Jeezus calm down before you jab the finger clane thru the screen lad
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Tiernan misses no intercounty action, and Sean Kelly misses the all Ireland semi final by this judgement.
Seems perfectly fair alright.
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Sean Kelly will miss nathin
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That’s the current adjudication though.
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In other news, I’m reffing the ladies county final (league) tomorrow.
I’ll need my earplugs.
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Being a Garda I can understand your reluctance to see justice done but I’m not like you.
Becoming fairly obvious why so many players were “in favour of” the split season and the championship finishing up early. 
Which fairly makes a mockery of the stated reasons for it.
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Surely at least one of the squads will be hit with covid outbreak before next weekend…
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Quail surprise
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He should get a freebie as well
Who was the big man at the back with the schoolbag? Reminded me slightly of Big Paul Grimley but I don’t think it was him. Seemed to have been sent out on a peace keeping mission.
That whole sending off episode was a charade. PJ had a right word with ref beforehand and the 2 players knew what was coming, they shook hands and accepted their fate like men
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He looked to be the County Secretary. Came across as a cool head when all around him were losing theirs.
These administrators dont get the credit at all.
Big Rob gave John Costello a lovely embrace before the Dublin game last week. Costello himself and his assistant Jim Roche work as a very dynamic duo on matchdays.
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That’s certainly a Grimley beer belly. Neither make nor shape to it.
For fans of the Deccie Meehan 01 goal Rob Finnertys point in about the 7th minute of the 1st half of extra time warrants special consideration. From keeper to corner back to over the bar in 10 deft passes, Real Madrid-esque
If somebody could type out the text of this article that would be great, thanks.
Are we being genuine when we ask why incidents like last Sunday happen in the GAA?
Or is it just an empty platitude to get us through the week, hoping the news cycle turns quickly enough that we don’t really have to consider the answer?
Because if we’re for real about posing the question, then let’s be honest about the answer: it’s part of GAA culture.
Maybe not a nice part or a big part - arguably, it’s much less of a part than it used to be. But it’s clearly, irrefutably a part.
If we at least accept that, then we can decide what we want to do about it. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Now, look. I get it.
I’m not going to be anyone’s moral compass this week. But I’m not here to preach and at least I’m honest.
You might say that I made my own cultural contribution, and that’s fair enough.
In my career, I was involved in incidents like that in tunnels on six, maybe seven, occasions and being up front about it, I’m not sure I’d change anything about how I reacted even now, with the newly discovered righteousness of a weekly newspaper columnist.
That culture, those terms of engagement, existed long before I played football and strangely enough, it hasn’t changed much in my absence.
Nor has the outraged reaction.
For some reason, we persist with the charade that this stuff doesn’t happen in the GAA, that it’s not a problem – until it does and it is. Then we all clutch our pearls and ask, won’t somebody think of the children?
It’s bullshit. Consider, for a second, the solutions touted this week.
Reduce the number of people on the line. Keep the teams apart going down the tunnel. Use dressing rooms on opposite sides of the pitch.
Now to my mind, these are all practical and effective measures. Quick and easy fixes.
But sport is played in stadiums all over the world where teams go down the same tunnel at the same time without seeing the need to pile on to one another. So is the issue the tunnel or the players?
And, ignoring the usual stereotypes and tropes, are GAA players any different to rugby or soccer players? To the best of my knowledge, we’re all the same species.
If players brawl more often in one code than another, is it because one set has only recently started walking upright and the other are pure as the driven snow?
Or is it something to do with the type of behaviours that are accepted or tolerated or even promoted in that sport?
It’s a cultural thing. It’s as simple and as complex as that.
That might not reflect well on the GAA, an organisation in which we’re ferociously fond of patting ourselves on the back. But that’s the way it is.
Listen to Seán Cavanagh last week on The Sunday Game.
“Sometimes this is ok when it’s the playing members that are involved and it’s a show of raw emotion and it’s in the white heat of battle.”
Whatever you think of Seán’s contention, admire his honesty. Because it’s reflective of a culture of what we might consider acceptable levels of violence in the GAA.
Which, to one extent or another, is the root of big fights, such as the one that Armagh and Galway had last week.
It’s there in the way we talk about our games.
We praise teams for their physicality. ‘Playing on the edge,’ is a virtue. ‘Soft’ or ‘windy’ is the worst thing a player can be called.
We myth-make about Meath and Mayo in ’96 and the brawl between Dublin and Kerry in Gaelic Park in the 1970s.
Any of those live GAA roadshows that do the rounds before All-Ireland finals, where former players spin yarns about their glory days. Listen out for the anecdotes that get the biggest reaction. Stand in any park or pitch for long enough this weekend and you’ll hear the same cry to ‘get stuck into them.’
It’s there. It exists. Let’s not pretend.
You’re mad if you don’t think that contributes towards players’ relationship with discipline.
I’m not excusing my own record. But I wouldn’t be inclined to apologise for it either because frankly, the rules of the jungle were written long before I grabbed a vine.
We play a contact sport but also, one with vague laws that we break constantly.
There are hundreds of breaches of rule that go unpunished in every game; steps, pulling, dragging, stealing yards etc. We don’t call fouls on ourselves. It’s not golf.
So it’s inevitable that the already blurry border between what’s considered an acceptable form of physical contact and what’s not will be crossed.
A shoulder is OK. An eye gouge is not. In between, there’s lots of grey area. Players will take advantage of that ambiguity. I know I did. Here’s one for you about culture and how it pertains to people’s behaviour.
Is a player likelier to be rebuked by his manager or team-mates for pulling out of a challenge with an opponent and letting him score, or for turning him upside down and being sent off?
Will he be praised as a paragon of restraint for holding back when his team-mate is being pinned to the wall of a tunnel?
‘Well, lads. We got the bollocks knocked out of us there. But fair play to Philly for keeping his hands in his pockets…’
Armagh were involved in three such melees this year. When Kieran McGeeney reviews the season with his management, how prominent will that behaviour rank among the team’s problems? Croke Park can just shrug their shoulders now, dole out the bans and blame the teams if they want.
But let’s face it, as soon as this one is forgotten, it’ll be two different teams next spring in some mucky league game under lights.
And before that, when the club championships start in the coming weeks, the usual clips will ping into our WhatsApp groups, the amateur camerawork capturing video nasties from every corner of the country.
And we, the right-minded GAA folk of Ireland, will roll our eyes at the outrage. The GAA are in a tricky position here because clearly, this does not reflect well.
Like most organisations, we’re uncomfortable with attention from outsiders. We don’t like being handed a mirror through which to view our own habits.
We all cringed this week when politicians got involved. A little bit of us dies inside when the Joe Duffy brigade pile in.
But honestly, what do we expect?
There were 70,000 people in Croke Park when this kicked off. Ten times that number watched across RTÉ’s platforms.
The number of punches thrown is irrelevant because the optics were awful. But again, apportioning blame is basically pointless.
Maybe on a micro level, there is some justice to be meted out and there are people in the GAA who, for the integrity of their own disciplinary procedures, would feel a whole lot better about making suspensions stick.
But in the great scheme of things, what difference will that make?
Would banning a clatter of Galway players for an All-Ireland semi-final be a deterrent for participation in melees? Is banning the ‘gouger’ from the GAA for six months?
Not.
Hope.
No, it’s the disingenuous reaction this week that tells us more about why these things happen and why they will continue to.
Because if we agree that melees or brawls or bust-ups are bad and should be eradicated, then the first thing to do is accept why they happen.
Once we admit that, then we can start to change it.
The only place you can do that is at juvenile level, where underage coaches are taught to lead by example, where they don’t speak to referees, where they encourage only good behaviours and punish bad ones, rather than simply focusing on winning.
That’s the only way to address it.
Or not.
That’s the other option here: let’s not address it. Maybe we’re grand as it is.
Maybe we’d prefer that there remains an acceptable level of violence in Gaelic football. Which is fine.
But if we do, then we must concede the inevitability that it sometimes spills over into incidents like last weekend.
That’s just the price we pay for having a sport with an edge. A game that, even to some small extent, brawls like last week are occasionally part of.
Me? I could go either way.
I like the edge.
When you’ve been on the inside of those brawls, you know it’s never as bad as it looks from the outside and hardly ever dangerous.
I reckon I’m not alone in my preference either.
So let’s all be honest about it now. And stop acting so shocked.
What they said: Fallout from the melee
THE MANAGERS
“It’s something Armagh don’t want to be a part of. I’ve found that there are a lot of things thrown on social media, and a lot of pictures. I could hear a lot of people commenting on it, and having different things to say. How a fight starts, and how it continues…
“I think it’s a very simple thing that they do in Australian Rules: Third man in gets automatically suspended.
“If I step three inches outside my box, I’m told I’m doing something wrong, and yet we find it difficult to do some of the bigger things.
“It’s something I don’t condone.”
– Kieran McGeeney
“Obviously, the scenes at full-time, they were ugly, they shouldn’t be happening – but they happened at the same time.”
– Pádraic Joyce
THE PUNDITS
“They (Armagh) are out of control and it is only a matter of time before someone gets very seriously injured.
“This was deliberate goading, deliberate assaults during the course of the game, way beyond what is acceptable.
“I invite the GAA to look at all the camera footage. They should be asking RTÉ for all of the camera footage because a lot was missed yesterday. It’s not good enough.”
– Joe Brolly (Indo Daily Podcast)
“Be it the eye-gouging or the melee … suddenly, high horse time. ‘Let’s make an example…’ the amount of times I’ve seen somebody saying or Tweeting, ‘these boys need to be made an example of’. The GAA has to learn and stop trying to make an example. They made an example of Tyrone at the start of the year; four boys getting sent off.
“All of a sudden, a headlock was the worst thing you could do in a game… There is so much inconsistency in the rules. Then they go and try and make an example out of somebody. The lawyers will absolutely drive a bus through the holes in the arguments and the lack of consistency.
“So unless the GAA get their entire disciplinary process tightened up, trying to make an example of this – it isn’t going to stand up.”
– Enda McGinley (Off The Ball)
“Sometimes this is OK when it’s the playing members that are involved and it’s a show of raw emotion in the white heat of battle.
“But then you get men involved that shouldn’t be there. Unfortunately, the two teams go into the one changing room. I’ve no idea why that was the case.
“But then it gets ugly. When you’ve guys there that shouldn’t be there, that aren’t involved in the game itself, have nothing to lose.”
– Seán Cavanagh (The Sunday Game)
“A grapple and a few swinging arms are all part of this gladiatorial contest that we love in Gaelic Games.”
– Danny Hughes (The Irish News)
THE GAA
“We had an absolutely fantastic game in Croke Park, everything you want in Gaelic Games, yet we’re talking about violence and that is a huge pity. That has to be admitted, that we have to tidy up our act.
“We should move to a situation where penalties are imposed on the day. We had that at one stage where the black card lasted for an entire game, that meant people weren’t doing the sort of things they’re doing now.
“We can’t legislate for everything that happens, but the responsibility for sports administrators is how we handle those situations.
“It’s up to us to make sure it simply doesn’t happen again.”
– Former GAA President
Liam O’Neill
THE CLUB
“As a club, and a family, we will support and protect Tiernan and his family. The vilification of Tiernan on social media over the last few days has been both unjust and unfair. Tiernan has been, and always will be, a great ambassador for our club.
“One moment does NOT define a man. The GAA will have its due process regarding the issue. We would ask people to let this process take place before making judgement.”
– Clann Éireann (Club of Tiernan Kelly, who has accepted a six-month ban)
THE POLITICIANS
“I think it was a shocking scene. It was a great game of football…awful that it was marred by what happened at the end of the game.
“And I think the Gaelic Athletic Association obviously would deal with that and would have to deal with that through its procedures and processes.
“But there is no room for that in any sport and particularly when young people are watching their heroes on the football, hurling or soccer fields, they don’t need to see this type of behaviour.
“And it’s quite, quite disturbing to see and quite concerning.”
– An Taoiseach, Micheál Martin.
“I would hope that whatever disciplinary procedures take place that it will send a clear signal that this sort of behaviour is not to be tolerated.
“If you look at the eye-gouging incident, it’s absolutely appalling stuff and that there are young families that go to these games. It’s not just about young children who grow up to participate in the sports, but actually, it’s a family event.
“I know of one five-year-old who was at that match yesterday as a first-time experience. They should have come home remembering what an amazing game it was; as I said, edge-of-the-seat stuff. Instead, they see sports players behaving like that, and it is despicable.”
– Minister for Sport Catherine Martin
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