It should be obvious that that list of CCCC members is about 3 years out of date, pal.
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Fucking GAA website.
Aaron Kernan questions the integrity of Tyrone GAA
http://www.gaa.ie/gaa-news-and-videos/daily-news/1/1208150834-aaron-kernan-on-football/
Aaron Kernan on Football
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
As I made my way to Dublin on Saturday morning my journey was filled with excitement and high expectation because this was the day when the football season would finally spring to life.
Gaelic football can be particularly hard on itself, particularly in terms of the way we discuss the issue of ‘cynicism’ within the sport, but team sports across the world show us countless examples of the levels people are willing to go to in order to achieve success. Cynicism is not solely a Gaelic Football issue.
It is after all the business end of the season, with nothing but knock-out football left, so a day brimming with high quality football and drama was on the cards. By 8pm on a perfect August evening the country would know the identity of the final two All Ireland semi-finalists for 2015. The stakes were high and anticipation was in the air.
However, after watching both Tyrone and Mayo deservedly clinch the remaining spots in the last four, my journey home was not as lively or enthusiastic as the trip up had been.
I knew clouds would hang over the media coverage of both games and that the negative aspects of the day would command the headlines across all forums. I knew too that the Monaghan and Tyrone game would bear the brunt of it.
It was bound to for I don’t think there is another sport in the world that is as self critical as the GAA, particularly Gaelic football. From committee members to referees, managers to players, everyone is open for extreme criticism at the first sign of things going wrong.
Benny Tierney always tell the story about an Armagh supporter giving out about Stevie McDonnell towards the end of Stevie’s career. The supporter reckoned Stevie was too slow, past it, no longer worth his place.
The next game Stevie shot the lights out, kicked 1-8 and Benny searched the ground until he met the supporter in question. “What do you think of McDonnell now? Still think he’s finished? He’s just kicked 1-8 and stole the show,” says Benny. To which the supporter replied. “I know, but isn’t he the greedy b*****d”. With some people you just can’t win.
Gaelic football can be particularly hard on itself, particularly in terms of the way we discuss the issue of ‘cynicism’ within the sport, but team sports across the world show us countless examples of the levels people are willing to go to in order to achieve success. Cynicism is not solely a Gaelic Football issue.
Last year’s NFL season in America was shrouded in controversy regarding the New England Patriots and their star quarterback Tom Brady’s ball tampering, now known as “DeflateGate”. The Patriots are alleged to have underinflated all 11 footballs they used during their win over the Colts in order to gain an advantage.
The AFL in Australia was hit by the bombshell of the Essendon club supplements programme in 2013 where widespread use of prohibited substances was identified.
The game of rugby, often held up as one of the ultimate games for ‘gentlemen’, has also had its difficulties. In the 2009 Heineken Cup quarter-final, the then Harlequins manager Dean Richards told one of his players Tom Williams to bite into a fake blood capsule to simulate a blood injury in order to get his regular fly-half Nick Evans back on the field in time to take a drop at goal with the last play. TV cameras caught them out and the scam was later revealed.
Even hurling has its cynical moments. Think of Kilkenny’s Richie Power racing through on goal with three minutes to go in last year’s All-Ireland semi-final against Limerick when Donal O’Grady dived to ankle tap him with his hurley and stopped an almost certain goal.
Cynicism is an inevitable by-product of top level sport, unfortunately. But for me, the problems begin when most of us refuse to accept our mistakes and as needlessly self-critical as our sport is, I don’t think we help ourselves in the way we deal with some legitimate criticism often directed our way.
Our instant reaction is usually to highlight a previous incident that may have been dealt with more leniently and try to deflect attention away from whatever our own issue is. It is never our fault. There is little or no ownership or error within our games.
This is a very Irish way of dealing with things, but there are some examples we can take inspiration from that show it is possible to ship criticism in the right way.
The case of former World Rugby Player of the Year Bryan Habana is a shining example to us all of someone being big enough to admit his mistake. During the 2014 Heineken Cup final while playing for his club Toulon, Habana tried a chip kick up the touch line. When he knew he wasn’t going to regain the ball, Habana made contact with a Saracens player and went down easily, hoping for a penalty or a yellow card for his opponent which thankfully the referee didn’t buy. The incident was immediately highlighted as a blight on Habana’s CV during the post match analysis.
The following day, while Habana and his teammates were receiving heroes’ welcomes in Toulon, he released the following statement.
“So before anything. Apologies in every way and to the whole rugby community for what happened in the Heineken Cup Final yesterday. It was in no way intended with any malice or to bring the game into disrepute. Sportsmanship and integrity are key factors to what makes rugby so special and I let myself, the fans, our opponents and the game down. Hopefully it didn’t take away from what was a fantastic spectacle and even more so a special victory for Toulon”.
This summer, there have been a few cynical incidents in Gaelic football matches that people won’t be proud of, and one very recent incident in particular comes to mind. My hope is that those involved in such incidents would follow the Bryan Habana template, admit the mistake made, apologise and put the issue to bed. Lesson learned, it won’t happen again.
Unfortunately, the tendency is in the GAA that when managers and players of teams involved in such incidents address the media, they defend themselves and point to others first, rather than addressing their own culpability.
Taking ownership of our games is one aspect I feel we can easily address in order to set the right example for future generations and perhaps limit our capacity for rampant self-criticism. We are all passionate about our games, we love representing our clubs and counties but every so often we need to step back and look at the bigger picture.
Our sport is continually evolving with different trends and tactics but who is going to be the first to buck the trend by coming out and admitting a mistake when one is made, particularly when it is something cynical?
I have no doubt that if more players followed the John Mullane ‘you do the crime, you do the time’ outlook it would be broadly praised and welcomed, regardless of how big the indiscretion is.
I was once involved in a team that was under-performing, we had a few internal issues and were on the end of a telling off from our management team. They felt that we had lost sight of what we were about and that we were more concerned about our own personal agendas than the well-being of the group.
We were told that we would get nowhere as a team or as individuals without integrity, that it was a characteristic our squad had been built on. They urged us to go home and look up its meaning before we met up again:
**
INTEGRITY (noun)
- The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.
**
As GAA people, we’ve all reached the stage where it is our responsibility to act with integrity for the good of our game.
Aaron Kernan is a well known cunt.
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Sure he is. They all are.
#alwayssomeoneelsesfault
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Get your own kitchen in order before telling others to do likewise.
People are always quick to throw the blame our way - see the Tyrone U21s this year and Derrytress a few years ago - when the facts state otherwise.
Rugby reference. FFS sake. The filthiest sport of them all. Doped up eye gougers.
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I see fire brigades had to be brought into Tyrone from three other counties this morning to deal with the amount of people spontaneously combusting after hearing about the ban.
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Always
Someone
Else’s
Fault
But he couldn’t have seen anything worthy of a red card because there was nothing worthy of a red card. Awarding a decision for something that didn’t happen is always worse than not seeing something and failing to award a decision.
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People
In
Glass
Houses
Dumb rating. Really dumb.
The GAA really needs a proper way in which these proposed suspensions are made public. It’s rumour and innuendo at the moment about this eight week ban.
For an intercounty county championship game - or indeed any intercounty match - any proposed suspensions should be issued on the GAA’s website within 72/96 hours of the match ending, accompanied by a short statement.
“Tyrone footballer T McCann has been charged by the association for bringing the game into dispute following an incident with Monaghan’s Darren Hughes during Saturdays AI quarter final in Croke Park. The player and Tyrone county board has been notified of a proposed eight week ban for breach of rule 2B which relates to bringing the game into disrepute. The player has 24 hours to either accept the charge or request a personal hearing.”
Something along those lines would help clear up the confusion around these disciplinary matters. It’s a pure joke at the moment, a cork player got banned for elbowing a dub in the league game at Croke park this year and it only came to light weeks later that he had received a one game ban.
Needs far greater transparency, the whole system.
Tyrone appear to have taken over the mantle from Kilkenny as the most hated team in GAA. The thing is Tyrone are hated cos they are cunts, Kilkenny were hated cos they kept winning.
there is clear logic and reason to the drip feeding. Much like other sporting organisations and political entities, they drip feed some info without making it official, they monitor the reaction of media and fans, and then they will make their final decision based on that.
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No one hates Kilkenny. They are far too boring to hate.
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Canavan has been rolled out to fight the good fight 
So thats Jordan, Harte, McGuigan and Canavan already out in the media, and its only Wednesday. Ah lovely 
Yip, the real story here is the black card and players trying to get leading players on the opposition put off. Part of that same story is the inadequacy of the vast majority of refs. Starting with fitness, most are a disgrace. I’d nearly walk the test they have to do, and I believe quite a few get away without doing it.
Throw stones at Tyrone but don’t spare everyone else
Hitting the Target with Kenny Archer
12 August, 2015 01:00
‘Well, they’ll stone you when you walk all alone
They’ll stone you when you are walking home
They’ll stone you and then say you are brave
They’ll stone you when you are set down in your grave
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned.’
BOB DYLAN’S lyrics are usually open to a variety of interpretations (and we’ll leave aside calls for WADA involvement), but Tyrone Gaels may feel those words could apply to them at present, as so often.
Although they’ve ended the jibes and won the Sam Maguire three times, the Red Hands regularly remain ‘on their own’.
On this occasion, let’s be clear, Tyrone deserve criticism, and their player Tiernan McCann in particular, for his theatrical tumble late in the All-Ireland quarter-final against Monaghan on Saturday.
Whether or not that actually led to Darren Hughes’s dismissal remains unclear at the time of writing. Referee Marty Duffy appeared to be writing in his notebook at the exact moment Hughes ruffled McCann’s hair, perhaps noting the punishment for the Monaghan man’s clash with Colm Cavanagh seconds earlier.
Yes, McCann is mostly to blame, but if Duffy had actually seen the incident he would have yellow-carded the Tyrone half-forward.
What did Marty Duffy actually see? If he guessed that Hughes struck McCann then that’s wrong on several levels.
Perceptions and reality can be very different. People often see what they want to see.
Although Tyrone have to take criticism when it’s deserved, as it is in this instance, criticism must be delivered consistently.
As Dylan’s last two lines have it:
‘But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned.’
Fair play applies off the pitch as well as on it.
On the subject of stoning, some have turned to the Bible, quoting `Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’. But if we applied that policy to the right to express opinions then the world would be almost silent; we’re all sinners.
Past crimes of thuggery don’t prevent someone having a valid opinion about simulation/ diving, even if they do point the GAA’s continuing indulgence of physical violence. It’s regarded as better to be dirty than a cheat, basically.
However, as hard as it is to listen to men who indulged in plenty of skulduggery – and skull-damaging – in their playing days giving lectures about morality, their message can still carry weight as long as they are consistent and sensible in their attitude.
But anyone who can describe a knee to the hinch swiftly followed by a punch to the side of the head as “minor contact” cannot be taken seriously and should really be ignored.
And when there has been silence about similar scenarios of play-acting, simply because they don’t involve Tyrone as the culprits, then that’s just as wrong as throwing yourself to the ground.
Call it certainly, call out Tyrone - but call it all fairly, without fear or favour.
Yes, some Tyrone players went down easily on Saturday, but so did some Monaghan men. Take off your blinkers and watch the match again and you’ll see that’s true.
Cast your mind back to the Derry-Down game in this year’s Ulster SFC. Down had a player sent off at the start of the second half after a Derry player fell to the ground holding his head.
Video evidence later showed that to be a very harsh red card, although it wasn’t overturned as the match wasn’t an All-Ireland semi-final and the player wasn’t from Dublin, Kerry, or Cork.
Yet the silence about that incident, especially from some usually very vocal people, was deafening.
Down being reduced to 14 men for almost the entire second half arguably had much more influence on the outcome of that game – which ended in a one-point Derry victory – than Monaghan losing Hughes in injury time, albeit just as six minutes of added time had been announced.
There’s also the aspect that Monaghan should have had a player red-carded midway through the second half, for that aforementioned `minor contact’ of a punch to the head.
Of course McCann shouldn’t have done what he did – but that also applies to plenty of things that happened on the pitch from both sides.
That’s what the referee and the rules are there for. Calls for retrospective punishment should not extend beyond the yellow card that is in the rule book for simulation (rule 5.4: `To attempt to achieve an advantage by feigning a foul or injury.’).
Maybe simulation of this sort should be punished by a red card, but that change needs to be brought in by Congress, not during a Championship.
Evidence of Tyrone’s transgressions can be found, of course, but so can evidence of hypocrisy and double standards towards the Red Hands.
Twice Tyrone teams have played Tipperary this year. Twice Tipperary players have stamped on Tyrone opponents (only once earning a red card though).
How much outcry has there been about either of those incidents? So little that the first culprit, rather than being suspended, was actually awarded the GAA/GPA’s official `player of the month’ accolade for the following month. So much for fair play.
Instead, the focus was on sledging. After the second match one southern journalist wrote Always Tyrone’ in relation to a shoving match involving players from both sides – but not Always Tipperary’ when mentioning the stamping.
In terms of holding up your hands and admitting you did wrong, there was more hypocrisy from one former Meath (yes, Meath) player on Twitter.
He tweeted `I hope Kerry knock seven shades out of these Tyrone lads …that McCann lad needs a serious lesson given to him’.
When challenged by several people about that obvious call for thuggery, he unconvincingly claimed who said anything about thuggery’, then implausibly added I never once mentioned violence. Meant it in a pure footballing sense!!’
It’s obvious that many people contort themselves in order to condemn Tyrone’s crimes, but not those of others. Twisted, you might say.
By all means judge Tyrone – but judge them by the same standards as everyone else.
Everybody must get stoned.
Brilliant article and bang on the money.
Another fucking dumb article full of whataboutery instead this idiot decides that quoting Bob Dylan will give him some gravitas.
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