Sportsfile August 1982
TELEVISION'S coverage of the World Cup was, in the main, unimaginative. This was particularly so in the analysis of the games during panel discussion afterwards. For the most part the panel discussions were un enlightening and often downright boring. By far the worst was the ITV panel with Jimmy Greaves and Brian Clough being truly appalling.
BBC weren't much better, although when Jimmy Hill got his head he was invariably coherent and intelligent €he too had the capacity to use teleevision to illustrate his points.
The RTE panel was perhaps the most successful. They did attempt to analyse the games with the aid of pieces of video recordings and Eamon Dunphy was invariably provocative and articulate. A pity, though, he knows so little about football anyywhere in the world outside England. For instance he made a big play of the Brazilian Falcao being uncontaminated by money and involvement in foreign clubs, when in fact Falcao is one of the highest paid footballers in the world and has been playing for an itallian club for two years. He also natttere.d on and on about Paul Breitner being sullied by avarice - Breitner founded and work's in a school for handicapped children when not playying football.
SOONER or later, and knowing them, probably later, the GAA will have to get around to doing something about the laws relating to dispossession in Gaelic football. The present rules are at best uncertain - it is not possible to know when a foul has been commmitted and when not. The way it is at present, this confusion spoils the game and leads to countless interruptions.
WATCHING recordings of the first Kerry-Cork game, after the World Cup Final, underlined the amateur nature of the Gaelic football code.
Nothing tactically seems to have been developed since the present Kerry team came to maturity., The level of coherent play, even by a team of the calibre of Kerry, is amateurish at best. John Giles has often said that if he managed a Gaelic football team he would destroy the system of manman markingv-, how about giving him charge of the Dublin team next season!
GILES himself is having considerable success this season with the Vanncouver Whitecaps, who are now into the play-offs in the North American League. Suggestions that he gave any serious consideration to the offer to return to West Bromwich Albion are unfounded - he made his mind up in 1977 and hasn't wavered since.
THE TIME must surely come, before long, when even the rugby authorities in this country will perceive that it is no longer morally acceptable to assist in propping up the apartheid state of
South Africa through sporting conntacts there. The manner in which the likes of Fergus Slattery, Willie Duggan, Phil Orr and Donal Lenihan, can take themselves off there in total disregard for the consequences to other Irish sports people, or for the international reputation of the country, is staggering.
THEY ARE not the only ones howwever, A group of rugby "louts", all prominent mem bers of the Lansdowne rugby club until a few years ago, took themselves off to South Africa a few months back to engage in further fraternisation with the rugby (white of course) element there, under the guise of playing middle aged rugby. Many of these are senior luminaries in the business and professional life of Dublin, no doubt concerned about the decline in moral standards, the rising crime rate, the alienation of the young etc.