Sean Cavanagh called it the most disappointing moment of his career, Aidan O’Shea smiles through it and Diarmuid Connolly seems to struggle with it.
Sledging, goading, instigation, incitement – call it what you will – but after last weekend’s quarter-final weekend, it has become a major talking point in Gaelic football.
SportsJOE GAA editor Colm Parkinson believes the current rules favour the aggressor, rather than the player defending himself, and should be changed to protect players from being goaded into reacting.
On the latest episode of the GAA Hour, former footballer of the year Paul Galvin – himself the subject of some special treatment during his career – described it as “the biggest problem in the game at the moment” and called for a rule change to protect players from the sort of treatment that Connolly, O’Shea and Cavanagh were subjected to this summer.
The black card for more general “abusive or provocative language or gestures to players” does not seem to effective, so Galvin put forward the idea of introducing a specific punishment.
“It can’t be accepted as just part of the game,” said Galvin. “There is a very easy way to control it. You give it a name and you put a motion to congress and you make ‘instigation’ or ‘incitement’ – I would call it instigation – you make it an offence, the same as retaliation.
“Any form of retaliation is a sending off offence – it you are trying to tell me what Eoghan O’Gara did was a straight red card? I very much doubt that it my book,” he added.
“If what Eoghan O’Gara did was a red card, it was no more forceful or dangerous than what I saw James Dolan do to Diarmuid Connolly a few weeks ago.”
While he does admit that this sort of behaviour is attractive to the fans, he does not believe it should be allowed to continue unchecked.
“Give it a name, tell officials to look for it and, at least then, you can control it somewhat. At the moment it is a complete double-standard and it is the biggest problem in the game that I can see at the moment. It’s huge.”
His opinions are not shared by his former Kingdom team-mate Darragh Ó Sé, who was struggling to see what all the fuss was about in his latest Irish Times column. Beginning by crying crocodile tears (or just tears of laughter) at the idea of Tyrone being outraged that Cavanagh was “dogged all day by Lee Keegan”.
Having been on the receiving end of some of the darker arts employed by Mickey Harte’s men, the former midfielder was devoid of sympathy, but he accepted that Tyrone did not invent the tactic – it has always been there.
“It happened to Pat Spillane, it happened to Peter Canavan, it happens to the best players in every team. Kerry picked on Michael Donnellan when we played Galway, we picked on Ciarán Whelan when we played Dublin. If you think there’s a chink in the armour of an opposition’s main man, you have to go after it,” he writes.
“This is a physical sport. It’s overseen by a referee who has too much to do and who can’t see everything that happens. Put those two things together and you have players trying to put the opposition off their game by picking at them off the ball. It won’t always be within the rules but that’s part of the deal. Everyone who has ever pulled on a pair of boots knows the story here.
“So why is there all this horror at the idea of the main player on top teams coming in for rough treatment?”
What do you reckon, should sledging or incitement be accepted as part of the game?
