“We don’t want to be going down that road where lads are just diving the whole time” – DJ Carey

Would you dive to win a free?

In the quiet corners of a dressing room, would you encourage a team-mate to ‘go down if they have to’? You probably would, wouldn’t you? It’s well and good to go on about morals and sportsmanship but at the end of the day, and in the sanctity of the dressing room, winning is the only currency that matters.

Teams will always choose glory at the expense of a bit of flak. Players will dive if they’ve something to gain from it and while that might be hard to stomach for some whiter-than-whites out there, we must accept it. Which is why the power is in the rule-makers’ hands.

There was controversy in December when, with two Ballygunner players going down dramatically, both John McGrath and his brother Noel were shown red cards in the Munster senior club hurling championship. It sparked a debate about diving in the GAA and the point was made that, unless referees are given the right to punish divers, then players will continue to dive.

We were speaking to DJ Carey at the launch of the Electric Ireland Fitzgibbon Cup recently and DJ reckons the GAA has a serious diving problem.

“There is. I’m not trying to go back and criticise anyone in particular but over the last few years, I have definitely seen teams, you know guys taking off their helmets and going down on one knee, just wasting time and looking for players to be booked or sent off.

“I want to be reasonably careful because there’ll always be some wise-arse now who’ll say ‘aw you were a fair man to dive yourself’ but our games are not supposed to have diving,” says the IT Carlow manager.

“We have a manly game. You know, in hurling, you have a stick. A belt is a belt and if you’re hurt, you’re hurt in fairness, but there’s no need to be going down if it’s not a bad belt. I like soccer by the way and I follow it but we don’t want to be going down that road where lads are just diving the whole time.”

“If that happens, it’s going to become more common and it’ll be a tactic in the game going forward then.”

It was suggested to Carey that, if a referee was to be more lenient and more inclined to let the game flow, such dives wouldn’t earn frees. But the Kilkenny icon feels that, in general as GAA people, we need to be more conscious of the rules of our games.

“It’s hard to know (how to stamp it out) because if there’s a letter of the law, there’s a letter of the law. I would go as far as to say we as hurling and football people need to start understanding rules. If you tune into a rugby match of a Saturday or Sunday, the commentators look at it and it’s cut and dry.

“They can tell you that’s a red card or that’s a yellow card but unfortunately, with ourselves, a lot of people who are in the crowds, even on the pitch shouting and roaring, a lot of them don’t know the rules in a lot of those cases. I think what’s happening is that referees, there are a lot of referees out there who don’t actually know the rules and maybe someone like myself doesn’t know all of the rules.

“I was at a game a couple of weeks ago where a referee gave five frees for lads throwing the ball. And they were genuine frees for throwing the ball but he could have given another five or six. But the players and the crowd were giving out to him. But instead of being critical of the action of the player, they’re critical of the referee who’s just applying the rules. In a lot of cases, the crowd are so much onto the referee that the ref gets excited.”

As for the Fitzgibbon Cup, which begins in the new year, Carey made the interesting point that, while players love the competition, supporters are non-plussed.

“We must remember this is a phenomenal competition,” he syas.

“There’s a massive want from players for this competition. The camaraderie and friendships that they make, they love it and it’s so important to them.

“Is there a massive want from supporters for it? I’m not as sure because I think they look at inter-county and clubs and that’s where the buck stops. But I think it’s such an important competition too, outside of senior inter-county, I think this is the second-best in the country because most of these guys will be playing senior hurling for their counties. So I do think there should be more time given to it but unfortunately, we have a divide in the GAA and we have a divide between club and county. We seem to have a divide at the highest level of the GAA and at the lowest level and we don’t seem to be able to get our act together on it.”