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Kickout mark rule changed after central council vote

Kickout mark rule changed after central council vote

Irish Times4 hours ago

Central Council has voted overwhelming to remove the 50-metre penalty for a foul on a player who catches a kick-out mark.
The 39-1 vote in favour of the
Football Review Committee
's proposed change will see the amended rule in operation from this weekend's All-Ireland SFC preliminary quarter-finals and Tailteann Cup semi-finals.
The 50-metre penalty had been criticised by several managers but speaking after his side's defeat to Galway last weekend, Armagh manager Kieran McGeeney expressed frustration at the possibility of mid-championship rule alterations.
'They just seem to be able to do what they want,' said McGeeney
READ MORE
'Some teams tell them to do something, I'd love that direct line. Whoever has that direct line to Jim [Gavin] and Eamonn [Fitzmaurice], I would love that.'

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Club World Cup offers first glimpse of Trent Alexander-Arnold 2.0
Club World Cup offers first glimpse of Trent Alexander-Arnold 2.0

Irish Times

time2 hours ago

  • Irish Times

Club World Cup offers first glimpse of Trent Alexander-Arnold 2.0

On Tuesday morning the Miami Herald carried a story about a Local Man arrested in Florida's Polk County for breaking into a stranger's house to make himself dinner and have a bath rather than going home to face his wife after an argument. The Local Man, who has no criminal history, was apprehended just as he was settling in for a relaxing soak. He has since been charged with burglary. So on balance, and while an entirely tempting, innovative option, this is probably not the way to go. Pressure makes diamonds, as online graft-influencers like to say. But it also makes the average human yearn for a little quiet space. That same Tuesday morning Trent Alexander-Arnold , who could probably also do with a break from the white noise, was taking his second Real Madrid training session in the 90-degree heat of The Gardens North County District Park, a hundred miles southeast of Polk, and in a team where the entire experience can at times resemble an unceasing spousal argument. Madrid are the most relentlessly exposed football club on the planet, huge even in a place where it feels at times as if nobody actually knows the Club World Cup is going on just up the road. Towards the end of Saturday's opening ceremony a Fifa-branded wailing wall of hope was wheeled out on to the pitch at the Hard Rock Stadium, trailed by a gaggle of children, who then solemnly implanted 32 lighted bricks bearing the badges of every competing club. READ MORE Real Madrid in training in Florida. Photograph: Chandan Khanna/Getty The big screen lingered on one badge only, the Madrid emblem, drawing huge, shrill cheers from a crowd that had to that point seemed interested only in Lionel Messi doing his Elvis in Vegas act. Welcome to the world, Trent, as we may now call him, a place where every moment is public, every second in the branded nylon out there to be hungrily consumed. The Hard Rock is also the venue for Madrid's opening game against Al-Hilal on Wednesday in the brain-mangling heat of a (frankly insane) 3pm kick-off. Before then it is to be hoped there is space to take a few breaths, because this will surely be the most scrutinised preseason debut any footballer has faced, globally streamed, instantly consumed and analysed. In America the sun rises every day, as Ronald Reagan pointed out, accurately. But it tends also to bring quite a bit of light and heat with it. There is something else too. For all the hype and hopeful talk, one thing is true: the evidence is that he will probably fail. This is not a criticism, more an assessment of the balance of facts. There are also competing positives. Madrid have a huge wealth of talent plus a very good new manager. The early sessions with the team have been encouragingly moreish. The chat among the Spanish journalists who follow Madrid is that Trent has tended to trail after Jude Bellingham 'like the new kid at school', and there was something tender about the first glimpse of Alexander-Arnold in the rondo, out there surrounded by all those faces, Luka, Kylian, Vini, trying to control a ball on plastic grass, like some recurring anxiety nightmare. But his own verdict was encouragingly plain: 'It's high quality, the ball moves very fast. It's a lot different to what I'm used to.' And the optics are good. He's a proper athlete, not just a mobile passing brain, impressive physically, with a grace and power that aren't always evident on TV. Trent in sleeveless Madrid training gear looks starry, handsome, easy in his movements. Speaking Spanish early on is also very smart, the hala Madrid -la stuff, the serviceable accent. The 'rebranding' as Trent is a nice idea, a New Me, a post-breakbreak-upvention. Trent12 posing in front of Madrid's massed European Cups looked disarmingly relaxed. He has already lifted that pot you know. He has already done terrible things to Barcelona. The new kid has moves too. But there is also one great unanswered question. Is Alexander-Arnold actually a transferable commodity? He is both a very good player and a very strange one. This is not like bolting on an orthodox centre-half or a goal-sniffing number 9. Alexander-Arnold was brilliant for Liverpool in a highly specialised role. And there is so far no evidence, aged 26, that this can be transplanted. Trent Alexander-Arnold celebrates with the Premier League trophy when at Liverpool. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA Wire All of his professional success has been for one club under one manager: Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool, that system, three hard-running midfielders inside him, empowered to lean only into his strengths. The Arne Slot season was decent, so-so, a fudge. Either side Alexander-Arnold has never played for any other club, never managed to succeed with England. He has only been his best self in one shirt, under one manager, at the club he grew up with. It is easy, from this starting point, to see only the darker clouds. Klopp drew extraordinary returns out of Alexander-Arnold's creative, high-precision passing. But we remember also the tendency to switch off, the good, competent defending interspersed with moments of no defending at all. Some will suggest no Englishman has ever really succeeded at Madrid, aside from Steve McManaman, a different kind of player, and probably David Beckham, El Jefe de Miami . There is another more structural problem. Madrid don't just have a new manager they have an entirely new type of manager. In Xabi Alonso the club of vibes, energy, imperial freedoms, have appointed a hard systems coach. Basically, Kylian is going to have to do things now. How's that going to work out? This is also nuanced. Alonso is not an aura-dad in the Carlo Ancelotti mould. He's also not a pure number-wanging technocrat. He's a blend of these personas, a supercool systems guy, aura and numbers. He's got nice tailoring. He's also got an iPad. For all that, two things are undeniably true. First, the Madrid squad is not instantly suited to replicating the Bayer Leverkusen style, which featured exceptionally disciplined pressing, learned patterns, brutal periods of running and resilient defence. And second, Alonso obviously knows this. He knows the club and the players. He knows the task here is not to go Full Amorim, to adapt and integrate. For all the pre-analysis nobody actually knows how Alonso is going to embrace this point of tension. Like Trent he faces the associated challenges of the step up to this stage, a manager who will basically spend his first few months trying to juggle a bowl of fruit while also putting out a minor kitchen fire and making soufflé for 500 paying guests. But there are also good points for Alexander-Arnold in this. Much has been made of Alonso's Leverkusen formation. But at its best this was only ever really a starting point, an armature for a controlled fluidity, rotation, drilled overloads. And the fact is wing-backs/full-backs were key to that success. Alonso drew his flank players into the central rotation. He had dribbling on one side, passing smarts on the other. Perhaps the best early model for Trent in Madrid is as a kind of right-sided Álex Grimaldo, freed up to use his creative passing, to spark the transitions, to move into the centre. It is clearly also a good thing that Mbappé will start on the left. Nobody has been able to make him run backwards. But perhaps Trent can make him go the other way, his excellent diagonal passing into the Mbappé channel an obvious point of interest. Madrid's new No 12 is very, very good at providing creative direction for speedy players in front of him. Make the midfield work, make those players fit and understand their roles, and there is an opportunity for some pretty decent chemistry here. The only real issue is time. As in: you don't get any. The same goes for margin for error, forgiveness, latitude, even when the urge to crawl off and hide in someone else's bathtub is at its most profound. This why even the opening act in Miami feels vital, the first step in a high-wire act, and a first chance to prove the Trent identity, always a little butterfly-ish, can flourish in that unforgiving heat. – Guardian

'They do an incredible job' - GAA President defends fixture makers after McGuinness criticism
'They do an incredible job' - GAA President defends fixture makers after McGuinness criticism

The 42

time4 hours ago

  • The 42

'They do an incredible job' - GAA President defends fixture makers after McGuinness criticism

GAA PRESIDENT JARLATH Burns has defended recent decisions around fixture-making in the All-Ireland senior championship. The Central Competitions Control Committee were under fire on Sunday from a vexed Donegal manager Jim McGuinness, who was annoyed that their final fixture in the group series against Mayo was set for Dr Hyde Park in Roscommon. 'We think it was very unfair to bring us here,' stated McGuinness, after their final round group game. 'It was the equivalent of bringing Mayo to Omagh and we also put in an email to the CCCC to say we couldn't get a hotel in the area so we had to stay in Athlone. We had to go beyond the venue to come to play in the venue. 'So it was the equivalent of Mayo going to play us in Omagh and staying in Derry and I don't believe that would happen. I think that would only happen because it's us. Disappointed in that.' Burns, speaking today in Croke Park at today's All-Ireland SFC launch, made a point of recounting when he and Games Administration Manager Bernard Smith were in the car on their way back from making the preliminary quarter-final draw on Monday morning, Advertisement 'He took seven phone calls from counties asking for clarification on this, asking for a favour there, asking that they could play at a particular time, something that would have been on in their county, and I think every one of those requests was met. 'And whenever fixtures are being made, there are so, so many things that they have to take into consideration, particularly with regard to neutral venues. 'I think they do an incredible job. I think they are amazing people and I just thought that it was important to put on record my appreciation and thanks for the work that they do in very complex circumstances.' Jarlath Burns at today's All-Ireland football championship launch. Sam Barnes / SPORTSFILE Sam Barnes / SPORTSFILE / SPORTSFILE Meanwhile, Armagh player Oisín O'Neill has added his voice to the debate around the practice of changing the playing rules in mid-season. On Saturday, the Football Review Committee proposed a rule alteration around the kickout mark, that any obstruction would not be punished with a 50-metre advancement of the ball. That met with disapproval from McGeeney after his side lost by a point to Galway on Sunday. 'Listen, honestly, they just seem to be able to do what they want,' said McGeeney. 'Some teams tell them to do something, I'd love that direct line. Whoever has that direct line into Jim (Gavin) and Eamonn (Fitzmaurice), I would love that.' Speaking to the press at the football launch, O'Neill stated, 'I think Kieran's biggest issue with them is that they constantly change, you know. Half the league and then they changed and now they're talking about another change this week. Like, there's four rounds of championship left. 'He has no issue. It's more just that they keep continuously changing and as players, that's frustrating because your coach is working on one thing one week and then it might change. 'But look, whatever it is, whatever it is it is and we'd be ready for the quarter-final in two weeks to do a massive rethink on what we're doing on some certain aspects.' He added, 'We probably had to tweak a few things that we've been working on and change certain things that we were trying to work on. Such as the mark, you know, you had to hold your hands up after going up and now you're being told you've five steps or whatever. 'I think if it's refereed in the spirit that the rules intended, you have to allow a little bit of leeway like for players to compete for the ball, but I think it's a reflection of how well coached you are. And we were punished severely by it at the weekend, and it's something that we wouldn't be happy with.' *** Check out the latest episode of The42′s GAA Weekly podcast here

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