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IN THE WRONG SPIRIT
By Liam Horan
Close your eyes now. Concentrate good and hard. Scrunch up your cheeks
because, apparently, that helps you think even harder. Breathe deeply.
And let your mind drift back to a time when a great deal of people in
the GAA operated within the ‘spirit of the rules’.
If you’re under a certain age this recollection may elude you. Or
maybe we’re just being cynical. But it strikes us that fewer and
fewer people involved in the GAA — particularly, but not exclusively,
at inter-county level — are interested in the tenets of sportsmanship
and plain ol’ decency.
It’s all beginning to jar.
Those who would stop short of nothing are beginning to get on the wick
of those who believe the games, for all their ferocious competitiveness,
should ultimately be about good sport. But, more and more, they are becoming
about people looking to get an angle — any angle, any piece of leverage,
anything at all to get them out of a tight corner.
So when Anthony Lynch does what he does in a Munster final, does he just
accept his punishment? No, the rule-book experts in Cork reach for the
fine-tooth comb and, magically, find a way out. Yes, he attempted to strike,
but, look, he was charged with striking. Whoooopeee! We’re free!
Like there’s a world of difference between attempting to strike
and striking. This clear breach of Lynch’s civil rights inspires
Cork to try their luck at committee level where — possibly spooked
by the welter of jurisprudence traditionally available to Cork —
the committee declare him an innocent man and free to play in the Munster
final replay the following Sunday.
The Sigerson Cup has now reached the point where it is almost a national
joke. On street corners now you get offered E-tablets and a chance to
play Sigerson. It’s everywhere, this Sigerson drug.
This once-great competition has become pulled in a thousand different
directions by teams who will do anything to win. Haul players in for dubious
courses, check. Objections and counter-objections, check. Flexi-read the
rules, check. It’s all there now, one more competition where the
love of the game has been lost.
Not everyone has gone this way. Some people — hopefully more than
I can see — still hold to the traditional elements of sportsmanship
and display a loyalty to what it is they have been lucky enough to inherit.
They are becoming an ever more minor, ever smaller minority alas but if
they keep getting pushed down they might just react one day soon.
Next month’s Congress should be just one such arena for a revolution.
But that won’t happen. A staggering dereliction of duty will see
Congress vote in the grants. Donal O’Neill says the games could
be professional inside five years. Yet the GAA whistles past the graveyard.
Cork engage in a bloody local row, drag it on for far longer than was
necessary and, in the process, throw Division 2 of the National Football
League into a tail-spin. At least Roscommon now have the courage to stand
up and say something is wrong here. Why should they play Cork in a bid
to get the two League points (and fail) when Dublin and Meath were spared
the hardship?
It’s not as if Cork went bust halfway through the League which would
have been a genuine headache for the administrators. No, Cork failed to
field at the start of the League. Twice. Someone’s having a laugh.
Roscommon’s objection is one of the few objections the GAA actually
needs to hear this year. Because I don’t believe it to be a mean-spirited
act. Rather it sounds to me like a case of one county saying it’s
time things started making sense around here.
No need for Kerry blues
I got to see Kerry on Sunday. Losing to Mayo in the League is nothing
new to them and a quick look at the missing-in-inaction list shed some
light on the matter: No Paul Galvin, no Declan O’Sullivan, no Gooch
and only a fleeting cameo from Daragh Ó Sé.
Kieran Donaghy was kept on a tight leash and, once again, there were signs
of his discipline being suspect. After missing a chance that would have
levelled it for Kerry at the death he almost copped a missile (not sure
what — possibly a plastic bottle) thrown his way by a Mayo supporter
who somehow managed to dance on Donaghy’s grave in March when, in
fact, it’s not a grave at all.
Donaghy’s reaction of making a one-fingered gesture to the crowd
was unbecoming of such a man. In the opening round of the League when
Donegal grabbed that late-winning goal he took his jersey off in another
impetuous move — we think his ire may have been directed at Eoin
Brosnan then for missing a catch.
His list of sendings-off is above the national average. Yet he is not
a dirty player. Nor is he a player you can dislike. There is no evidence
of a sinister edge to him unlike others we can think of.
Far from it in fact. He’s just a reactor. One day soon an agent
provocateur will provoke a reaction in a big Croke Park showdown leaving
Kerry to face into a tight finish without him. That would make for interesting
fare.
Keeping him on the straight and narrow will be a major challenge for Pat
O’Shea while also ensuring that his natural enthusiasm and effervescence
are not knocked out of him. Elsewhere Tomas Ó Sé looked
in ruddy good health with two surging points from the half-back line.
Tom O’Sullivan looked distinctly uncomfortable at full-back while
corner men Padraig Reidy and Marc Ó Sé both took in a lot
of water at various times. Bryan Sheehan missed a close-in free to draw
it but that won’t happen too often.
Darren O’Sullivan will be pushing hard for a starting place this
year. He was far and away Kerry’s most dangerous attacker —
a tightly-coiled amalgam of muscle, pace and skill. No need for alarm
in the Kingdom, chalk it down.
Which means plenty of call for alarm everywhere else with designs.
Comments to liam@weeklycolumns.ie. |
