BRING OUT THE CHIMPS

Increasingly preposterous GPA seem to believe media should see, hear and speak no evil

FOR a body that prides itself with dragging the GAA kicking and screaming into the modern age, there are some within the GPA who would be happy for it to be returned to its censored past.

Back in the good old days, to spare the county, parish and family name from shame – and the blood curdles at what merited the ultimate sanction back then – RTÉ’s protocol in its Gaelic Games’ reportage was not to report the identity of a player who was sent off.

Conor Cusack, the GPA player development officer, appeared to be pining for those old days as he engaged in a Twitter spat with members of the fourth estate last week when he raged at ‘gutter GAA journalism’. Cusack was light on the specifics, but heavy with indignation.

‘Gutter GAA journalism continues to be validated by the silence of other journalists,’ he posted.

It prompted an inevitable response; exactly who was he referring to for inking his, or her, pen in the gutter, and what exactly had been written?

Alas, Cusack, whose angst was fuelled by the lack of courage within an entire industry for not hunting this renegade down, could not quite find the conviction to come up with a name to assist with pointing the lynch-mob he so desired in the right direction.

We trust when he finds it in himself to descend from his lofty moral perch, the fog might clear and he will see the irony of his position.

So instead we were left to sniff it out ourselves – and we did try and make direct contact with Cusack this week to ascertain the source of his displeasure but to no avail.

By deduction, and we did not reach this station in life where we get to ride around in a 05 Ford Focus just because of our pretty face, it would appear it was the reportage of Rob Hennelly’s error-ridden performance in the All-Ireland final replay that was at the core of his displeasure.

We are divided here as to whether it was down to one of our colleagues giving the Mayo goalkeeper a 3/10 in his ratings – hard but fair given that he had half a dozen kick-outs turned over, gift-wrapped a goal and got himself sent-off for a black card offence – or one of the many other commentary pieces.

There is a flourishing industry in celebrity columnists writing about GAA and those who have gained traction have, at times, shown few scruples when getting down and personal.

However, there was little personal about the analysis on offer last weekend. There were observations that Hennelly was ‘nervy’, ‘panicstricken’ and had endured a ‘nightmare’ but fingers were pointed at management for putting the player in that position in the first place.

Overall, there was measured comment on offer after the replay – but feel absolutely free to disagree.

What we are pretty certain about is that there was no ‘character assassination of an amateur sportsman’ which Cusack raged about, but simply the critique of a poor individual performance in the most trying of circumstances.

But that was not enough, by half, to quell the GPA official’s rage who went on to suggest that ‘the media say they (inter-county players) deserve minimal support,’ before going on to assert to one inquisitor that a ‘wonderful, authentic human being, brother, friend and son has been destroyed by your profession and you remain silent’.

So here it is, one player has a poor game and because it has been called out as such it is interpreted as a lack ‘of support’ shown by GAA media for the entire inter-county playing community. I mean, seriously, the GPA should possibly consider calling a halt to those self-awareness programmes it runs if over exposure results in their officials displaying such levels of hyper-sensitivity.

For the record, and for Cusack’s

He lacked conviction to come up with a name to assist the lynch mob he so desired

future reference, it is not included in the media’s terms of reference to ‘support’ players; that on a visceral level is for the flag-wavers on the terraces, and, from a welfare/wellbeing consideration, for the GAA and the GPA to undertake.

The media’s job is merely to report and analyse in a fair-minded and balanced manner without resorting to ‘character assassination’, but it is the reality that such analysis is more robust now. The days when RTÉ stopped naming ‘shamed’ players belongs to the past, as are the opening paragraphs that hailed every losing team as ‘gallant’ for the good reason that the media also has a duty not to bore the nation to death while ‘supporting’ those it is charged with reporting on.

We live in more honest and robust times and we are the better for it.

‘I know that I’m not going to give up,’ declared Hennelly in a powerful statement this week, sounding nothing like a man who had been ‘destroyed.’

Perhaps the players are made of sterner stuff than those entrusted with overseeing their welfare would have us believe.