All Stars week arrives and with it the usual unease. Selectors know that the best way to attract maximum publicity is to make a questionable call and that prospect occasionally haunts meetings, as those in disagreement with a decision may sometimes make reference to us all “getting slaughtered” unless it is changed.
Even as metaphor, such an outcome gives pause for thought.
We don’t publicly defend the final teams, probably because collective responsibility protects everyone from having to stand over choices with which individuals may disagree.
The process has changed a good deal in my four decades of involvement. As a deliberative environment, the old days were ehhh, challenging. Smoking was not forbidden, which clouded the atmosphere fairly quickly, as cigarettes and even pipes smouldered into life around the table.
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These days discussion is pretty evidence-based. Back then the big weapon of advocacy was assertion. Having arrived at my first meeting, full of notions and having watched some video tapes in preparation, I fully expected to carry the day with irrefutable logic – until my first intervention.
A run-through of a favoured candidate’s virtues for an early position was met by high rhetorical resistance: “I don’t know why we’re even discussing this!”
Miffed at this peremptory put-down, I was further chastened when my views were overwhelmingly rejected after a vote. It was a good lesson though, that no matter how strongly anyone feels about an issue, not everyone – and certainly not a majority – will necessarily agree.
Then would come a bibulous lunch and, in case the room of about two dozen reporters weren’t sufficiently out of sorts by late afternoon, a drinks trolley would merrily clink into the room to fuel further cantankerous squabbling.
There was also a range of old-school prohibitions. Players who had been sent off during a season were ineligible. Offaly’s Pat Fleury was dismissed after he had been selected an All Star and still was not allowed to attend the presentation dinner.
No one was meant to be selected out of position, a stance adopted after selectors “got slaughtered” in 1971 for choosing Cork’s Ray Cummins at centre forward rather than full forward where he routinely played.
There was such terror at the danger of leaks that a secret ballot was introduced for the live team, which is announced on the night. This had a material influence on the most infamous omission of all, the exclusion of 1994 Hurler of the Year Brian Whelahan from that year’s All Stars.
A simple review of the final selection before signing off, as happens now, would have averted the embarrassment, as in my recollection there is no way a majority of the selectors would have assented to Whelahan’s exclusion, which had been procedurally suspect.
The red card prohibition was relaxed into a vaguer, less insistent criterion governing “sportsmanship”. Strict adherence to position has been qualified to a proviso that anyone chosen must be “credible” in the allotted role.
These days everything is more efficient, more streamlined and with fewer self-imposed obstacles to sensible outcomes.
Unlike player awards in a global sporting context, the All Stars suffers from the unwieldy structure of Gaelic games. Most sports have a prestige league competition in which all teams play each other, which creates a consistency of comparative data.
Opinions will differ and sections of the public may disagree – and at times in vitriolic terms – with teams in any given year, but the deliberative process is never taken lightly
The national leagues in football and hurling do not bring together the top counties for a full round-robin schedule of fixtures. In the past five years, the hurling championship has required teams to play provincial rivals but not that many candidates for All Stars will have played precisely the same opponents, making accurate comparisons more difficult.
During the past 25 years, the selection process has intensified because championship formats have been expanded and we now get to see players for more extended periods, which rules out the old phenomenon of one good performance securing an All Star.
It is now necessary to have a portfolio of work for the season. Championship has become so intense in terms of scheduling that league form counts for less and less – it is a long way in the past and given the varying approaches of different teams, sometimes hard to know what is being assessed.
In the last year of pure knockout format, in 1996, there were 36 football championship matches and 22 in hurling. This year, those figures increased to 63 (for Sam Maguire counties; Tailteann teams have their own scheme) and 29, respectively. That is a lot of additional data to process.
A consensus develops about the actual team and that often has to be challenged if not well founded. Selectors are conscious that in such a larger schedule, it can be difficult to identify everyone deserving of a nomination.
One selector some years ago made a notably daunting point during a discussion on nominations, pointing out that a former player who had recently died was mentioned as having been an All Star nominee in his obituary – even though this sad event was being used to excoriate a candidate proposed by someone else.
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Players by and large appreciate the honour, sometimes to a profound extent. I remember a friend telling me one awards night that a player had said the All Star was the first time his mother had smiled since the death of his father.
There is a well appreciated imperative to be as diligent and fair as possible.
Opinions will differ and sections of the public may disagree – and at times in vitriolic terms – with teams in any given year, but the deliberative process is never taken lightly.
