So what do ye think of the black card rule now?

[Esmarelda]

Define an 'incorrect decision'?
Did James McCarthy deserve a black card in the drawn game against Mayo?
As far as I'm concerned, yes he did.
That didn't stop people having a go at the ref/linesman afterwards.
The correctness, or otherwise, of a black card decision is largely in the eye of the beholder.

And there in lies its major problem.
Alot of these decisions are impossible to nail down to a  definitive right of wrong.
Off the top of my head , the mattie donnelly one v donegal, the lee keegan one in the replay,the non- cards for small & Md Mcauley in the final where all incorrect.
The problem is these are potential game changing decisions that are regularly being called wrongly.

There were incorrect game changing decisions before the black card. It's going to happen. A referee not giving a penalty when he should is arguably more game-changing than a player having to be replaced.

And it should be a) completely. B should not come into it.

Exactly.

[blewuporstuffed]

Define an 'incorrect decision'?
Did James McCarthy deserve a black card in the drawn game against Mayo?
As far as I'm concerned, yes he did.
That didn't stop people having a go at the ref/linesman afterwards.
The correctness, or otherwise, of a black card decision is largely in the eye of the beholder.

And there in lies its major problem.
Alot of these decisions are impossible to nail down to a  definitive right of wrong.
Off the top of my head , the mattie donnelly one v donegal, the lee keegan one in the replay,the non- cards for small & Md Mcauley in the final where all incorrect.
The problem is these are potential game changing decisions that are regularly being called wrongly.

There were incorrect game changing decisions before the black card. It's going to happen. A referee not giving a penalty when he should is arguably more game-changing than a player having to be replaced.

And it should be a) completely. B should not come into it.

Exactly.

Of course there where , but there are far more now.
Just because there was mistakes made before , doesnt mean ewe should accept a  greater number now.

[Esmarelda]

Define an 'incorrect decision'?
Did James McCarthy deserve a black card in the drawn game against Mayo?
As far as I'm concerned, yes he did.
That didn't stop people having a go at the ref/linesman afterwards.
The correctness, or otherwise, of a black card decision is largely in the eye of the beholder.

And there in lies its major problem.
Alot of these decisions are impossible to nail down to a  definitive right of wrong.
Off the top of my head , the mattie donnelly one v donegal, the lee keegan one in the replay,the non- cards for small & Md Mcauley in the final where all incorrect.
The problem is these are potential game changing decisions that are regularly being called wrongly.

There were incorrect game changing decisions before the black card. It's going to happen. A referee not giving a penalty when he should is arguably more game-changing than a player having to be replaced.

And it should be a) completely. B should not come into it.

Exactly.

Of course there where , but there are far more now.
Just because there was mistakes made before , doesnt mean ewe should accept a  greater number now.

There are far more now? Because of the black card rule?

I don't agree. There could be half a dozen questionable frees/frees not given in scoreable positions per game.

Over the summer, I'd say the average questionable black card decision per game was very low. Maybe one per game.

It's not a matter of accepting it. It's a matter of acknowledging that key mistakes will be made with or without the black card rule and the focus should be on removing the crimes from the game and enforcing the rules where applicable.

[westbound]

Define an 'incorrect decision'?
Did James McCarthy deserve a black card in the drawn game against Mayo?
As far as I'm concerned, yes he did.
That didn't stop people having a go at the ref/linesman afterwards.
The correctness, or otherwise, of a black card decision is largely in the eye of the beholder.

And there in lies its major problem.
Alot of these decisions are impossible to nail down to a  definitive right of wrong.
Off the top of my head , the mattie donnelly one v donegal, the lee keegan one in the replay,the non- cards for small & Md Mcauley in the final where all incorrect.
The problem is these are potential game changing decisions that are regularly being called wrongly.

But on that basis we shouldn't bring in a sin bin either?
a sin bin will 'probably' have a greater impact on a game than a player being subbed (black-carded) and referees will get these calls wrong too.

Shouldn't we be trying to help referees getting the decisions correct rather than trying to change the punishment (just because the referees sometimes make incorrect calls!)

[Esmarelda]

Define an 'incorrect decision'?
Did James McCarthy deserve a black card in the drawn game against Mayo?
As far as I'm concerned, yes he did.
That didn't stop people having a go at the ref/linesman afterwards.
The correctness, or otherwise, of a black card decision is largely in the eye of the beholder.

And there in lies its major problem.
Alot of these decisions are impossible to nail down to a  definitive right of wrong.
Off the top of my head , the mattie donnelly one v donegal, the lee keegan one in the replay,the non- cards for small & Md Mcauley in the final where all incorrect.
The problem is these are potential game changing decisions that are regularly being called wrongly.

But on that basis we shouldn't bring in a sin bin either?
a sin bin will 'probably' have a greater impact on a game than a player being subbed (black-carded) and referees will get these calls wrong too.

Shouldn't we be trying to help referees getting the decisions correct rather than trying to change the punishment (just because the referees sometimes make incorrect calls!)

That's what I was getting at. Thanks for explaining it better.

[gammysolo]

Lads the campaign was started by Whelan towards Lee Keegan and continued by other lesser Dublin names. All of Whelan's fellow panelists said nothing – too afraid that they would rock the boat. How could they go for pints afterwards?. To portray them as journalists is a joke. To portray the media outlets they work for as producing quality output is therefore a joke. Whatever about Vinnie Murphy commenting at least he is not a paid journalist. When you are paid to write something you need to leave your prejudices at home and you need to show your character and bottle. O'Shea, Dolan, Spillane, Brolly, O'Rourke, Lyster and Cahill showed none when Keegan, AOS and others were subjected to a biased and personal attack by one of their own. They circled the wagons.

[macdanger2]

Some soft black cards handed out this weekend, saw Donie Kingston's there and it looked like nothing. The kerry midfielder was even less of an offence

[Whishtup]

Dubs are immune.

[Rossfan]

Some soft black cards handed out this weekend, saw Donie Kingston's there and it looked like nothing. The kerry midfielder was even less of an offence

Looked like Kingston slipped and accidently caught the Tipp lad's heel. Free but no black card as it certainly didn't look deliberate/cynical.

[moysider]

Some soft black cards handed out this weekend, saw Donie Kingston's there and it looked like nothing. The kerry midfielder was even less of an offence

Didn't see Kingston one but Kerry one was just a common foul.
Roscommon's black last night was a black. Didn't see the Boyle incident but a few that did reckoned it was a black and could have been more.

[Main Street]

Some soft black cards handed out this weekend, saw Donie Kingston's there and it looked like nothing. The kerry midfielder was even less of an offence

Didn't see Kingston one but Kerry one was just a common foul.
Roscommon's black last night was a black. Didn't see the Boyle incident but a few that did reckoned it was a black and could have been more.

The Kerry one was a classic black offense not a common foul, a deliberate trip on a player with momentum on the counter attack, This is precisely the reason why black cards were brought in, to cut out exactly this type of cynical fouling to slow down the counter attack.

[Fuzzman]

Cynical ploys that pay dividends are ruining our game
By Declan Bogue in the Belfast Telegraph

Last Wednesday night during one of the Ulster Under-21 Championship games, a goalkeeper went to take one of his first kickouts. Almost immediately after he left the ball on his tee, the members of the opposition bench were onto the nearby linesman, making a lot of fuss about how long the kickout was taking, even though the goalkeeper had yet to even begin his run-up.

After some time, the linesman must have felt the heat as he relayed it to the referee. From that point, the goalkeeper was unfairly pressured to rush his kickouts.

Who were the teams? It doesn't matter. It happened and it was clearly a strategy they thought they could implement. And it paid dividends.

That is among Under-21s, who take their lead from the senior inter-county game. Last weekend, we had an All-Ireland Club final and an Ulster derby that showed up the major fault of Gaelic football, which is that - four years after the introduction of the black card - it still pays to cheat.

Nowadays, players hold on to an opponents' jersey and drag them back. It is no less a cynical foul than a trip, or dragging your opponent to the ground.

While there is a yellow card to deal with that kind of infraction, for some inexplicable reason referees display extreme caution when it comes to dishing a few out.

On Friday, Slaughtneil's inspirational Chrissy McKaigue was fouled 11 times when he gained possession in the All-Ireland Club final against Dr Crokes. His marker Gavin O'Shea was a persistent offender, but other forwards such as Johnny Buckley and Kieran O'Leary got in on the act.

Now, Kerry men have never had an issue with doing what it takes to win a game of football.

Two years ago in the final league match of the year, Kerry fouled 34 times in comparison to Tyrone's 14. They didn't really make any bones about it.

The true competitors of Kerry - the likes of the Ó Sé brothers, Mike Quirke and Dara Ó Cinnéide - will speak openly of the need to 'hammer the hammer'.

When selector Harry O'Neill was asked about Crokes hammering the hammer that is McKaigue, he clearly wasn't expecting the question but fronted up. You target the big opposition players, he said.

The thing is, the ways and means of 'targeting' opposition players has descended into schoolyard bullying. Last summer, Diarmuid Connolly spent significant minutes across a few games standing on the Croke Park sideline waiting to get a replacement jersey after his original was ripped by opponents.

Sean Cavanagh was dismissed after a second yellow card in an All-Ireland quarter-final because of an outbreak of pulling and dragging that the referee would like us to think he was equally culpable of.

And last Saturday night in Ballybofey when Donegal beat Tyrone, we watched the same old nonsense playing itself out between two teams that seem to just hate each other - a virus that has worked its way down to under-age levels.

Neither side want to go down to 14 men, so they spend an inordinate amount of time trying to goad each other into a reaction and forcing the referee to send off a member of the opposition.

Asked about the nature of the rivalry between these two in particular, Tyrone boss Mickey Harte responded: "When someone rises as a power, someone else wants to challenge that power.

"Rivalries happen from time to time, and sometimes the whole idea of the enmity that exists within that can be overplayed.

"I know crowds can get fractious in terms of the vociferous nature of their comments and things like that but that is always going to happen when you have people who are very passionate and maybe don't have as much sense to go with the passion."

He has a point and sometimes you should be careful what you wish for. After all, the rivalries contained within Ulster football makes it practically the only provincial Championship worth following every game when other provinces have given up.

But it does not have to be like this. The black card was also brought in for 'sledging' of opponents. If referee David Coldrick had his umpires on the lookout for this and flashed a few cards early on, we could have ended up with a different game altogether.

It was Coldrick, you might recall, who was the central character in the 2014 documentary 'Man In Black' which had him mic'd up for the 2013 Ulster final. That was a game played before the era of the black card, but it's hard to imagine that players have toned down the verbals significantly.

The suspicion is that somewhere along the way, referees have been instructed to use the black card very sparingly for sledging. What we are left with are games ruined by spite.

[Fear ón Srath Bán]

Cynical ploys that pay dividends are ruining our game
By Declan Bogue in the Belfast Telegraph

....
On Friday, Slaughtneil's inspirational Chrissy McKaigue was fouled 11 times when he gained possession in the All-Ireland Club final against Dr Crokes. His marker Gavin O'Shea was a persistent offender, but other forwards such as Johnny Buckley and Kieran O'Leary got in on the act.

Now, Kerry men have never had an issue with doing what it takes to win a game of football.

Two years ago in the final league match of the year, Kerry fouled 34 times in comparison to Tyrone's 14. They didn't really make any bones about it.

The true competitors of Kerry - the likes of the Ó Sé brothers, Mike Quirke and Dara Ó Cinnéide - will speak openly of the need to 'hammer the hammer'.

When selector Harry O'Neill was asked about Crokes hammering the hammer that is McKaigue, he clearly wasn't expecting the question but fronted up. You target the big opposition players, he said.

The thing is, the ways and means of 'targeting' opposition players has descended into schoolyard bullying. Last summer, Diarmuid Connolly spent significant minutes across a few games standing on the Croke Park sideline waiting to get a replacement jersey after his original was ripped by opponents.

Sean Cavanagh was dismissed after a second yellow card in an All-Ireland quarter-final because of an outbreak of pulling and dragging that the referee would like us to think he was equally culpable of.
...

And the usual amadáin hereon whine on about Tír Eoghain being the most cynical team 

[rosnarun]

the Team that doesn't get caught is usually the most Cynical team

[thewobbler]

I refereed a minor game last week. Often went 5 minutes without a foul as the players (mostly) want to play football, and are less bothered about trying to grind opponents down. So refreshing.


The only way to encourage grown men back into this kind of behaviour is by making it the most desirable outcome.

So I reckon there genuinely aren't enough black cards being shown in adult football.

I still believe we should trial playing a competition with no yellow cards. They're a get out of jail free card for players and most annoyingly, for referees.

Refs would be encouraged to dish out blacks for anything unsporting .

Cynical fouls / persistent fouling: black card.
Normal fouls that a contact sport should involve: carry the f**k on lads. This is football.
Dangerous fouls: red card.