Kieran McGeeney gets a bad rap sometimes. Granted, it’s probably not as bad a rap as he imagines he gets – the Armagh manager is a great man for making dark references to unnamed “people” out there in the ether, “people” who think he’s always giving out or “people” who think he asks too much of his players or “people” who reckon he should go easier on referees. He’ll get some shock some day if he ever realises most “people” genuinely admire him.
He’s been either playing, coaching or managing at intercounty level since 1989. He lets on to be a grumpy, demented oul’ hoor half the time but imagine how deeply you’d have to love something to give 37 years of your life to it. And not just the taking part bit, not just going through the motions. No wonder the game drives him mad sometimes.
On Saturday night against Dublin, he cost his team a point by striding out on to the pitch to remonstrate with referee David Gough after the half-time hooter went. Gough was in no mood to entertain him – he was more interested in the scuffle breaking out at the entrance to the tunnel between Jarly Óg Burns and about 15 Dublin players and subs. He sent McGeeney away with a flea in his ear, presumably to match the one McGeeney had planted in his.
(For what it’s worth, Gough – or maybe his linesman and/or fourth official – got that tunnel row completely wrong. Burns was heading to the side to allow the Dublin players go down the tunnel first when Niall Scully jostled him from behind. Any fair look at the video would see Burns as the victim rather than the aggressor, all the more so when he was immediately surrounded by Dublin players as he went to push Scully back. How he ended up being the one who got singled out for a black card is baffling.)
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Managers have been having a word with referees going in at half-time since the lads spilled out of Hayes’s Hotel. But there’s a rule covering it now and McGeeney fell foul of it. The referee can – and did – award both a yellow card to the offending manager and begin the second half with a free to the opposition in front of the posts. Hence, Dublin’s nine-point lead became a 10-point one before everybody was even back in their seats.
There’s a small irony here in that McGeeney has fallen foul of a rule that came in to deal with a grey area and make it more black and white. Referees being harangued at half-time – sometimes by managers, sometimes by players, occasionally even by county board people who should know better – has always been a bad look but there was never anything in rule to say it couldn’t be done. Now there is.
For as long as he’s been a manager, McGeeney has railed against the grey areas in the rules of Gaelic football. Here he is 16 years ago this very week when he was over Kildare, talking about the lack of clarity in what constitutes a legal tackle.
“There’s no clear definition of it. One week if you’re strong it’s an advantage, the next week it’s a disadvantage. It varies on the referee and the type of game that’s being played. Just make it more clear-cut, easier for the referees. If you’ve on the one hand players bluffing it, and then the ambiguity of the rules on the other hand, it’s a hard thing to make a call on.”
Here he is in 2015, now in situ in Armagh, posing an almost existential question on the very nature of having codified rules in sport at all.
“Referees are going to have a hard job. They are always going on what they believe and they are trying to be objective about it. But I thought rules were there to be implemented. They tell us if the rules were to be implemented, there would be a free every 10 seconds. So why have rules? Why not go out and if you like a physical game, then let’s have it?”
And now, spin the tape on to last Saturday night, when he shook his head again and pondered the fairness of an unfair world.
“It’s very, very frustrating. People sort of say it’s down to the referee’s interpretation - and that’s where things always fall asunder. You can’t have a personal opinion on the game. Either play the rules or you don’t.
“Because when it comes down to personal opinions, it’ll come down to likes and dislikes – the way you like football to be played or the way you don’t like football being played. You just can’t do that. You can’t have one rule one week and a different rule the next. That’s not the way sport’s supposed to be played.”
Except, well, it kind of is? Gaelic football is far from the only sport where the application of the rules comes down to the view (not to mention worldview) of the man with the whistle. Watch American football, soccer, rugby, AFL – basically any contact sport on the planet – and different games are refereed differently. Referees and umpires the world over have their own way of interpreting passages of play, degrees of contact, sleights of hand, moods, intents, purposes. What is VAR if not an attempt to wrestle with all of it?
[ Ken Early: All VAR does is annoy everybody while delaying everythingOpens in new window ]
McGeeney’s bugbear on Saturday night was the amount of time Gough gave Armagh on an advantage just before the break. Peadar Ó Cofaigh Byrne was pushing in the square but when Armagh goalie Blaine Hughes came out with the ball, Gough chose to allow Armagh play away rather than call a free. Three passes and eight seconds later, his arm came down. Dublin won the ball back and Seán Bugler scored a two-pointer.
Later on, in the second half, Gough gave Armagh a 12-second advantage, during which they tried to work the ball back outside the arc to take on a two-pointer. By the time they got there, his arm was down but Oisin O’Neill tried the shot anyway and was met by a shrug from the referee when he pleaded that he thought he had the advantage.
So in a way, you can see where McGeeney is coming from – there’s a difference there in the amount of time the same referee in the same game awarded an advantage for. But it’s right there in the rule – the time awarded shall be at the referee’s discretion. The grey area is literally written into the rule.
Not to annoy McGeeney, much as he’d let on to be open to the conspiracy theory. But more to take cognisance of the fact that invasion sports are messy and that hard and fast rules (as there used to be when the advantage could only last five seconds) can’t always be the best way.
McGeeney has always prized clarity above all in Gaelic football’s rules. But sometimes you need the leeway of a judgement call.
