KILTEGAN WIN APPEAL

GAA club claim they were tried by social media

KILTEGAN GAA CLUB have won their appeal in relation to the charge of conduct which discredits the association following the giving of a walk-over to the refixed Senior championship game against Hollywood after that game was abandoned following the lights going out in Baltinglass.

Kiltegan GAA Club’s Colm Doyle says that his club feels that they were tried by social media in the days and weeks following the walk-over and he claims that Wicklow C.C.C. were influenced by this public opinion being voiced by a small number of people across a variety of forums.

Wicklow GAA chairman Martin Fitzgerald dismissed that charge and said that the C.C.C. would not be influenced by that and that the C.C.C. have a job to do and they do it to the best of their ability.

Secretary of the C.C.C. Mick Murphy said that the C.C.C. took the decision based on the information they had to hand and that Leinster Council have found them to be wrong and that everybody should move on.

‘On the night of that match our players stayed on the field for close to an hour and a half to ensure that that match would be finished. The match was then abandoned because of actions by a person not involved with our club. We understand that Baltinglass has investigated this, but we don’t know the outcome,’ said Kiltegan GAA Club’s Colm Doyle.

‘We then got word on the Saturday that the match was being refixed for the Monday night, so we didn’t get enough notice to get guys that we had away at college, we had four guys starting in college that day (the Monday) and one guy working shift work.

‘We hadn’t got the time, two days’ notice, to get things sorted for them. We couldn’t ask the guys on their first day in college, their first day in a new career to actually take the time to come back. We had guys in Galway, Limerick, Tipperary and Carlow.

‘We would have ended up going out to play Hollywood with fairly much half a Junior team. We felt that that would not be fair. It wouldn’t be fair to the other clubs in the group because we went out and played Rathnew with the strongest team possible, they beat us fair and square, and now it was down to score difference between Hollywood and Rathnew and if we had gone out with a weakened team, chances are, they would have beaten us by the required amount so it wouldn’t have been fair on the other teams.

‘So, the basis of our appeal was three-fold. First, that the match was abandoned through no fault of our club, and that wasn’t investigated. The reason why the match was abandoned wasn’t investigated by the County Board and we felt that if it was that there would have been a possibility that the match would have been awarded to us under rule, I think it’s 7.2D.

‘If they (the County Board) had investigated what happened, there’s a big chance we would have been awarded the game.

‘Then you’re supposed to get four days’ notice, we were only given two days’ notice.

‘The CCC then met, they actually decided that looking at the rule that there was no sanction for giving a walkover, because a club is allowed to give a walk-over, so they decided to charge us with conduct that discredits the association. We felt, and we felt very strongly, that we did nothing to discredit the association. We were being punished for a match being abandoned through no fault of our own, the County Board not following the correct procedure with the correct amount of notice, and we felt that it would have been unfair to other teams to play Hollywood with the team we had available.

‘The CCC could provide no evidence at Leinster Council as to what conduct had discredited the association.

Our contention was that the only reason that we were charged with that was because of the perceived uproar on social media, and the County Board felt they had to do something, even though if you went back and looked there was only a handful of people posting on various forums.

‘We had told our guys, players mentors or anyone involved in an official capacity in the club not to get involved on social media because we felt it wasn’t the forum to discuss it.

‘We won our appeal, the charge and the fine of €500 have been withdrawn.

‘Everyone was talking about us wanting to play AGB. AGB were a stronger team. We had beaten Baltinglass twice in the league. We had no fear of Baltinglass.

‘If you’re going to win a championship you have to beat any team in it.

‘We thought that the talk that was going on was disrespectful for both ourselves and AGB because is was not an opinion that we held as a club.

‘We did not feel that AGB were a weaker team in any way. It’s things like that we would have liked to clarfiy at the time but it wasn’t the proper forum,’ said Doyle.