An extra 2 months off for some rednecks to make hay in the big city.
For the good of the game obvs
Who will Irish kids watch in August and September now, Crossmaglen? Loughrea?
Dear Lord
You can’t move in the Dublin dressing room for the amount of articles pinned to the wall.
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The sweeping will take forever with the amount of distracting articles in their eyeline.
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Ten Haags warriors.
The European Athletics Championships are going to be box office.
Mudderagawd he just speaks to the common man who used to go to the hill but now gets a carvery at premium/box level, watches bits of the game behind the glass, catches up with what happened in match on Twitter on the way back to Briodys/chaplins/pipers/palace/Cassidy’s
Iconic
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Roy just makes us feel alive.
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Paul Flynn: The cultural and systemic flaws in the GAA ensure that the melee will always be with us
In the GAA, players are conditioned to wade into brawls safe in the knowledge that the disciplinary process is not the end of the matter but only the beginning.
The green luminous gloves were the smoking gun. Dublin were playing Meath and, while it wasn’t like the Dublin-Meath clashes of the previous generation, there was always a sense that you shouldn’t be backward in coming forward at the first sign of trouble. This is the GAA mentality, one for all and all for one, a mentality probably protected too by the knowledge that if you go in all for one, all of you are unlikely to be penalised and if you are suspended you can appeal.
On that day in 2008, I went in without reservation as a brawl broke out. I was young and naïve and wanted to prove to management that I would do anything for the team. I was charged with an infraction under Rule 143 9(b) Category II, which covered my crime, which was “contributing to a melee”.
For my trouble, I was given an eight-week suspension which meant I would miss the league final and the first game in the championship – this wasn’t insignificant for me as it was my first full season so it meant I missed an important game and my championship debut. Others had received four-week suspension and I wasn’t sure what I had done to merit getting double, alongside a few others, Ciaran Whelan, Bernard Brogan and Diarmuid Connolly.
There had been plenty of outrage about the brawl in the media and Pillar Caffrey said we would accept the suspensions and not appeal. I disagreed with this course of action in desperation to not miss out on these two milestone games for me. However, if I had any doubt about this course of action, a viewing of the video changed my mind. I wasn’t doing anything worse than anyone else but the luminous gloves I was wearing would give a different impression. It looked as if I was doing jazz hands as I “contributed to the melee”. I’m still not sure if the lesson I learned from it was not to wear luminous gloves in the future, or not to contribute to a melee.
There had been a fair bit of outrage about that melee too although nothing as comprehensive as the response to what happened at the end of the Armagh-Galway game.
The eye-gouging incident transformed the melee into a matter of “national importance”. The Taoiseach has commented, the Minister of Sport has commented and on social media everyone wanted action now. The man at the centre of affair Tiernan Kelly was viewed only in two dimensional terms. People had made up their minds and they knew what they saw. They wanted a long ban, at the very least.
Maybe a long ban will be the result of this and an eye gouging incident certainly merits one but the calls went beyond that. “This man should never be allowed play again”. These calls infuriated me – in all walks of life, there are very few actions that leads to a ban of infinite duration. The young lad made a mistake, he has been punished by the GAA with a six-month ban and should now be afforded the opportunity to learn from it.
My natural instinct, in situations like these where the trial by social media is in full swing, is to empathise with the accused. In my role at the GPA, I would often be in a position after a weekend like this one where I would try to offer some comfort to a player on the receiving end of ‘moral outrage’.
Of course, there are plenty of people staying silent on social media who recognise that someone can’t be judged by one action but they will perk their heads up when it feels like a safe place to do so – typically when somebody else was first to lead the charge.
Empathising with the accused is by no means being soft on the crime. The fundamental principle I had was to condemn the sin but protect the sinner. The sinner in most of these instances was a young amateur athlete not a menace to society looking for any excuse to cause trouble. The sinner is also a student or your kid’s teacher or your local banker or a dad. That human element of these social media court cases seems to get lost on the commentators. People make mistakes in life but imagine what a difficult and lonely a place it is to deal with them when they are commentated on by politicians and every current affairs programme?
Kelly’s club and team-mates have condemned the response. “The TK I know is a great fella around the club,” his club mate Ryan Henderson told the Irish News.
“He’s a teetotaller and a non-smoker and a role-model for the youngsters. He’d be down helping at underage sessions and doing a lot of work you wouldn’t even hear about.”
But that work that you don’t hear about counts for nothing against the certainty of the online jury. He has made a mistake, will suffer the most and will be appropriately reprimanded by the GAA for his actions.
I don’t think the sanctimonious online care too much for the disciplinary processes of the GAA but to my mind the failed system doesn’t help in these cases.
Malcolm Gladwell described sport as the voluntary acceptance of unnecessary obstacles but when it comes to suspensions and the GAA there is very little acceptance of any obstacles at all.
I found it hypocritical that people could be furious about the eye gouging in one breath and then go on to outline what parts of a melee are acceptable. This is something we discussed further in the podcast that accompanies this piece.
The GAA has a problem with brawls in part because, as I said to begin with, there is very little downside to piling in. If there was, maybe the best thing you could do for your team would be stay out of it.
Instead most players feel their chances of getting off are high. There are two reasons for this. One is a systemic flaw and the other is a cultural flaw, which goes way beyond the GAA.
These incidents and similar incidents this year have brought into focus the flaws in the GAA’s disciplinary processes – these flaws have led to an appeals culture that is deemed acceptable with the pursuit of victory more important than the integrity of the games. These instances are not a welcome sight in our games but in high intensity sport where physicality meets a win at all costs mentality- things can become overheated and escalate.
They will continue to escalate to these unsavoury melees unless a harsh stance is taken by the GAA hierarchy. A stance that goes further than dishing out eight week bans which can be overturned on a technicality. The GAA need to take systemic action and assume full control of their disciplinary processes to the point where an appeal is not only culturally unacceptable but procedurally impossible.
At the moment, it is not the end of the matter but merely the beginning.
He’s wrong though. There’s a sharp line to be drawn this side of a double attempt at eye gouging from behind. He just knows Dublin have form.
No right thinking person would eye gouge on a playing field.
Bizarre article.
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To an extent, but this piece:
is spot on. Players pile in because there is no recrimination for doing so. And some that do get punishment, end up getting off. See Armagh V Donegal, where Donegal accepted their suspension, Armagh didnt, appealed and all 3 players got off and served no ban. Thats wrong. Entirely wrong, and the GAA enable shite like what happened in the Galway game by not being strong in their disciplinary process.
There is a somewhat separate argument as to eye gouging developing as a result of a brawl, and I’d agree with you there, just because there is a brawl doesnt mean that it naturally will develop to eye gouging.
However, a non togged out sub shouldnt be anywhere near that melee, and I’d be of the opinion every person who was not on the playing field at the time who got involved should serve a suspension. They had no business being there. I’d also say any other player, other than Comer and the Armagh guy who started it with him, shouldnt have got involved. But this is the point, the GAA do nothing. Kelly should have been in a position where he knows if he gets involved he’ll be banned. Ultimately he took it a few steps too far. But the set up should have meant he was never there in the first place.
I’d agree with what you say, but he is close to a false equivalence in the tone of that article.
yeah I think the fluff and all the additional commentary he makes kind of dilutes the main point which only needs a paragraph or 2. But then its not a proper word count publishable article.
I’ve never been more certain that an underdog will win a match than Dublin v Kerry. The dubs are absolute certainties Kerry are ridiculously overrated. What’s the injury news? Even though I think they’ll win even without con.
Kerry will win pulling up pal … its their time …
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Just drove through Miltown in Galway, place is festooned in flags, whose the ‘Scan’ lad mentioned on the posters ?
Who’s the underdog?
Shcan
John ‘Schan’ Concannon. Part of PJ’s backroom team.
Milltown is prime Galway football county.
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