INSIDE POLITICS - GREAT REFEREEING MOMENTS

AT THE last World Cup, Portugal and the Netherlands met at the knock-out stages of the competition.


I can’t remember which team advanced but one other detail of the game I can clearly recall. It was the most memorable refereeing performances of all time.

Valentin Ivanov was the unfortunate man who officiated at the game (and hasn’t taken charge at this level since). He made a decision that he wasn’t going to take any indiscipline from any side and that he was going to lay down the law from the start.




What transpired was a refereeing disaster of tsunami proportions. Ivanov administered a yellow card early on for a particularly bruising tackle. His mistake was this: the concept of discretion did not exist for the rest of the game. He applied the law rigidly, adhered to the standard that he had applied from the get-go. What we witnessed was an unravelling.

The game gradually descended into an unspeakable farce, a yellow and red card fest that just did not relent. By the time the game ended, 16 yellow cards and four reds had been shown. The four red cards were the most in a single World Cup game ever. In the last couple of minutes, players, pushed to beyond frustration by the referee, began making impetuous tackles and fouls.

And what was clear was this: the referee who had set out to show he was in control in such a strong fashion was clearly not in control. Any authority he had striven to assert had been shorn off him by the time the game began ticking into injury time.

I was reminded of all that watching John O’Donoghue endure his first day as Ceann Comhairle last Tuesday. One of the features of the last Dáil was the frequent clashes between his predecessor Rory O’Hanlon and Labour leader Pat Rabbitte, mostly over Rabbitte’s remote understanding of what constituted two minutes of speaking time. Very often Leader’s Questions would go 15 or 20 minutes over the time allotted to it. To be sure, one of the biggest miscreants when it came to time-keeping was the chief anorak himself on the Government benches but the Ceann Comhairle was never in the habit of telling the emperor about the state of his undress.

You could see where O’Donoghue was coming from. He wanted to impose himself like a strong referee from the get-go, hand out a yellow card for the first heavy tackle, and by imposing his authority early, the House would quickly come to heel.

His mistake was that he picked the wrong target. Enda Kenny was never the worst offender when it came to time-keeping — you could have counted on one hand the times that he and the chair had clashed over time-keeping.

And, despite the good-humoured and youthful smile that Kenny maintained throughout their exchanges, there is a bit of the old dog for the hard road about him (he is the father of the House after all — having been elected 32 years ago).

As O’Donoghue slapped him on the wrist for going over time, Kenny began gently goading him. You could almost see him light the match and quietly place it up to the very short fuse, put his fingers into his ear, and wait for the deafening explosion to go off.

He started off by telling O’Donoghue to be quiet. O’Donoghue was out of his chair quicker than dung off a shovel, and his complexion (always fleshy) began to deepen to scarlet with the heat being generated with his tongue.

The more he lambasted Kenny, the more Kenny and his troops began doing what the picadors in a bullfight too — sticking the spears into the flesh of the Bull O’Donoghue.

Before we get carried away with the ‘bull’ analogy, it’s time to return to football and to great refereeing moments of our time. Once he had brandished the first yellow card, there was no return. Within minutes, he was flashing them constantly and it was inevitable that the red card would have to be produced.

The problem was there was no saving face. If he backed down, he lost. If he persevered and ploughed on, he also lost. It was incredible. Arthur Morgan and Michael Ring joined the fray. The stuff with Ring was like a pantomime. You are leaving the chamber! Oh no, I’m not. Yes, you are leaving? No I am not.

Over the past four years since I first sat on the bird’s nest above the chamber, there have been some disruptive scenes. But it was the first time that the Ceann Comhairle provided the start, beginning and end of them.

To be sure, Fianna Fáil are going into government for a third time. But with the opposition benches packed to the rafters — and with a Ceann Comhairle as colourful as O’Donoghue — I think we will witness interesting times!

This is my column from today's Irish Examiner. (I am on leave for the next few weeks so blog entries will be sporadic!)

INSIDE POLITICS - THE BULL AND HIS CHINA SHOP

WE all wondered what we would do without the comic talents of Joe Higgins.

But on the first real day of the Dáil returning, a ready-made joker emerged from the pack.

This might strike you as a bit strange but the very same deputy who was responsible for keeping order in the house was also single-handedly responsible for some of the most unruly scenes of disorder in the house for many years.

It was Kerry TD John O’Donoghue’s debut as Ceann Comhairle and he gave a textbook example of “a turn-up for the books”.

The problem wasn’t that the new Ceann Comhairle’s ability to keep easily excitable deputies under control. It was more deputies not being able to keep an easily excitable Ceann Comhairle under control.

The man who is known as “The Bull” had finally found his china shop. By the time the rampage had come to an end a debate that should have taken half an hour had dragged on for almost three, two TDs had been chucked out of the house and anyone who dared to wave the red flag to him was trampled over with a verbal onslaught.

O’Donoghue has many extraordinary qualities but one of them isn’t a long fuse.

Perhaps he came into the chamber yesterday with the intention of laying down the law but it was hard to figure what law we were witnessing. Sure, John O’Donoghue was wearing the Cathaoirleach’s robes but at times you were unsure if you were in the Dáil or in the Wild West and whether he was the sheriff or the chief outlaw.

Within three minutes of the start, his hackles had been raised. The mild-mannered Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny had gone over his three minutes and O’Donoghue was in no mood to play extra time.

After a couple of exchanges, Kenny made the mistake of saying: “Quiet now, you are new in the job”.

The Ceann Comhairle was out of his chair like a greyhound out of traps.

“You will not say ‘quiet’ to me sir,” he roared at Kenny.

“The deputy will be seated when the chairman is standing,” became the recurring theme of the afternoon.

Kenny’s good humour gave way to jibes. “The perception in Kerry is that you have no power down there,” he said. The taunts came thick and fast from the opposition benches. Zero tolerance, they shouted, reminding the Ceann Comhairle of a previous incarnation.

Strangely Pat Rabbitte, who clashed frequently with the previous ceann comhairle, was as good as gold yesterday, and (uncharacteristically) waved no red flags at the Bull.

For at this stage, O’Donoghue was distracted by all the other miscreants. The first to get the red card was Sinn Féin’s Arthur Morgan, who was told to sit down by the Ceann Comhairle when he got up to speak, but refused.

He was kicked out but refused to go, and stubbornly stayed on for 20 minutes before sheepishly making his exit.

And then — surprise, surprise — it was Fine Gael’s Michael Ring. He made the mistake of accusing O’Donoghue of “making it up as you go along”.

A mini-volcano erupted from the summit of the Ceann Comhairle’s chair.

“That’s a disgraceful statement and completely untrue,” roared the Ceann Comhairle.

You will leave the house, he told Ring. I won’t leave the house, replied Ring. There followed a pantomime exhange along the lines of 'oh yes you will leave' and 'oh no I will not leave'.

The upshot was that house was suspended twice as the mulish Ring refused to leave. The long and short of it was that he later left under a protest loud enough for his supporters in Belmullet to hear.

The delay was so severe that the debate on the new Stamp Duty Bill for first- time buyers was allotted all of 35 minutes, making it one of the shortest debates on a new piece of legislation in recent history.

A version of this appeared in this morning's Irish Examiner