Foul Play: Then There Were Four

With The Great Big Kick-Off of The Greatest League In The World amply attended to elsewhere in this fine issue, I’ll hold fire and spare you the Foul Play verdict for the time being. Right now, though, I must say I haven’t an earthly clue who’s going to win it. With three new head honchos in the main hot-seats, there are more imponderables, what-ifs and question marks hovering over the leading contenders than at any point in the last couple of decades.

If you told me at this point in time that the title race would go down to the last day with Chelsea and the two Mancunian clubs neck-and-neck, I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised. Bring it on.
Back on home soil, Dublin’s hurlers eventually bit the dust after a positively epic season, to the unadulterated glee of my Corkonian colleagues, who now march confidently onward to an All-Ireland Final against whoever comes through the imminent Clare-Limerick derby. This heartbreaking development has left Foul Play relying on Dublin’s footballers to keep the side up, and I have to be honest and admit that Sam would feel like something of a consolation prize this year, so intensely engaged had I become with the hurlers’ progress.
The Croker semi was an unadulterated classic right from the throw-in, a full-blooded, hotly-contested masterpiece, and though many observers felt Ryan O’Dwyer’s debatable second-half red card at a stage when Dublin led by one point ruined the contest, in truth Liam Rushe was fortunate not to follow him down the tunnel a few minutes later. The eventual five-point winning margin may have been misleading, but there could be no serious cribbing about the outcome.
 Not that it stopped numerous observers from drawing attention to the glut of red cards in key games in this year’s Championship, with the implication that the results were tainted as a result. There is a prevailing attitude among hurling pundits that almost all red cards are inherently unfair, that ‘manliness’ in the ancient art ought to be paramount, victims of foul play are duty-bound to just accept it without complaint, and that almost any action which stops short of bashing your opponent’s front teeth in with the butt of the hurl is basically fair game.
Serious flare-ups are casually shrugged off as ‘only a spot of handbags’, and an unwritten code of honour serves to ensure that no player would dare to publicly criticise an opponent’s conduct. The truth is that, as in any other highly competitive high-stakes contact sport, all manner of off-the-ball skulduggery can and does go on. Unless one adopts the position that players should have carte blanche, then disciplinary sanctions (even red cards) are a legitimate part of the game, and it’s time pundits stopped treating them as some sort of outrage.  
 The fallout from RTÉ pundit Joe Brolly’s ridiculously excessive personalised criticism of Tyrone’s Sean Cavanagh continues apace: Brolly has proffered a qualified apology, while Cavanagh struck exactly the right note in his response (which can be summarised as ‘I don’t make the rules, I had to bring the guy down, anyone else would have done the same, and I wish the rules were different’). There is a history of spiky rivalry between Derry and Tyrone, which one suspects may have influenced Brolly’s outburst on some level. Cavanagh has probably been the single best player in the football Championship to date, though Tyrone still enter the semi-finals as colossal outsiders, with Mayo’s blood-curdling demolition of a depleted Donegal having sent a resounding message around the land and rendered the Westerners white-hot favourites for the All-Ireland.
 Certainly nobody who witnessed the Donegal match would dare to dispute Mayo’s position as favourites, and the swashbuckling manner in which they play the game couldn’t contrast more sharply with Donegal’s ruthlessly pragmatic approach. The general consensus in advance of semi-finals day is that Mayo and Dublin, unquestionably the two most potent attacking forces in Ireland, are nailed-on certainties to lock horns on the big day, with goals flying in freely at either end, and nary a sideways hand-pass, cynical shirt-tug or blanket defensive set-up to be seen. Things may not work out quite so neatly, however.
 For a start, Tyrone and Kerry are hardly what you’d call cannon-fodder. Tyrone’s progress thus far has distinct echoes of 2008, when they also took the long road, got stronger with every game and peaked to perfection in September. The beards are mostly gone and plenty of the personnel have changed, but Mickey Harte is still working his magic on the sidelines, Cavanagh is in the form of his life, and it would take an idiot to dismiss their chances at this advanced stage of the competition.
 Kerry and Dublin go head to head in the other semi, a resumption of the most torrid rivalry in GAA lore. Historically this is one in which Kerry have undeniably held the upper hand, but they must still be haunted by the 2011 Final, in which they pissed away a four-point lead in the final few minutes in front of an utterly demented Hill, Dublin rising to the occasion in splendiferous style while the self-styled Brazilians of the beautiful game buckled under the pressure. There is an argument that Kerry, rather than losing that game in the closing stretch, owed their downfall to spending much of the second half arse-ing around in possession with little end product at a time when their lead was substantial but still precarious. When you’re on top in any game, you need to make it pay on the scoreboard, because there will certainly come a stage when the momentum shifts in the other direction. Kerry’s recent quarter-final against Cavan did not offer convincing evidence that they’ve learned this lesson.
 In the two years since that unforgettable final, Kerry appear to have gone backwards while Dublin have suddenly sprouted a mouth-watering array of options in almost every position, leading to an unprecedented situation whereby the Dubs are overwhelming two-to-one-on favourites to smite the mighty Kingdom. This is inherently unnerving for any Dublin fan over the age of about ten: Kerry’s supremacy down all the decades has been extremely pronounced. They produce better footballers in greater quantities than any other county in Ireland, have done so since time immemorial, and even their less impressive vintages are invariably a force to be reckoned with. The teams’ respective form-lines thus far this year mean you have to go for Dublin, but I fear this may not be entirely straightforward.
 Predictions? Mayo and Dublin to come through, but I wouldn’t recommend giant stakes on either. At any rate, team sports are a treacherous betting medium, especially compared to golf, my love of which grows and grows by the week as it begins to dawn on me that I can’t seem to put a foot wrong when betting on it. Regular readers, by this stage, will probably be positively sickened to hear that Foul Play has just struck gold for the third major in a row (Jason Dufner, 35/1, US PGA) which, when allied to 80/1 and 175/1 each-way bank jobs in the two previous majors, all adds up to a profit too obscene to disclose here. Unfortunately, the majors have now concluded for the season, and I can’t really get myself excited enough to give a toss about events like the Nedbank Invitational Challenge.
With Premier League football returning in a matter of days, it looks like it’s back to a life of scanning team-sheets, home-and-away records and goal-difference stats in order to read the runes, always aiming for that magical zillion-to-one accumulator which is invariably torpedoed by a sickening, blatantly offside 94th-minute goal. Football has the endless capacity to torment as well as thrill (Hibs’ recent 7-0 capitulation at home to Malmo in the Europa League being a case in point) — but I love it unconditionally, and I always will. Welcome back.