GAA to act if counties flout rules
the be all and end all to me. You don’t know what way other lads were thinking, maybe they were thinking that, ‘Look, it’s not the end of the world if we’re beaten here, we’ll go on and go at it again’, I certainly don’t know.
“But from my point of view, we went bullheaded to win every day we went out in Leinster.”
Doyle completed 14 seasons with Kildare though it wasn’t all downhill after 2000, neither was that year surpassed during his career.
“I was just in the right place at the right time really and I do treasure that very fondly.
“We had a lot of victories along the way and, yes, there was nothing at the end of it but you still get a lot of satisfaction from it, where things weren’t going great and you came back in different matches maybe where you were expected to win and showed a bit of grit.
“For me, it’s that five or 10 minutes after a game, whether it be in Newbridge or Portlaoise, it looked like the game was gone and you grafted hard as a group and got over the line. “Most people that play, there’s a fair chance you’re not going to win anything but if you were to only play because you thought you were going to win something, well then none of us would play.” came following a remote meeting held yesterday between the GAA’S top brass and county board officials, some of whom apparently admitted their teams have been training underground of late.
Just seven days earlier, GAA president John Horan said that while it wasn’t intending to punish offenders, he said he would welcome people “to call them out”.
Director general Tom Ryan added that he felt it wasn’t the appropriate time for sanctions but said that they may look at introducing some at a later stage - but after a week of stinging criticism for what was perceived to be their weak stance on the matter, the GAA has decided to act.
Clubs will be invited to inform the GAA if they have been deprived of players due to county training.
However, it remains to be seen if clubs ultimately have the stomach to call out their own county team – and how much conviction the GAA has to pursue any allegations.
Although throwing offending teams out of the Championship is an option, it’s likely they will opt for fines in the first instance.