IN ALL FAIRNESS - GAA in the dock

For much of the first hundred years of this country, there were three pillars of society, the Catholic church, Fianna Fail, and the GAA. The first two have long been knocked from their perch but the GAA remains strong, but they do take an all-merciful kicking when something negative happens.

Last Sunday, we got one of the great games of football between Galway and Armagh, which was overshowed by unruly scenes at the end of normal time. There is no defending what went on but the commentary since has been over the top, including politicians having their say, as well as ill-informed non-sporting pundits in particular, with no understanding of the GAA and are using it as an easy target for their own self-promotion.

The eye-gouging incident was grim and is up there with spitting as the worst things you can do on a playing field. However, isn’t it now contradictory that the people who three weeks ago felt retrospective action after the Munster hurling final was over the top because the game was so good, are now looking for retrospective action to be taken against the Armagh player who gouged Damien Comer, even though the game was one for the ages. Whether the incident was worse is immaterial, you can’t just choose when to apply retrospective punishment when it suits you.

But back to Sunday and the over-reaction to what went on. From my viewpoint, apart from the eye-gouge, it was a lot of pushing and shoving, albeit very aggressive. I didn’t see any punches thrown, just players with lots of adrenaline losing their cool following a dramatic ending to normal time where Armagh came back from the dead to send the game to extra time. And let’s be fair about it, there are many out there that like to see things boil over as it adds an extra ingredient to the spectacle. The International Rules Series is a perfect example, one of its big selling points was the chance of things boiling over, but when that was taken out of it, the series sunk like a stone.

However, there are a number of issues around the game the GAA needs to address. Again, the associations’ own rules around how they deal with indiscipline needs modernising. There is no way referee David Coldrick, or his team of officials, could have confidently picked out the major people involved in the scuffle, as if they did, more than two red cards would have been shown. What you are asking them to do is impossible, bar them sitting down in front of a screen and reviewing the footage and that is impossible, bar you introduce a video-referee like in rugby.

Galway captain Sean Kelly and Armagh joint-captain Aidan Nugent were the two players picked out and given red cards, when from the footage they were acting more as more peace-makers than instigators. However, what does seem to have happened is that the referee couldn’t be sure about who to send-off, but had to make a strong statement and so chose the skippers of the respective teams, even if they were innocent, as they were the leaders, and someone had to go.

In some ways, the reaction of both players suggested they already knew it was coming and was why there was such a delay to the start of extra time as the officials conveyed their decision of what was going to happen to both counties in the tunnel, with Kelly and Nugent then emerging and having to be sent off on the field of play as per rule. In effect, they were sacrificial lambs in the overall context of the game and in fairness it worked as extra time ran on without incident, but hopefully both men will have their cards rescinded, particularly Kelly who will miss out on the All-Ireland semi-final otherwise.

At the same meeting, the CCC needs to review the evidence and come down hard on the players who did overstep the mark and hand down strong bans. However, the GAA only has themselves to blame in this regard as they haven’t been strong enough in terms of dealing with ill-discipline.

The chickens are coming home to roost with players given suspensions, who are then subsequently cleared on appeal, many times on technicalities. The inability of players, teams, and county boards to accept punishments, is contradictory to when the same county boards will come along in the coming months and apply suspensions on club players, many of whom won’t have the same ability to successfully appeal.

I said it a few weeks ago in this column, what is needed is a Monday morning review of games by the GAA whereby incidents can be reviewed and retrospective punishments, if needed, can be applied and I’ll tell you players won’t be slow about misbehaving if they are wary about the eye in the eye that can see and record everything, rather than the referee, linesmen and umpires, who can only go on what they see at that given moment, and have no replay mechanism to review when they make their decisions.