Diarmuid Connolly’s 12-week ban is nothing short of ridiculous
No excuse for Dublin star’s actions but a 12 week ban is ridiculous
THERE was no mistaking the mood in the Mayo pub as the roof came crashing down on Diarmuid Connolly’s season last Saturday night. As far I could see no one fainted from shock and there certainly were no proclamations of horror, but the hoots of absolute delight were impossible to ignore.
It wasn’t just Mayo folk either; these were football folk drawn from all over the land on the weekend of Comórtas Peile na Gaeltachta and everyone was singing from the same hymn sheet as the incident was played on a loop to highlight its significance.
Diarmuid Connolly was going to get what was coming to him and so were Dublin. Yahoo…
As a nation, we should stop putting ourselves down because we are the world champions of begrudgery and no one will ever take that away
from us. The Dublin footballers now get to sit in the same dock where the Kilkenny hurlers used to be perched, and pelted for our amusement.
We were there for a while ourselves; everyone wants to see you beaten, by fair or foul means.
I guess that is just the human condition, but it holds no appeal to me which is why I take no pleasure in Connolly’s predicament.
I am not saying that he is not responsible for his actions. On this page, a week after Dublin’s League final defeat to Kerry, I finished my piece with these two sentences.
‘We are back to a game of inches. And getting Connolly’s head back in the game could be the most critical one of all for Dublin.’
He clearly hasn’t. In his last four major games, starting with the AllIreland club semi-final, he has picked up three black cards, one yellow and now a 12-week suspension for ‘minor physical interference of a match official’.
No matter how you look at that, it is quite the charge sheet and it indicates a player whose head is ‘not in the game’.
I remember Páidí used to always say that one of the great mental challenges was tuning into a game you knew you were going to win.
Ultimately, you are measured by how you play in the biggest games against the best teams but if you are not tuned into those games, well, you should not be playing.
But the real measure of your mental focus and your discipline is to be able to do that when you know that if you don’t you will still get away with it.
I remember Páidí referencing Killian Burns having a terrible game against Kilkenny in the League in the late 1990s, and being nicknamed ‘Peanuts’ – on the basis he was roasted – for years after.
Killian’s head was not in the game that day, just like Connolly’s last Saturday night. The Dublin star was just not at it; turning over ball at will, his shot selection was poor, his execution even worse.
He was nowhere close to the pitch of where he needed to be.
He cut a frustrated figure and by the end an angry one, but there is no excuse for his actions. The question is, though, do they merit a 12-week ban? Not for me, not by a long shot.
He should not have laid a finger on linesman Ciaran Branagan but the latter’s reaction – there was none – is an indicator of just low down the infraction scale this is.
To lose 12 weeks of your season for that does not sit well with me.
That is why Dublin should have challenged this, but in the end Connolly took his medicine in the knowledge that if he didn’t, it would have been force-fed.
I know that critics say that players are always trying to wriggle out of suspensions, but when bans of this length are being dished out what do people expect.
The question now is how much impact it will have on Dublin, because it will have some.
I say that from experience because when Paul Galvin was suspended for something similar in 2008, it definitely hit us in a negative way.
It wasn’t just that he was missing – he was also banned from training, which was incredibly harsh − but it ended up in our headspace.
While we were saying publicly that we were not bothered, in private we were wondering if he was going to be back, when was he going to be back, and what shape would he be in if he did return.
At least by Connolly’s decision to accept the ban, they have been spared that. Dublin can come through this because, of all counties, they have the depth to cope with the absence of a key player, and they are operating in a province where there is no team that can truly trouble them.
Their only worry is the quarterfinal, but the chances of meeting a heavyweight – as in a team that can genuinely win the All-Ireland coming through the back-door – is about one in four.
Those are pretty decent odds so Connolly, hopefully fit and able, will
Connolly cut a frustrated figure and by the end an angry one
The ban he will serve is not appropriate to the offence committed
be back for the All-Ireland semifinals.
I hope so and I say that in the knowledge that his absence will not hurt my own county – or for that matter, Mayo, Donegal or Tyrone – but that’s not how you set out to win an All-Ireland. You want to play the best that you can and beat the best that is out there while doing so and right now that is Dublin.
But the bottom line here is that suspension he will serve it is not an appropriate reaction to the offence that has been committed. The GAA needs to look at that rule book and allow itself greater discretion when it comes to handing down suspensions – there would have been little argument if a one-match ban was handed out in this instance.
The GAA has nothing to fear by allowing itself room for discretion in how it deals with those who step outside the rules.
In the absence of that discretion what you end up with is a mob cheering because they know that they are about to see a lynching.
That is many things but justice is not one of them.