GAA has become the land with no law and order
REALLY, it was just another angry weekend. A very angry weekend, though round the clock we’re well used to our weekends being bitten on the bum by incivility and a riotous choice of venomous acts. Always in the name of sport.
In Peru, on Sunday, Sporting Cristal and Alianza Lima were deep into the second half when their game was suspended because of fighting between rival fans. Four people were wounded by gunshots. The game will be replayed tomorrow night behind closed doors.
In Australia, on Saturday, Australian loose forward Lukhan Tui got to grips with a fan after his team’s defeat by Argentina on the Gold Coast. The fan had seated himself in an area reserved for players’ families. He let his feelings about the team be known. Tui’s sister was pushed. Michael Cheika and Co have said they are not going to ask any more questions of their loose forward.
Closer to home in England, on Sunday, Leicester lock Will Spencer was sent off after almost taking the head off Wasps’ hooker Tommy Taylor in a high and wild tackle. The Tigers’ interim head coach, our own Geordan Murphy, called the sending-off of his man ‘crazy… and bulls***.’
But, right here at home, over two days, Friday and Saturday, we showed the whole world just how seriously we take our sport.
Dozens and dozens of young men in Tyrone felt obliged to act like absolute thugs. They didn’t even have time to think that their mothers and fathers were watching them, or that their kids were in the crowd. Though it probably would not have mattered.
Thuggery in the GAA is regularly seen as an obligation.
TYRONE’S greatest footballer of all time, Peter Canavan spoke about the behaviour of the men in his county from the parishes of Moy and Edendork, and Stewartstown and Strabane. Eleven players were red-carded and ordered off the field. We won’t bother ourselves counting up all of the other coloured cards that were shown for unacceptable behaviour.
Canavan wasn’t happy. What happened was wrong, he told listeners of Today FM’s Last Word on Monday evening, but then he had a little belly-ache about the media having some form of ‘agenda’ against Tyrone. Now, I know Peter Canavan. I spent four years with him in a TV studio, and he is definitely the most astute, clear-headed analyst of our games there is. He also came across to me off camera as a decent and deeply intelligent man. I think he’s smart enough to know that the rest of us don’t stay awake at night, and could not be bothered in daylight hours either, thinking about Tyrone. He is no fool. Why he would say such a foolish thing, I have no idea!
In this newspaper on Tuesday morning former GAA president, Seán Kelly condemned what he had seen in Tyrone but he stopped short of asking for the police in the north to get involved. Actually, Kelly said that the GAA is getting ‘a lot better’ in dealing with its own people.
This is also not true. And why Kelly, who is a massively strong character and has courageously led the association to a better place, should say something so completely incorrect is also something that I find bizarre.
In my lifetime in the GAA, we have beeen utterly incapable of instilling discipline. We have failed to outlaw thugs. We have always courted thugs, in fact. And, unfortunately, we have repeatedly paid a heavy price for this laissez faire approach, as mass brawls from games played deep in the country — and not just Tyrone — are unveiled to the entire nation.
Compared to our brothers and sisters in grassroots rugby and soccer, who are exceptional in how they value good and decent behaviour, we in the GAA do not know how to lay down a blanket of law and order.
It has always been like this. Through the 70s and 80s and 90s, when I was a footballer, disgracing ourselves was also something that came as an obligation. We felt we had no choice at times.
Obligation was the word back then too.
And nobody amongst our own ever criticised us for acting like thugs occasionally — same as today.
Luckily, there were no iPhones when I was a footballer, and mass brawls in Meath were not quickly up on YouTube and presented to the rest of the country for inspection as to their true worth on the barometer of brawling.
GAA folk are still conditioned to this barometer. There are good brawls, and brawls in which feck all happens or not enough to get it high up. The brawl between Stewartstown and Strabane was up there with the biggest and best of them in the eyes of football and hurling supporters all over this country.
In the game between Moy and Edendork, the second greatest footballer in the history of Tyrone was left with a face that looked like it had come into contact with a baseball bat more than a couple of times, rather than accidently meeting someone’s knee. Seán Cavanagh’s face was posted on social media.
Even though the player says he was unaware that his face would be ‘posted’ his appearance resembled a victim of abuse who silently, but very carefully, wished to store up evidence for the police at some future date.
Kelly was wrong in telling us that the PSNI up north and the Gardai down here do not need to be called and asked for their help in sorting through the violence in our games. They do need to be called. But why are our policemen and Gardai not viewing YouTube themselves and doing their jobs by calling into the homes of those guilty of riotous behaviour?