IN THE WAKE of Wexford matches in recent years, Lee Chin has made a habit of heading home and watching back the game tape straight away.
Chin finds it a useful exercise to cast a cold eye on his own performance and “focus on things I could have done better on my own side of things.”
He broke his habit after their All-Ireland semi-final exit to Tipperary last August, instead waiting for a couple of weeks before he could stomach it.
Even then, Chin only watched the opening 55 minutes before turning it off.
“Up to the 55th minute I was excited about watching the game even though I knew what was coming afterwards,” he said. “And I actually think, I switched it off from there.
“And probably the biggest learning point I would have gotten was from the last 15 to 20 minutes as opposed to the first 55 minutes you know, so it took me another little while to address that.
“Look it’s a game at the end of the day. I try not to let it have so much of an effect.”
A keen student of the game, he said last November that one of the hardest parts about the Tipperary loss was the lack of a debrief as a group afterwards.
When Wexford resumed training ahead of 2020, Davy Fitzgerald’s squad dissected the game and Chin found the process cathartic.
“We just needed to address a couple of things and I think it was very comforting at the time as well when we did it as a team,” said Chin.
“As a team just try to cover those things before we go back into training and talk about it collectively. So you’d have a couple of points you’d like to bring up yourself or whatever.
“I got around to doing it myself but still didn’t have feeling of pure comfort out of it because you are so used after games to doing it together.
“I was just waiting for that to happen and we got around to that when we went back training and we addressed a few things and spoke about it. It was easier to put it to bed after that.
“They are such a good side that it was no surprise to me they went on and won the All-Ireland because they are such a good team. There are so capable doing that to any team in Ireland in their day. We were gutted at the end of the day.
“In some respects if we had continued doing what they were doing and we were beaten that way, through Tipp just dominating us at the end you’d almost think, ‘We gave everything we had.’
“But I think at the end of that game and the way things went and the way we allowed them to happen in terms of letting them funnel back and us not pushing back out the field, it is a bit frustrating to think we allowed that to happen. But at the end of the day, that’s hurling that’s sport and that’s the game.”
He was in Croke Park to witness Liam Sheedy’s side go on to lift the Liam MacCarthy Cup, which didn’t make their semi-final defeat any easier to get over.
“At the end of the day I’m a hurling fan, I’ve been to the last number of All Irelands and it is a great occasion for the GAA and it is a great day to be up among fans and supporters and the day it is just electric.
“The day that’s in it, the aftermath of the All-Ireland, getting up to socialise with your own friends and meeting different people.
“I wanted to go up to the game. It wasn’t I suppose the most comforting game to sit through either but looking at Tipp and the way they went on to win it by such a big score.
“There’s no doubting what Tipperary are as a team, there’s no doubting their quality.”
Chin spent the start of the season rehabbing a knee injury he suffered during last year’s trip to New York.
“I’m getting there,” he said of his fitness. “Probably still not operating off 100% but again a lot of GAA lads don’t regularly operate off 100% anyway. I heard one before if GAA lads are at 70%, that’s 100% for them.
“I had a bit of a setback in New York, the Super 11s, partially tore the PCL in my knee.”
The Faythe Harriers clubman was one of the last high-profile GAA dual players. He famously lined out with Wexford footballers and hurlers in the championship over one weekend in 2013.
“I suppose as a young guy at the time you were just wanting to do it all. Getting the chance and time for me to go out and represent (Wexford in) hurling and football consecutively in the one weekend, you were just thinking, ‘Ah great, I’m well able to do it, I’m in a good place physically, I’ll be able to get through it’.
“That weekend was actually decent, we drew against Dublin and went up and beat Louth and I was part of both games. It was great at the time but I wouldn’t be doing it now.”
Chin also had a soccer stint with Wexford Youths in the League of Ireland, but has since poured all his focus into the small ball code.
“I think when you’re sharing your time and sharing the load of your commitment and everything to other sports, it can have an effect. I felt that definitely when I was a lot younger, as opposed to the last couple of years I’ve totally committed to hurling.
“People still often ask me am I still playing football for Wexford? I find it odd that they don’t realise that I’m not. I haven’t played football since I was 21 years of age for Wexford.
“I’ve dedicated all my time to Wexford hurling, that is going to have a massive effect going forward when you’re totally committed to one thing in your life and especially in sport.”
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He was never going to be punished yet Chris foy doesn’t give enough injury time(according to whiskey nose) against spurs and he gets a league two game for the first time in years and united get Howard the coward at a ground where they lost last season. Yes your right the record needs to change
ABU people forgetting that Webb also chose to let go Tiote’s stamp on Cleverley after reviewing it with the RvP incident afterwards. The anti United stuff that people come out with is hilarious.
Get a life and change the record !!
Oliver Stone once said: “Paranoia is having all the facts”. Many of us die hard football fans know exactly what he means.
I’ve long held the view that something very fishy goes on in English football.
I’m not the most naturally trusting of guys anyways. When it comes to institutions, I’m downright skeptical of them. I have very little respect or trust in governments, police, and media or football institutions. It’s not me being paranoid either: week after week, I’m proven correct on my doubts about them (to any Liverpool fan the findings of the Hillsborough report came as absolutely no surprise).
When it comes to football, it’s not even lack of trust. It’s plain common sense.
In recent years, we’ve had a huge number of corruption scandals all across Europe. Several of them in Italy, the corrupt referee Hoyser in Germany, Fenerbahce being docked their title in Turkey, Spain’s second division scandals, Marseille a while ago in France, Porto in Portugal etc…
Of course, the one league where nothing ever gets proven to be dodgy is in England. The richest and most watched league in the world is, we are told, completely squeaky clean.
Leaving aside the sheer ridiculousness of that statement, ask yourself this: if corruption gets proven all across Europe, how is the most popular league in the world, with the biggest prize monies in football, whose clubs are owned by some of the richest people in the world, run by stakeholders that are the most powerful media moguls in the world, immune from this? With the amounts of money at stake, how has it managed to be so clean for so long?
To dismiss any talks of corruption in the premier league is to fall for 2 of the traits that characterize the English the most: a sheer egocentric belief that they are better than anyone else and their complete faith in the country’s institutions. To them, it’s entirely logical that that stuff goes on abroad where institutions are corrupt, but it’s impossible in England. Just like diving is a foreign disease and Uruguay is the epicenter of racism, unlike the multi cultural tolerance of middle England.
I share neither of those traits. By pure logic, when I see corruption in every facet of English life (MP’s expenses scandal, banking sector, the war on Iraq, Leveson enquiry, Hillsborough, The Guilford 4, The Birmingham 6 et all…) as well as entire European football, I ask why is it impossible as many deem, for it to be happening in English football too?
I have followed football since 1986. I have seen for years how Manchester United benefits from refereeing decisions. I don’t need an investigation to tell me this: it happens on a near weekly basis to the point where people are so immune to it, they laugh it off.I have seen the influence Alex Ferguson has on every facet of the English game. When his Darren son got fired as manager of Preston North End, I watched with bemusement as Ferguson immediately recalled his loan players from Deepdale. I then watched in horror as another club in the premier league, managed by Ferguson’s father’s friend Tony Pullis, also recalled their loan players from PNE.
The message was clear: Mess with Mr Ferguson or his children, and you will be punished.
And not just from Mr Ferguson either. By his friends in football.
Recently, ex referee Jeff Winter stated that he once sent Roy Keane off in a match. He was then criticized by Ferguson and not given a Manchester United game to referee for 2 years. He saw that as punishment as he said that “The FA is reticent to give Manchester United games to referees that Ferguson has criticized in the past”.Read that statement again. Ferguson criticizes referees that give decisions against his club. Most likely, these decisions happen in games Manchester United lose. The FA reacts to the criticism by not assigning said referees in future Manchester United games. Thus, the only referees assigned to United games are ones that Ferguson approves of.
The referees that have given decisions Ferguson deem to be incorrect against United, however, no longer referee their games (usually the most high profile ones). It’s a terrible indictment of sporting impartiality, justice and the way the game is run in England. This form of selective referee assignement led to the Juventus scandal in 2006.
Winter’s comments prompted me to do my own research. I focused on the referees that took charge of United 2 biggest high profile losses in the last decade or so.
Alain Wiley refereed United’s 4-1 loss to Liverpool in 2009. In that game, he gave both United and Liverpool penalties and sent off Nemanja Vidic. All 3 decisions were absolutely correct and Wiley was praised by Sky TV co-commentator Andy Gray for his performance. Not even Ferguson complained.Later that year, Wiley was given another United game to referee and despite sending off Kieran Richardson of Sunderland, Wiley was lambasted by Ferguson for being “fat and unfit”. The game ended 2-2.
That would be the end of Wiley’s refereeing career. Wiley, it says cryptically on his Wikipedia page, “agreed to retire” at the end of that season. Agreed with whom? No one knows.
Last season, Manchester City romped to a 6-1 win at Old Trafford, inflicting on their rivals their biggest embarrassment under Ferguson. The referee on that day was Mark Clattenburg. He sent Johnny Evans off in the second half for a clear professional foul.
There have been 34 Man United league games since that day. The number of times times Clattenburg has refereed them? Zero. Not a single one.
It seems that the FA, for whatever reason, doesn’t want Clattenburg to referee Man United games anymore. Some of us more paranoid folk may just wonder who’s behind that decision.
The FA has no hesitation to hand United games to Howard Webb though: he’s been the most used referee in 34 United games since the 6-1 defeat to City.
Webb’s history in Man United games are well known and documented. All I have to say on the matter is that more than 18% of the penalties he’s awarded in his ENTIRE premier league refereeing career have gone to Manchester United. Over a 9 year period, that’s a huge percentage.So in closing, let’s resume what we’ve discovered. We have an ex premier league referee who has openly stated he was not handed a Manchester United game for 2 years after sending off one of their players. We have an FA who, in said referee’s words, don’t hand Manchester United games to referees that the United manager has previously criticized.
We have a referee who took charge of a heavy United defeat and “agreed to retire” a year later after being called unfit by Alex Ferguson. We have another referee who hasn’t been handed a United game to officiate since he reffed a heavy United defeat 34 league games ago.
Meanwhile, the most used official in United games in that time is the man who has handed 18% of his entire career penalty awards to Ferguson’s team.
Factor in the fact that Manchester United CEO is ON THE BOARD OF the English FA, Alex Ferguson is a knight of the realm with political connections that go a lot deeper than football (just read Allistair Campbell’s diaries if you don’t believe me), and the evidence in the Darren Ferguson sacking that clubs that cross Ferguson get punished by his friends, and you have all the tools there for someone more investigative than me to really delve into.
But yet, nothing happens. Year on year, I watch as not a single journalist utters a peep on the subject. I watch as decision after decision goes United’s way and people in the UK, so much better than everyone else and trusting of their institutions remember, brush them off with insouciance.
In Italy, there would have been phone tap investigations a long time ago. In “so much cleaner than everywhere else” England, we’re paranoid.
Why is that?
Well, when you look at who runs the sport in the country, you understand a bit more. Rupert Murdoch’s Sky live off the premier league. So do his other publications like the Sun. The English media’s last priority is going to investigate and damage one of their biggest cash cows.
Please follow me on twitter, new handle: http://www.twitter.com/DimmyBad and check out the follow up post to this article, http://diminbeirut.typepad.com/my-blog/2012/10/corruption-and-influence-peddling-in-the-english-game.html
Oliver Stone once said: “Paranoia is having all the facts”. Many of us die hard football fans know exactly what he means.
I’ve long held the view that something very fishy goes on in English football.
I’m not the most naturally trusting of guys anyways. When it comes to institutions, I’m downright skeptical of them. I have very little respect or trust in governments, police, and media or football institutions. It’s not me being paranoid either: week after week, I’m proven correct on my doubts about them (to any Liverpool fan the findings of the Hillsborough report came as absolutely no surprise).
When it comes to football, it’s not even lack of trust. It’s plain common sense.
In recent years, we’ve had a huge number of corruption scandals all across Europe. Several of them in Italy, the corrupt referee Hoyser in Germany, Fenerbahce being docked their title in Turkey, Spain’s second division scandals, Marseille a while ago in France, Porto in Portugal etc…
Of course, the one league where nothing ever gets proven to be dodgy is in England. The richest and most watched league in the world is, we are told, completely squeaky clean.
Leaving aside the sheer ridiculousness of that statement, ask yourself this: if corruption gets proven all across Europe, how is the most popular league in the world, with the biggest prize monies in football, whose clubs are owned by some of the richest people in the world, run by stakeholders that are the most powerful media moguls in the world, immune from this? With the amounts of money at stake, how has it managed to be so clean for so long?
To dismiss any talks of corruption in the premier league is to fall for 2 of the traits that characterize the English the most: a sheer egocentric belief that they are better than anyone else and their complete faith in the country’s institutions. To them, it’s entirely logical that that stuff goes on abroad where institutions are corrupt, but it’s impossible in England. Just like diving is a foreign disease and Uruguay is the epicenter of racism, unlike the multi cultural tolerance of middle England.
I share neither of those traits. By pure logic, when I see corruption in every facet of English life (MP’s expenses scandal, banking sector, the war on Iraq, Leveson enquiry, Hillsborough, The Guilford 4, The Birmingham 6 et all…) as well as entire European football, I ask why is it impossible as many deem, for it to be happening in English football too?
I have followed football since 1986. I have seen for years how Manchester United benefits from refereeing decisions. I don’t need an investigation to tell me this: it happens on a near weekly basis to the point where people are so immune to it, they laugh it off.
I have seen the influence Alex Ferguson has on every facet of the English game. When his Darren son got fired as manager of Preston North End, I watched with bemusement as Ferguson immediately recalled his loan players from Deepdale. I then watched in horror as another club in the premier league, managed by Ferguson’s father’s friend Tony Pullis, also recalled their loan players from PNE.
The message was clear: Mess with Mr Ferguson or his children, and you will be punished.
And not just from Mr Ferguson either. By his friends in football.
Recently, ex referee Jeff Winter stated that he once sent Roy Keane off in a match. He was then criticized by Ferguson and not given a Manchester United game to referee for 2 years. He saw that as punishment as he said that “The FA is reticent to give Manchester United games to referees that Ferguson has criticized in the past”.
Read that statement again. Ferguson criticizes referees that give decisions against his club. Most likely, these decisions happen in games Manchester United lose. The FA reacts to the criticism by not assigning said referees in future Manchester United games. Thus, the only referees assigned to United games are ones that Ferguson approves of.
The referees that have given decisions Ferguson deem to be incorrect against United, however, no longer referee their games (usually the most high profile ones). It’s a terrible indictment of sporting impartiality, justice and the way the game is run in England. This form of selective referee assignement led to the Juventus scandal in 2006.
Winter’s comments prompted me to do my own research. I focused on the referees that took charge of United 2 biggest high profile losses in the last decade or so.
Alain Wiley refereed United’s 4-1 loss to Liverpool in 2009. In that game, he gave both United and Liverpool penalties and sent off Nemanja Vidic. All 3 decisions were absolutely correct and Wiley was praised by Sky TV co-commentator Andy Gray for his performance. Not even Ferguson complained.
Later that year, Wiley was given another United game to referee and despite sending off Kieran Richardson of Sunderland, Wiley was lambasted by Ferguson for being “fat and unfit”. The game ended 2-2.
That would be the end of Wiley’s refereeing career. Wiley, it says cryptically on his Wikipedia page, “agreed to retire” at the end of that season. Agreed with whom? No one knows.
Last season, Manchester City romped to a 6-1 win at Old Trafford, inflicting on their rivals their biggest embarrassment under Ferguson. The referee on that day was Mark Clattenburg. He sent Johnny Evans off in the second half for a clear professional foul.
There have been 34 Man United league games since that day. The number of times times Clattenburg has refereed them? Zero. Not a single one.
It seems that the FA, for whatever reason, doesn’t want Clattenburg to referee Man United games anymore. Some of us more paranoid folk may just wonder who’s behind that decision.
The FA has no hesitation to hand United games to Howard Webb though: he’s been the most used referee in 34 United games since the 6-1 defeat to City.
Webb’s history in Man United games are well known and documented. All I have to say on the matter is that more than 18% of the penalties he’s awarded in his ENTIRE premier league refereeing career have gone to Manchester United. Over a 9 year period, that’s a huge percentage.
So in closing, let’s resume what we’ve discovered. We have an ex premier league referee who has openly stated he was not handed a Manchester United game for 2 years after sending off one of their players. We have an FA who, in said referee’s words, don’t hand Manchester United games to referees that the United manager has previously criticized.
We have a referee who took charge of a heavy United defeat and “agreed to retire” a year later after being called unfit by Alex Ferguson. We have another referee who hasn’t been handed a United game to officiate since he reffed a heavy United defeat 34 league games ago.
Meanwhile, the most used official in United games in that time is the man who has handed 18% of his entire career penalty awards to Ferguson’s team.
Factor in the fact that Manchester United CEO is ON THE BOARD OF the English FA, Alex Ferguson is a knight of the realm with political connections that go a lot deeper than football (just read Allistair Campbell’s diaries if you don’t believe me), and the evidence in the Darren Ferguson sacking that clubs that cross Ferguson get punished by his friends, and you have all the tools there for someone more investigative than me to really delve into.
But yet, nothing happens. Year on year, I watch as not a single journalist utters a peep on the subject. I watch as decision after decision goes United’s way and people in the UK, so much better than everyone else and trusting of their institutions remember, brush them off with insouciance.
In Italy, there would have been phone tap investigations a long time ago. In “so much cleaner than everywhere else” England, we’re paranoid.
Why is that?
Well, when you look at who runs the sport in the country, you understand a bit more. Rupert Murdoch’s Sky live off the premier league. So do his other publications like the Sun. The English media’s last priority is going to investigate and damage one of their biggest cash cows.
Imagine the hit to the revenue streams of the media and clubs if corruption is proved in the premier league? The richest league in the world, so carefully and beautifully marketed across the world, would suffer a huge blow. The effects an investigation would have on Manchester United, the cash cow’s biggest cash cow, would also be devastating.
So it’s all swept under the tabled and every refereeing decision shrugged off. “They even themselves out” we’re told by journalists who get banned from United press conferences for asking a question about team selection.
God knows what would happen to them if they investigate United’s behind the scenes dealings.
Maybe, like Preston, they’ll learn that if you cross Man United, all of football will turn their backs on you too…
Oliver stone has also been know to do some mighty powerful drugs, a few things on your rant, Webb has given united 18% of his overall penalties because he has refed far more united matches than Bolton or WBA or villa matches, why? Because the best refs are used for the big games and united tend to play in some of those, also David gill is a member of the fa board which he was elected too by the chairmen of all the premier league teams including Liverpool, David dean of arsneal was the previous member of the board it’s well rotated, as for the influence of sir Alex well it’s not much different to how the Liverpool manager of the late 70s and 80s were making there voice heard, just look after yourselfs for once ye have a great manager who can bring ye back to the top but be worried about your owner he is letting the red sox fall apart and I’d say if u don’t get rid of him then ye are going nowhere,
Also I completely agree that there is corruption going on in the English league, I don’t think it’s match fixing more Likely it’s like rangers and double contracts, under the table payments to players, the players are the most corrupt thing in English football
Gavin, I’d like to offer you two things, sincere thanks for curing my insomnia last night and a tin hat and a place in a darkened room with Jim Corr, birds of a feather and all that.
Gavin, you really need to get out more, you keep pulling the ‘David Gill is on the FA board’ thread. You don’t however acknowledge that he was voted on by the premier league chairmen as the premier leagues representative on the FA board. You don’t acknowledge that David former Arsenal chairman held the same position previously, you just scream conspiracy.
Howard Webb is the highest profile referee in England, he has referreed a World Cup final, he gets the majority of the televised games. Manchester United are the highest profile team in England, by far the most televised, it stands to reason he will referee them more often. You say he has awarded them more penalties, United are usually the more dominant side on games, therefore have more shouts for penalties, the balance of probability dictates the will get more than lesser sides, Liverpool for example.
I realise your bias will not allow you to thick rreasonably, this rant is for the more open minded readers of this page.
Webb saw it and chose not to act, the FA cannot intervene in that under their own rules. Also, if brushing someone with the back of your hand is elbowing then I’m in dire need of new anatomy lessons. Is a joke of a controversy, if he played for any other club it wouldn’t have even been raised by the media and they would have wrote a proper story about the scandal of Tiote and Huth getting away with their stamps
He not generally a dirty player so that’s probably why he got away with it, but that doesn’t make it right either.
Good old urd chair man on the fa board working his magic there and the ref as well Howard Webb biggest united fan going
Shut up Gavin.
What about the penalty Newcastle got at old trafford last season or the corner that led to wigans goal should have been a united kick out when Wigan beat united last season united were also denied a clear penalty in the recent game against spurs all the top teams get dodgy designs Liverpool got plenty of them at anfield in the 70s and 80s if Liverpool were good enough in front of goal they would not be depending on penalties to score are you sure you are a Liverpool fan because you seem to be obsessed with Manchester United and their manager
Gavin u really are a muppet of the highest order
Change your mind Gavin.
Wow Gavin. Just wow.
Thank you
typical manure fan nothing worth saying say nothing at all
As I said, shut up Gavin.
Gavin if it’s so corrupted and the Refs are so Pro united and the Fergie rules the roost why do you you bother to watch it week in week out then !!!!
Typical united fan not one of u between about the six of u on here have the capacity to put an argument for utd and their players and manager all u can resort to is name calling god love yas
Coming from the excuse that refers to a club by a reference to a nasty song about a tragedy I take that as a compliment.
And mine !!
Why is that because I put a comment up not one comment has been put up to change my mind of what I put
Read my comment no read mine very clever well done
read my last comment
Read my last comment