Just to be clear, I am not blaming any one county for indulging in the so-called 'dark arts' but I really believe GAA football is suffering because referees/ officialdom and the media seem to hell-bent on legitimising, or at the very least, ignoring thuggery. Some of the stuff that passes for 'tough' defending nowadays is way beyond the rules of the game e.g. blocking runs, sledging, etc. The black card is an utter joke because it is not being correctly or consistently applied. If a defender's agenda is to take his man out of the game by any means necessary referees turn a blind eye to it and gifted players, like Gooch, Connolly et al. are nullified. Even the media is complicit in this. Joe Brolly, so quick to lambast Sean Cavanagh for hauling his man down, while bearing down on goal, had a nice snigger at Lee Keegans's extraordinary ability to goad his man into getting a yellow card while he walked away unpenalised. Double standards again Joe but why am I not surprised? To repeat myself : All counties are doing this. Just to be clear I thought MDMA deserved a red for that 'clothesline' tackle. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do. I believe the GAA needs to address this issue urgently. The All-Ireland is meant to be a showcase for football, not some kind of hybrid between rugby, street fighting and mud wrestling. If we want our kids to play football successfully ought we send them to Judo lessons too.
Not too much you can say about this except that it appears the advantage and reasonable doubt is given to the defenders in pretty much every case. Umpires and officials will generally go with the " ah sure there's a pair of them at it " attitude. The instigator of the incident needs to be the one that gets punished and after a few cases of fellas getting carded or sent off it would have the desired effect. Of course you will have the usual backlash from supporters and pundits initially about how they were hard done by but if the will was there it would have and should have been done ages ago. Defenders are there to stop forwards scoring and be the first line of offence but in a lot of cases they are given far too much rope. The sin bin would also be a good solution for offenders and allow the opposition to have an advantage as long as it's not too near the end of the game.
With such confusion with the black card at the minute you may as well leagalize a pull down tackle to stop the controversy and let the game run wothout even a free although I'm pretty sure that's a legal auzzie rules tackle so it would be obviously too extreme and game changing.
This topic never dies. Will there ever be a solution ?
Direct pull down = no card but free right in front of the posts regardless of where the foul was ?
Don't even know what to say on the black anymore ..think its all been said .
Replying To avonali: "Just to be clear, I am not blaming any one county for indulging in the so-called 'dark arts' but I really believe GAA football is suffering because referees/ officialdom and the media seem to hell-bent on legitimising, or at the very least, ignoring thuggery. Some of the stuff that passes for 'tough' defending nowadays is way beyond the rules of the game e.g. blocking runs, sledging, etc. The black card is an utter joke because it is not being correctly or consistently applied. If a defender's agenda is to take his man out of the game by any means necessary referees turn a blind eye to it and gifted players, like Gooch, Connolly et al. are nullified. Even the media is complicit in this. Joe Brolly, so quick to lambast Sean Cavanagh for hauling his man down, while bearing down on goal, had a nice snigger at Lee Keegans's extraordinary ability to goad his man into getting a yellow card while he walked away unpenalised. Double standards again Joe but why am I not surprised? To repeat myself : All counties are doing this. Just to be clear I thought MDMA deserved a red for that 'clothesline' tackle. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do. I believe the GAA needs to address this issue urgently. The All-Ireland is meant to be a showcase for football, not some kind of hybrid between rugby, street fighting and mud wrestling. If we want our kids to play football successfully ought we send them to Judo lessons too."
Very good honest reflection.
You are dead right. Each year when we get to the quarter finals, the rule book goes out the window. The referees are put in an impossible position. If a player is black carded or red carded (individually) then the remaining players have carte blanche to do what ever they want to do on the field. This is what happened on sunday. Michael Darragh, Cillian O' Connor and Aidan O'Shea should definitely have been either shown black or red cards.
When James McCarthy was rightly shown the black card he proceeded to verbally abuse the officials. I know he was upset but that should not be an excuse for that type of behaviour. The days of GAA suspending somebody at that level for that behaviour is light years away.