With the match poised at 1-1, the A-League’s bottom team were jutting out their jaws, snorting in defiance of a conclusion that had, not long earlier, seemed inevitable.
Melbourne City, their opponents, had scored after three minutes; an early pasting was in order, with Tim Cahill already having boxed the corner flag – a tearful Central Coast ball-boy weeping in Gosford, unable to prevent the violence – and City licking their lips in anticipation of the emphatic win that might reinvigorate their season.
But the Mariners had rallied and, inevitably, found fortune in City’s lardy centre.
One Connor Pain venture up the left wing needed a simple pull-back, to the penalty spot, to find Roy O’Donovan utterly unmarked and free to slot home with ease.
A lax moment – typical of City this season, but no less galling to see – and the Mariners had thrown off the shackles of fate. No pasting here, not yet at least.
Then, as a lofted ball was chipped up towards their goalscorer, O’Donovan raised his arm, feeling for Michael Jakobsen’s presence, and made contact with the City defender’s face. Enraged, but clearly not hurt in the slightest, Jakobsen sprung up off the turf, squaring with the Irish Mariner, eye-to-eye, incensed and indignant.
As O’Donovan shrugged sheepishly and Jakobsen smouldered, Dean Bouzanis sprinted 30 full metres to offer his wholly irrelevant opinion to the match officials, both referee and linesman, who were already deep in discussion.
O’Donovan was sent off.
The match had been flickering attractively into life – perhaps another AAMI Park classic like City’s 3-3 against Perth earlier this season. There was a clear clash of classes here; the flushed Citizens, with their spangling marquees, clad in resplendent white and blue, against the basement dwellers, scrounging and sweating, trying to save another manager from the axe.
The dismissal tore down all of this, and when Tim Cahill scored his second goal, 15 minutes later, the fate the Mariners had done so well to scrub away grew back thicker and hairier.
The contact, as illustrated by Jakobsen’s vim and vigour immediately following, was inconsequential. O’Donovan had had a sneaky glance backward – an incriminating one, in all honesty – before he raised his arm, implying that the height of his limb and the direction it swung in may have been completely intentional.
Had he really wanted to hurt the Dane? He could have manoeuvred his elbow in a much more lethal way, if he had cared to, or waited for some other moment to plant his studs on Jakobsen’s Achilles or shin.
We slip now into arguments over intent, messy areas of football officiating that have no clear answer, no matter how long the discussion stretches on.
What was clear was that the arm-to-head contact, intentional or not, was not serious, and did not hurt anyone more than any other pedestrian skirmish. But the punishment for it ruined the viability of the contest, and obliterated the precious gossamer scraps of hope the team from the Central Coast had been clutching to.
This event joins an irritatingly large collection of arm-to-head incidents this season, with the league and its officials apparently intent on filling the headline quota in eager, meaty fistfuls.
From memory, Jade North, Neil Kilkenny, Besart Berisha, and now O’Donovan have all been tangled up in moments like this, falling on either side of the punishment line, all of the cases unwelcome distractions to the main event.
It would be helpful to revisit the exact wording of the rule in question, one that has been recently changed:
“A player who, when not challenging for the ball, deliberately strikes an opponent or any other person on the head or face with the hand or arm, is guilty of violent conduct unless the force used was negligible.”
To apply this to O’Donovan’s action; the Irishman was jockeying with Jakobsen in anticipation of the arrival of the ball, which should reasonably be included in the definition “challenging for the ball”. This was not like the North-Bruno Fornaroli incident, which was away the from the play entirely. Even Berisha’s red card in the match against the Roar – which has since been overturned – occurred further away from the ball than last night’s incident.
Clearly, the word “deliberately” is problematic in the extreme, just as it is with regards to handball decisions.
And then the caveat, that excuses “negligible” force, can’t just be ignored, although it isn’t unpacked easily either. Must blood be drawn by the contact? Must treatment be sought? It was the meat of O’Donovan’s forearm that made the most contact, the least bony area, the part least likely to maim or wound.
Must there be visible evidence of an abrasion, or a bruise? Perhaps the officials must soak up the tears from the victim’s eyes and determine the weight of the liquid sorrow on a minuscule set of scales.
Or maybe the referee and his assistants would be better served assessing the practical realities of the situation, weighing up simply the apparent damage done and their impression of the egregiousness of the act, and decide based on that. Because it seems – not just in this case, but in others too – had they done that, O’Donovan would have been booked and told to get on with it.
The part of the rule that mentions a player “striking an opponent or any other person on the head or face with the hand or arm”, is drowning out the rest of the sentence.
Is it too much to ask for a little discretion? A forearm colliding innocuously with an opponent’s face isn’t an exhibition of some deadly martial art, nor is it any more violent than a tackle from behind, or a tactical shirt tug, or any other bookable offence. At least two more moments occurred later in the match last night, both actually involving Jakobsen, where arm-to-face contact was repeated, yet not even a yellow card was awarded.
O’Donovan shouldn’t have waved his arm in the way he did. But only die-hard City supporters would argue the game was better off without him, or that they’d rather see a game stage 11 versus ten.
Central Coast, in all likelihood, would have lost that game even with their full complement on the pitch. Their goal had come against the run of play, and City had been dominant up until their concession.
But what had been, for 14 sweet minutes, a potentially tasty confrontation was turned by one crimson flourish into a mauling, a lion toying with a wounded gazelle.
Central Coast struggled admirably, gritting their teeth and bucking their heads in the face of doom, but their wound was mortal.
Neil
Guest
The referee has a choice of completely ignoring it or the send off, striking is a send off offence, there is no inbetween here. Do we want refs to adjudicate according to the laws of the game or not ? I am sure if he gave a free kick and maybe a caution he would have been marked down by the assessor for an error in law. The referee has to satisfy the assessor not the players, public or anyone else.
jeff milton
Guest
you make a lot of football comments for a guy that doesnt like the game pip
hogdriller
Roar Rookie
Exactly Nemesis, "Berisha's contact was totally away from play".......and yet still it was contact, and so was O' Donovan's, no matter whether you think it seemed heavier or not it was contact. But IMO the question should be asked whether CCM will try to or may be allowed to achieve the same result as did MVFC where they (MVFC) were not only granted an early meeting of the MRP where they convened over a weekend, but where their red carded player in question, had his card rescinded? Yeh, and pigs will fly.
Cool and Cold
Guest
PS Forgot to say that it was obvious that Beckham's kick was deliberate, despite light.
Cool and Cold
Guest
David Beckham was sent off with straight red card for retaliating on a Argentina's player. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWsEuczNj48 That was very special. The match was stopped because the Argentina's player made a foul on Beckham. After the referee blew the whistle, the match is stopped. However, Beckham retaliated by a small kick to his opponent's leg. As such, he was given a straight red card for hitting, despite the match had stopped. Giving a hit above the shoulder is serious. A player may become blind if the hit is on the eyes.
Cool and Cold
Guest
Watch the video again. At 21 seconds, O’Donovan turned his head to see that Michael Jakobsen was behind him. This can be interpreted as a deliberate foul, hitting above the shoulder.
Chris
Guest
I said they ADD to the mess. Obviously the players need to take more care however the action of jumping to head the ball means your arms need to flail out to get leverage and balance etc.
Cool and Cold
Guest
ps Thank you again for saying "I saw a striker trying to get into a better position". That means you see O'Donovan is a second or two earlier before he can make an excuse of swinging his arm to lift his jump in a header jump".
Cool and Cold
Guest
Thank for mentioning "what game you are watchin?" Thank for mentioning "I saw a striker trying to get into a better position." So, a player wanting to get into a better position is allowed to swing arm? Maybe, you mean a striker not a player. So, a striker can have privilege of swing arm? Anyhow, you saw "a striker wanting to get into a better position". However, I read from the replay that either "O’Donovan swing his arm to protect is position" or "O’Donovan deliberately swing his arm to hit" The answer is in O’Donovan mind. So, the referee is right because the referee cannot read his mind.
punter
Guest
Amazing what you can get from Google.
Mister Football
Roar Guru
OKON SLAMS 'UNPROFESSIONAL' BOUZANIS http://www.fourfourtwo.com.au/news/okon-slams-unprofessional-bouzanis-448103 Central Coast Mariners coach Paul Okon has labelled Melbourne City goalkeeper Dean Bouzanis as “unprofessional” after he urged officials to send off Roy O’Donovan in the 2-1 loss on Thursday. “He’s (Bouzanis) a good kid, I like Dean, but to run out of your goal for 60 metres, straight up to the linesman… unprofessional and it’s not fair play,” Okon said. I'm with Okon here (an Australian legend), for a keeper to run 60m from his goal, for the sole purpose of trying to get somebody sent off - I just hate that sort of stuff.
Mister Football
Roar Guru
Yeh, so did the ref last week, and the MRP overturned it. So let's be clear, using last week as an example, the ref hasn't seen it, goes on the advice of the linesman, and he was proven to be seeing things when it went to the MRP. So all I am saying, in a situation where the ref hasn't seen anything, he better grill the linesman good and proper because a straight red should be viewed as an extreme action for an extreme event. If you are going to ruin the game, have a very good reason for doing it.
Swampy
Guest
It is ridiculous. Was definitely a free kick and possibly a yellow card. No one would have complained at a yellow and we move on. Red cards are given out all to readily by officials these days. They are a last resort to maintain order and control. The match was well in control at this point - a yellow card would have been sufficient to prevent any more transgressions by O'Donovan. None of my kids would have blinked twice at seeing a free kick issued rather than a red. My eldest son (a city supporter - traitor) actually was surprised it was a red at the time. If the FFA are trying to protect the future generations from head injuries that incident isn't explaining itself properly to the youth.
Fadida
Guest
It could have been either a yellow or red Mid. I'm not saying any contact is red, but on this occasion there was premeditation to raise an arm at the opponents head. Therefore it was justifiable to give a red, though a yellow would have been ok. My issue is all the blame is aimed at the ref. Players know the rules and yet will take risks When players are sent from the fiekd for a studs up challenge, regardless of force, intent or injury, no one complains,"players know they run the risk". This is exactly the same , and yet is regarded differently. This was the equivalent of O'Donovan going in knowing his studs were showing, meaning to show his studs
Fadida
Guest
MF, what are you talking about? He double checked with the asistant! Who else is he supposed to check with? Call his mum at home and see if she was watching the telecast? In both the Bersiha and the O'Donovan incidences the decision was made as a team, there was double checking. One decision was wrong, one arguably correct.
Fadida
Guest
I'm not saying all head contact is a red Mid. What I am saying is that in this incident O'Donovan, when the ball is a distance away, looks around, sees his opponent, raises his arm/elbow to a height he knows will make head contact, and moves his arm toward his head. We aren't talking a "contest" here, where 2 players are jumping for a header. As I have said multiple times elsewhere on this topic, players know head contact risks punishment. O'Donovan showed poor technique and/or decision making. The correct technique is to lean into your opponent, using a firm arm against the lower chest, allowing both a header challenge or the rolling o the opponent. What we are seeing is really poor technique, with so called experts claiming it is the way they are taught. People are confusing jumping for a header, where it is impossible not to use arms to a degree, with fighting for position. The latter does not involve raised arms anywhere near the head. The sooner people realise this the better.
punter
Guest
I totally agree Mid, if the ref deems it so. It's his interpretation. This is what you are missing. I do not agree it was a sent off, but the linesman did.
punter
Guest
Mark, Defender puts hand onto attacker in penalty area, attacker goes down. Referee has to decide under his interpretation did contact occur enough for player to fall over. Memo to defender do you touch attacker. O'Donovan should not have had his arm so far away from his body, his arm in the air for such a long time, you are now relying on what the Linesman/referee saw. I believed Berisha dive to win free kick last week (Troisi scored) & incorrectly appealed to win penalty (he scored), but in both cases McKay touched, ever so slightly, & he put the decision into the referee's interpretation. Likwise with penalty, DeVere slid in & it was a again a mere touch & felt the ball had already got away from Berisha. If DeVere had not slid in, GK would have collected ball as Berisha slid in, but DeVere in sliding in gave it to the Ref's interpretation.
Midfielder
Guest
Punter Agree it was a foul and it was deliberate, as are many things that happen on a football field... the question is what level of punishment is required for his act. If that is a red then Matt Simon will never see out any more than 5 minutes in any match. Intent, degree etc all come into how these things are judged... if that was a red ... then I maintain most matches would finish with 7 to 8 players a side. Again no one is questioning it was a foul the question is the degree of punishment and are we looking at the player ... Timmy has done far worst this season and stayed on ...
punter
Guest
Mid it was a clear foul, now O'Donovan has put it into the interpretation of the linesman/Referee. It was deliberate, he was clearly trying to gain advantage & struck the head. Now did Jakobsen, Goalkeeper & Linesman see it as malicious, this is what O'Donovan did wrong. I'm not saying this was a red, but I did see 3-4 times in slow motion, they linesman had to make a quick decision, live.