it.
I'm not suggesting foul play by Offaly players shouldn't be highlighted but the manner in which this was done struck me as unfair.

If they had used a clip of someone else, would they not be unfair to that person then?

Sorry, don't see an issue here.

I'd agree that perhaps showing a few examples would have been better than focussing on one player, but then that would require a bit of work on RTE's part, and that was never going to happen.


Incidentally, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, dirty is as dirty does. I'm not saying Cleary is a dirty player either, but bearing in mind that the phrase gets aired about every player who ever commits any foul stoke, it has kind of lost all meaning. It's like someone saying "oh what a beautiful baby". Until you hear people saying "what a hideous baby - did he fall out?" - the opposite doesn't really mean anything.

RTE can be very haphazard in their footage.
They really don't categorise their GAA archive footage very well.
For example, when a great player retires they'll few a random clips from a match of him scoring a free, giving a square pass and swapping jersies after a match.
All the great goals, outrageous pieces of skill etc are in the archives but no-one would know where to look for them.

I suspect they aren't tagged very comprehensively when they are being committed to the filing system.
Paul Cleary's foul was probably the first bit of VT they found tagged with "Rough play", so they decide to use it in their clip. It is a quite random process I suspect.

And it wasnt that bad a foul anyway- he was able to play on afterwards wasnt he!!
Sure he got a few stitches or maybe even a steri-strip or 3 and lost a wee drop of blood but hardly life threathening- he should have got a yellow, now that I think of it, - for diving.