Joe Brolly "analysis"

OMAR wrote: ...brings into the debate the shiels off the ground.

And that is why Tyrone people are so upset - everyone is breaking the rules in some shape or form, yet we are hung out to dry as being the only culprits.

Never got to watch the match, see the tackle though and it was dirty and cynical no two ways about it.

Maybe it's wiser at this juncture to stop throwing petrol or even "diesel" onto the fire and drop the issue.
The more that's said and written about it the longer it lasts.

Joe got excited and the mouth took off before the logic lever had engaged. It wasn't pretty and he referred to that, but it's over, Monaghan will get over it and we'll move on....until the next time.

Excellent work from Breheny today. Story still dominating the press and airwaves:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The story should indeed continue to dominate the press and airwaves.  The GAA have to take their heads out of the sand.  And for anyone to attempt to compare what Cavanagh and Shields did is just bizarre and farcical but some people will try anything to deflect the issue.  Even Tyrone minors are being coached to drag opponents down so we have this kind of play to look forward to for many years as we have seen.

We often have some very long winded analysis here on Tyrone games.  But if we are honest the truth is that Tyrone won their last two games this season, and numerous others, by foul and cynical play.  That is the reality.  But the 'analysts' here will never refer to this.  Even after the games.  Instead they will try to defend the indefensible and try to make comparisons where none exist.  

Tyrone people are upset.  Could I suggest that the team desist from their unique ‘style’ of consistent and systematic foul play and maybe then the majority of decent sports followers would stop being upset at it.

Thomas Clarke wrote:Excellent work from Breheny today.  Story still dominating the press and airwaves:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

There are 10 comments under Breheny’s piece on the online Irish Independent edition. Every single comment is critical of the piece and Breheny’s take on things. The people commenting are sick and tired of this kind of thing.

Below is an article from Seán Moran in today’s Irish Times.

Brolly’s message shouldn’t be lost in the medium

Why Tyrone? Joe Brolly understands the mechanics of outrage well enough to appreciate that his timely outburst and unarguable concerns about the malaise of cynical play would arouse some vocal antipathy, which in turn would create a more widespread if private acceptance.

Had his point not been made in such an incendiary fashion, would it have attracted the same level of attention? Probably not. Is his point valid? Absolutely, and the complete absence of substantive – as opposed to stylistic – rebuttal indicates as much.

For a long time, observance of discipline within Gaelic games has been compromised by the dismal inadequacy of the punishments for breaking the rules of fair play.

As a natural consequence disregard for the rules has flourished and there has developed an unquestioning assumption that the Official Guide is an obstacle to be circumvented rather than a framework within which the games are expected to take place.

It was this landscape that the Football Review Committee sought to address when it brought forward a package of measures to counter cynical fouling, including the black card, which will be introduced next January and will punish pulling down, tripping and deliberately colliding with opposing players.
There’s a reasonable case to be made that these reforms should only be the start of a process to tighten up on cynical fouling, eg the introduction of suspension for cumulative yellow cards, but that will await the outcome of the new rules’ enforcement.

Why Tyrone? Brolly’s denunciation was directed at the fact that in successive weeks at Croke Park the county had been guilty of conspicuous infractions, most highly-profiled by the rugby tackles of Seán Cavanagh.

If this was to give the impression that such behaviour was the preserve of Tyrone and their leading player, such a perception would be wrong but it is not wrong to say that the county has demonstrated remarkable insouciance about such breaches of rule.

It may infuriate manager Mickey Harte that he has been asked to respond to strident, hot-of-the-airwaves punditry on successive weekends but equally, he has demonstrated a casual attitude towards the problem, most recently in taking a shoulder shrugging attitude to cynical fouls in the qualifier with Meath 11 days ago.
“It happened during the game. Both sides were guilty of it from time to time. So what?”

‘What-about-ery’
Last Saturday he again evinced the same reluctance to take responsibility for his own team, instead indulging in ‘what-about-ery’.

“Look at the game in its entirety and tell me how did the balance of fouling add up; give me the statistics of the whole game and then I will talk about the individual instances,” was his response to questions about the rugby tackling in the Monaghan quarter-final.

“It’s a worry that there is so much focus on little things (sic) that happened in the game and I’d like to think if you really forensically examine the whole game you might find other things of the same nature that you speak about. So I wish you would talk about the good game that we had there today and stop delving into the negativity.”

Seán Cavanagh, the target of Brolly’s displeasure for the 49th-minute rugby tackle on Conor McManus, bluntly stated his terms of engagement in an interview on Newstalk radio.

“It is cynical play. It’s unfortunate. I don’t want to play football like that… unfortunately the rules of GAA dictate that (when a man is through on goal) a yellow card does not mean that much to you.”

There has been something akin to a Pentecostal rush amongst players and former players to testify that they too would bring down the disappearing attacker if they had to. Some of this has been public and some has been in private conversation and gradually the rules have disappeared through the looking-glass to become an irritating – if admittedly optional – restraint on players ‘doing what has to be done’.

In a way this isn’t surprising. Breaking rules to suit oneself offers the possibility of advancement in all societies – as we are all too painfully aware. Therefore breaking rules has to be culminate in disadvantage; otherwise we end up with the current situation in Gaelic games in which many evidently believe that cheating is worthwhile.

Seán Cavanagh is saying that as a player more sinned against than sinning, he would prefer a regime where the punishment for what he did actually did mean something to him. Were the black card in force, would it have been worth it for Tyrone to lose their best player for the last 20 minutes of the match in order to avoid conceding two points?

The 2008 Footballer of the Year also blew apart his manager’s view of the issue, as expressed last March.
Ironically the congress debate on the black cards took place in a context in which Tyrone a week previously on an earlier visit to Croke Park this season had held Dublin out at the end of a league match and in the process committed a number of calculated infractions.

“I believe that referees have a yellow card to deal with the personal, deliberate foul,” said Harte afterwards. “And I think that will suffice. If it happens that somebody commits one in the last minute of the game, that’s the exception, not the rule.”

This was despite three of his players having been yellow carded in the last three minutes for cynical play.
They’re not the only ones but they have put themselves in the spotlight in recent weeks by exploiting the notoriously lax status quo, which as a county they sought to defend at Congress.

Nor is this selective criticism: when the new rules take effect they won’t apply just to Tyrone but to every county. And football will be better for that.

First 30 seconds of this video from the 1990 Cavan Final.

Rough stuff, JS! I'm sure Brolly will find a way to blame Tyrone for it.

Still, spare a thought for poor Joe, who has spent half his week trying to convince people that what he was really doing on Sunday was simply starting a debate about a wider problem, and the other half making apologetic phonecalls to Sean Cavanagh and Swatragh GAA (for the insults and/or lies that he told about them on television).

Biggest worry for us in the aftermath of Brollys rant is the absence of bocerty! All the rest can piss off until boc returns!

How long before this clown runs out of people to apologise to?…

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Intelligent man like Brolly should know there is other ways to attract the attention he craves than acting like a 12 year old.

Would love to know what ever happend to the brolly/tyrone love in.

champers wrote:Would love to know what ever happend to the brolly/tyrone love in.

it ran its course and wasnt giving him enough publicity and attention which he seems to like

"RTE Pundit In Rant at SKY GAA Coverage/Presenter Shocker"  Yawn, Brolly is getting boring now, i'm surprised that he didn't have another pop at Bradley for signing up to Soccerball for another 2 years!

bald eagle wrote:"RTE Pundit In Rant at SKY GAA Coverage/Presenter Shocker"  Yawn, Brolly is getting boring now, i'm surprised that he didn't have another pop at Bradley for signing up to Soccerball for another 2 years!

Yeah, he's been waging war against SKY from his twitter account for the last month now. Yet the funniest thing is that SKY have now managed to shut him up without them saying a single word. Hilarious.

Thomas Clarke wrote:

bald eagle wrote:"RTE Pundit In Rant at SKY GAA Coverage/Presenter Shocker"  Yawn, Brolly is getting boring now, i'm surprised that he didn't have another pop at Bradley for signing up to Soccerball for another 2 years!

Yeah, he's been waging war against SKY from his twitter account for the last month now.  Yet the funniest thing is that SKY have now managed to shut him up without them saying a single word.  Hilarious.

I haven't been on twitter for an age, one of the last arguments I was having was with him and his followers about the Sky deal, anyhow some mug was spouting about GAA should be free to air blah blah blah; when I pointed out that my folks in South Derry had to pay for Sky just to get RTE therefore NEVER got GAA FTA and ended with the comment "National broadcaster me hole"! That ended Joes correspondence with me as he is like Jeremy Vine in the respect that you can have an opinion, but if it's not like his then he doesn't want to hear it!

Brolly back at Sean Cavanagh again, calling him a cheat. What is it with this little man?

As an accountant in a high profile practice, Sean should take legal action against RTE for libel and potential loss of business reputation. Might put a stop to Brolly's constant insults.

As for the 'diving', here's Wooly's take on it:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]