The Black Card = Blanket Defence

[Zulu]

I agree but there's no hope of something like being adopt.

[ross4life]

Lads when was the term blanket defence first used in football? i was watching back on the 98 Galway documentary a year til Sunday tonight & John O'Mahony mentioned breaking down the Kildare blanket defence in his pre match talk.

[DUBSFORSAM1]

I think the one thing that is abundantly clear is that teams are more than happy to take a black card in the last few minutes of a game if they're defending a lead.

Exactly, it didnt stop both Kerry & Mayo doing it at the weekend when trying to defend a lead.
Kerry also got away with 2 other quite clear 'black card offences' during the game.
As was my main issue with the rule at the time, its the implentation thats is the issue, and when it comes down to it, the rule still doesnt adress the most cynical of fouls ( the dragging down of the man at the end of a game when defending a lead.

See I don't think that *is* the most cynical of fouls. I think the insidious fouling in the forwards all throughout the game, all in the name of killing momentum, was the most cynical and the most 'coached' aspect of cynical fouling, and that has been largely eradicated by the black card in my view.

Brolly did the rule a disservice by going mental on Sean Cavanagh, because it made people focus on that sort of foul when I think that sort of thing was just an easy video to show, and wasn't actually the problem the black card was most worried about.

As someone who was very opposed to it initially, I will say that it has drastically reduced the number of 'body check' type fouls which is certainly a good thing. (although how mcquillan missed one of the most obvious ones i have ever seen on sunday, i will never know)
The problem is i suppose, the nature of the these fouls are that they are off the ball, and therefore can be difficult for the referee to spot alot of teh time.
I personally would have prefereed that referees where encouraged to use the yellow card for these type of fouls (something they werent doing) and the linesmen and umpires given more scope to draw the referees attention to the off the ball ones, so that the ref could go back and issue the yellow.I think this would have had the same effect as the black card, without the inconsistancy of what is a yellow and what is a black.
The arguement against that was that a yellow wasnt enough of a deterant, but if it was implemented consistantly and for the ones the ref didnt spot himself, i think it most definatly would have been.The black card is still no more deterent for the end of game drag down foul than a yellow would have been

As AZ points out that wasn't really the type of foul it was brought in to address though. Nothing will deter lads from fouling in the last few minutes under certain circumstances so I don't think we should be overly concerned with that. Of course it would be great to have something that would deter lads even in the last few minutes but I don't think there is an easy fix to that one. The black card has done a good job in what it was designed to address IMO.

An automatic 13 metre free in front of the posts will cut out such fouls. If the player is hauling someone down to prevent a promising attack developing, then the punishment should on the scoreboard rather than with card colours.
In the cases where the drag down prevented a clear goal chance, then the ref should have the power to award the penalty. We need to trust refs to make the interpretation.
The fairest punishment for Sean Cavanagh dragging down Conor McManus should have been a penalty to Monaghan and not cards, fines, jailings, lashings etc.

For blatantly denying a clear goal scoring chance like Cavanagh did it should be a straight red card with a 2 match ban - apart from All-Ireland final game players won't take a chance