MY hat is off this morning to Wexford’s Darren Stamp for his full-on attack on the hurling rule-tweakers.
A game which once was seen as being amongst the manly of all is being turned into a sissies game, reckons Stamp in today’s Irish Examiner. The modern players is afraid of going into a tackle, but not because of the impact – it’s because if that tackle is slightly mistimed, or if the player being tackled turns his shoulder away at the last minute, the tackling player now risks being carded, perhaps even sent off.
Those of us who cover this game have noticed that trend building year on year, the GAA head honchos making all these sounds about getting tough on dirty play, on making hurling a game where mothers can encourage their kids to play, secure in the knowledge that it’s a game safer than houses (maybe we should change that analogy in the current climate?).
First of all, I think the GAA is grossly underestimating those same mothers of Ireland. Those I’ve come across anyway, in a long career, have no problem whatsoever with hurling being played as it was always designed – hard and without compromise. There are dirty hits in hurling, filthy hits; sometimes they are blatant, wild, obvious, sometimes they are far more subtle (the attempted ‘block’ that was aimed a few feet above the ball was always my pet hate), but always those hits should be penalised without doubt. The players who indulge in that sort of play are a blight on hurling but nowadays, for the most part, they are gone. In their zeal to clean up the game, however – and I agree totally with Darren Stamp on this — the GAA has gone overboard.
We can blame the referees, but only up to a point – it’s the assessors. I was reading Joe Brolly last week where he was commenting on a referee in one particular football game in Belfast. The whistleblower was highly rated by those assessors but a referee roundly booed by both sets of supporters at game’s end. He wasn’t adjudicating on behalf of the two teams, he wasn’t adjudicating on behalf of the fans, he was adjudicating to please that one man in the stand that all the top referees must now satisfy – the assessor.
You have players in both hurling and football who are afraid to tackle, hurlers afraid to try for the flick off the opponent’s stick, for fear of what might happen if it’s mistimed.
I’ve seen defenders who stood their ground against an opponent on the charge, turned their bodies slightly just before impact to absorb the blow through the shoulder rather than in the chest and then receiving a yellow-carded for it. What are they supposed to do, step aside and wave the forward through? Stay square and risk serious injury?
You’ll see a guy going for the big shoulder hit, only to meet an opponent who – cleverly – twists the body slightly so the hit is taken on the chest; result? Another yellow card. Darren spoke of the player who mistimes the flick, gets another yellow, but I’ve seen players whose timing was perfect, who got the ball, only for the player he has just dispossessed to dramatically drop to the ground shaking his hand. It is nonsense.
Meanwhile, genuine frees are going unpunished; players in possession having their arms held — the arm with the ball or the free arm, sometimes both. They are then put in a position where they are unable to release the ball; the arm over the shoulder, reaching in with the hurley – again, a foul, but a foul rarely called.
A full-blooded overhead pull on the ball, into which an opponent leaps/puts up his hand is not a free, but is often blown for one and the guy who was trying to play the ball carded.
Get it right, Croke Park. Get it right, assessors. Get it right, referees.
Darren Stamp is right – they are destroying the game.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/Z760e2pmt2o/post.aspx
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