IN ALL FAIRNESS - Loughmore go down with heads held high

Loughmore/Castleiney’s incredible run in this year’s Tipperary club championships has captured the imagination of GAA fans, not just in this county but right around the country.

Maybe it was that element of a fairy-tale to go from double county final losers in 2020 to come back and go one step further and complete a hard to achieve senior hurling and football double in the one year. Incredibly, it was one of three senior doubles done in 2021 with Kilmacud Crokes and Naas doing the same in Dublin and Kildare, however, those clubs have a larger player base to choose from with not near the number of players doubling up as in the case of the Tipperary champions.

Maybe it was this storied run that made their exit from the Munster championship at the hands of Ballygunner even harder to swallow. Indeed, Loughmore’s defeat on Sunday is remarkably similar to the manner in which they went out of the provincial hurling championship the last time they were in it in 2013 when they also had two men sent off in a narrow defeat to Na Piarsaigh of Limerick, who went onto win their first Munster title and begin a period of dominance in the province. Will it be the same for Ballygunner if they get past Kilmallock in the New Year, you couldn’t rule it out!

However, Ballygunner will have lost an awful lot of neutral support for the antics of some of their players in the sending’s off of both Noel & John McGrath. If you are to apply the letter of the law, both men were foolish to get involved with both Paddy Leavy and Barry Coughlan and gave the referee a decision to make. However, to those hiding behind the strict wording in the rulebook, in the GAA there is such a thing as the spirit of the rulebook and this certainly wasn’t applied, and thinking of the late Kieran Delaney, he would certainly have not issued red cards in either instance as he was a player’s referee.

Now, Noel McGrath did give Paddy Leavy a decent shoulder into the chest, but the Ballygunner man had no issue striking the Loughmore man off the ball beforehand but wasn’t seen by the officials but was by many Loughmore fans and you could hear the spike in noise both on radio and television commentary when it happened.

I’d like to think there is still a little honour left in the GAA where you if you live by the sword you die by the sword and if players like Leavy want to dish a bit out, they should take a little bit back in return, and not hit the deck like he did. That kind of stuff, we thought, was left to some other sports.

However, the actions of his joint-captain Barry Coughlan were worse. A player who gave John McGrath a lot worse off the ball throughout the game, yet when McGrath tapped the ball out of the defenders’ hand to get set for the penalty, you’d swear Coughlan had been shot in the hand by a sniper. If that wasn’t bad enough, you had two Ballygunner players going to the umpire squealing like children to a teacher in the schoolyard.

Seriously, I have never seen as negative reaction to such behaviour in the GAA in a long time and the only people backing the sanctions handed out to the McGrath brothers are people with a hatred of Tipperary hurling. The day will come that Ballygunner will be on the receiving end of some controversial decisions and it will be interesting to see what their reaction will be then.

If Ballygunner are so desperate for Munster and All-Ireland success, maybe they should be given both trophies if they want it badly enough, to go to such lengths to win a game. There is an ethos in professional sport that “you do what you have to do to win” but in amateur sport, you’d like to think this mindset doesn’t exist, but is worryingly creeping in.

Some might see Loughmore/Castleiney’s reaction after the game, which was more measured than I was in the aftermath and I not being from that club, as well as this column as an element of sour grapes but there is an honour in hurling of standing tall and being counted and we have got to keep that at all costs, for if we don’t, we will lose an element of what is special in the GAA.