How Donal Óg cheated against Tipp in 2005!

[Premier Emperor]

Cusack reveals Cork's sliotar 'gamesmanship'

ALL-IRELAND winning goalkeeper Donal Óg Cusack has revealed the 'gamesmanship' which Cork employed in a 2005 Munster SHC final with Tipperary.

In his book Come what May (which is published tomorrow), the former All Star has lifted the lid on their sliotar strategy used for penalty situations.

He said: "There was already a bit of history between Cork and Tipp with regard to sliotars. They won a penalty against us. Eoin Kelly stepped up. We had a plan. Once we had been awarded a penalty or we had given away a penalty, we were to create a bit of commotion, a diversion through which to get the right ball in play.

"If we won a penalty we'd be getting rid of the O'Neill's ball and getting one of our favoured Cummins All Star balls into use. If we conceded a penalty I'd get rid of the match ball in use at the time and the dud ball would be rolled in. Never handed over. Rolled in, so that it would just appear to be lying on the grass waiting to be picked up. There was nothing obvious. It would just appear there. On the day, Kelly picked up the dud ball. It had been a job of work for one of our men to soften it up and still have it look like a newish O'Neill's ball.

"It gave me great confidence to see him pick it up. To reassure opposing players, what we used to do was write the opposing county name in marker on the ball. Tipp!

"Eoin Kelly picked up the ball, looked at it and placed it for the penalty. I said to the boys, 'we have a chance here now with this'. He took the penalty with it and we saved it. (Kieran Murphy got a point with the same ball seconds later when it broke down field, so if anybody every argued with us we could say that Kieran Murphy put the same ball over from 50 yards!)"

Cork won the game (1-21 to 1-16) and went onto win the All-Ireland final.

The Cloyne man admitted it wasn't an isolated incident. "You'd get a great kick out of something like that afterwards. Before a game it would be a little something up your sleeve. Pulling it off in the heat of battle gave great satisfaction. And we'd have a bit of crack with it. Sully (Diarmuid O'Sullivan) nearly got raped by Limerick fellas in 2006, running the length of the field with an All Star sliotar in his shorts for us to take a penalty with."

But he is adamant that Cork were doing nothing wrong.

He reasoned: "There was room for all this carry on with sliotars because the GAA left room for it.

"We'd always be for pushing the edge with stuff like that where the GAA leaves the door open."

[Premier Emperor]

In cricket and golf, that sort of ball tampering is seen as a really low form of cheating!
Its hardly a coincidence that once referees copped onto Cork's cheating with the sliotars and Donal Óg taking his puckouts from the 21, they went into serious decline. 

[Galwaybhoy]

As I said there would be more made of this topic only the main talking point about Donal ógs book is his sexuality.

As you said yourself this would be very serious if this happaned in cricket and rightly so.  The GAA need to cop themselves on, no sliotars provided by either county team should be used in big match days.  But then the Organisation allows refs to pick their own umpires so it does not surprise me, this is just another area (ball tampering) that the GAA need to sort out.

[Tony Baloney]

Being proud of cheating is some example to young kids out there. Pretty low stuff from Cork but then who'd be surprised.

[Aghdavoyle]

Did he express pride?

[Galwaybhoy]

In fairness he more exploited a loophole, would you class that as cheating?  Either way the GAA will probably just ignore this and do nothing to stop it from happening again.

[Premier Emperor]

Yeah, most GAA people don't care, or won't even bother to exercise their brains to think about the consequences..

Imagine if Tiger Woods was 1 shot behind Padraig Harrington at the last hole of the Masters.
At the last tee box he takes out a rubber super bouncy ball and drives it 400 yards onto the green.
He then holes the putt for an eagle and wins the tournament.

Would golf fans admire tiger for being a cute boyo and pulling such a great move?
Would they fcuk!
He'd probably get a life ban.

[Tony Baloney]

In fairness he more exploited a loophole, would you class that as cheating?  Either way the GAA will probably just ignore this and do nothing to stop it from happening again.

Premeditated and against the spirit of the game whether there is a rule against it or not. In my book that's cheating.

Did he express pride?

In the book he says "stuff like that really gave you a buzz after the match". Shame isn't really up there in his list of emotions.

Good speaker, great player, brave for coming out but still a horrible **** in my book.

[orangeman]

In fairness he more exploited a loophole, would you class that as cheating?  Either way the GAA will probably just ignore this and do nothing to stop it from happening again.

Premeditated and against the spirit of the game whether there is a rule against it or not. In my book that's cheating.

Did he express pride?

In the book he says "stuff like that really gave you a buzz after the match". Shame isn't really up there in his list of emotions.
Good speaker, great player, brave for coming out but still a horrible **** in my book.

Shameless more like.

[Aghdavoyle]

quote author=Aghdavoyle link=topic=14215.msg668718#msg668718 date=1256393677]

Did he express pride?

In the book he says "stuff like that really gave you a buzz after the match". Shame isn't really up there in his list of emotions.

[/quote]

Is that a no then?

[Reillers]

Oh for the love of God, some people.

Till a point there were no rules on what sliotar should be used. What Cork did wasn't illegal, yet it's called cheating. There was no rule to disallow what was done.

Some seem to forget that ALL keepers do this, or have done it in the past, this was against Tipp...ya, because they've never done anything controversial in the past when it comes to playing with their own sliotars.
There isn't a keeper out there (well a decent one at that) that hasn't done something like that in the past.
So get off yere high horses. And to be honest if this is the first time ye've ever heard about this then where the hell have ye been..clearly not watching hurling that's for sure. (I mean Sully running the length of the pitch with the sliotar in his shorts to take a penalty, Babs having an almighty fit at one of the umpires..the list goes on)

And as for the sliotar that was used in the penalty, Cork went straight up the pitch and scored a point with it, clearly there was nothing much wrong with it, but anything for a mob movement.

And by the by now the rules have been changed (a few years ago I think) that teams are only allowed used a specific type of ball on match day.

Another thing ye seem unsure of. This is the hurling forum ye know right?

And if it was anyone else who did it, it would have been a stroke of genius.

[Reillers]

Yeah, most GAA people don't care, or won't even bother to exercise their brains to think about the consequences..

Imagine if Tiger Woods was 1 shot behind Padraig Harrington at the last hole of the Masters.
At the last tee box he takes out a rubber super bouncy ball and drives it 400 yards onto the green.
He then holes the putt for an eagle and wins the tournament.

Would golf fans admire tiger for being a cute boyo and pulling such a great move?
Would they fcuk!
He'd probably get a life ban.

Oh climb down off that ridiculously high horse. If you think he's the first keeper to take advantage of unclear rules back
then then you are delusional or naive.
And that's what they were the GAA left so much space and a lot of keepers, the good ones anyway, took advantage of that.
And two words for ya lad, "dry ball." (Apparently though by your talk I suppose you wont know what that means.)

So get off your high horse, we've all done it. From Cork to Tipp to Carlow.

[ha ha derry]

Oh for the love of God, some people.

Till a point there were no rules on what sliotar should be used. What Cork did wasn't illegal, yet it's called cheating. There was no rule to disallow what was done.

Some seem to forget that ALL keepers do this, or have done it in the past, this was against Tipp...ya, because they've never done anything controversial in the past when it comes to playing with their own sliotars.
There isn't a keeper out there (well a decent one at that) that hasn't done something like that in the past.
So get off yere high horses. And to be honest if this is the first time ye've ever heard about this then where the hell have ye been..clearly not watching hurling that's for sure. (I mean Sully running the length of the pitch with the sliotar in his shorts to take a penalty, Babs having an almighty fit at one of the umpires..the list goes on)

And as for the sliotar that was used in the penalty, Cork went straight up the pitch and scored a point with it, clearly there was nothing much wrong with it, but anything for a mob movement.

And by the by now the rules have been changed (a few years ago I think) that teams are only allowed used a specific type of ball on match day.

Another thing ye seem unsure of. This is the hurling forum ye know right?

And if it was anyone else who did it, it would have been a stroke of genius.

It is against the rules to change a ball for a free / penalty.

[Reillers]

Oh for the love of God, some people.

Till a point there were no rules on what sliotar should be used. What Cork did wasn't illegal, yet it's called cheating. There was no rule to disallow what was done.

Some seem to forget that ALL keepers do this, or have done it in the past, this was against Tipp...ya, because they've never done anything controversial in the past when it comes to playing with their own sliotars.
There isn't a keeper out there (well a decent one at that) that hasn't done something like that in the past.
So get off yere high horses. And to be honest if this is the first time ye've ever heard about this then where the hell have ye been..clearly not watching hurling that's for sure. (I mean Sully running the length of the pitch with the sliotar in his shorts to take a penalty, Babs having an almighty fit at one of the umpires..the list goes on)

And as for the sliotar that was used in the penalty, Cork went straight up the pitch and scored a point with it, clearly there was nothing much wrong with it, but anything for a mob movement.

And by the by now the rules have been changed (a few years ago I think) that teams are only allowed used a specific type of ball on match day.

Another thing ye seem unsure of. This is the hurling forum ye know right?

And if it was anyone else who did it, it would have been a stroke of genius.

It is against the rules to change a ball for a free / penalty.

But it wasn't.

[Galwaybhoy]

Oh for the love of God, some people.

Till a point there were no rules on what sliotar should be used. What Cork did wasn't illegal, yet it's called cheating. There was no rule to disallow what was done.

Some seem to forget that ALL keepers do this, or have done it in the past, this was against Tipp...ya, because they've never done anything controversial in the past when it comes to playing with their own sliotars.
There isn't a keeper out there (well a decent one at that) that hasn't done something like that in the past.
So get off yere high horses. And to be honest if this is the first time ye've ever heard about this then where the hell have ye been..clearly not watching hurling that's for sure. (I mean Sully running the length of the pitch with the sliotar in his shorts to take a penalty, Babs having an almighty fit at one of the umpires..the list goes on)

And as for the sliotar that was used in the penalty, Cork went straight up the pitch and scored a point with it, clearly there was nothing much wrong with it, but anything for a mob movement.

And by the by now the rules have been changed (a few years ago I think) that teams are only allowed used a specific type of ball on match day.

Another thing ye seem unsure of. This is the hurling forum ye know right?

And if it was anyone else who did it, it would have been a stroke of genius.

If there was not much of a difference why would they go to so much bother to swap the balls?  That makes no sense?

Why would it make a difference what team done it?  The colour of the jersey is irrelevant.

I never said it was cheating either, but it was devious.