The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Eight-week ban for punch
Dingle mentor the subject of CCC investigation
DINGLE senior football team mentor Colm Geaney is to be handed an eight-week suspension by the Kerry GAA County Committee for his part in the mass fight that marred last Sunday’s SFC semi-final replay in Austin Stack Park.
Mr Geaney was the subject of a Competitions Control Committee (CCC) investigation this week for his part in the brawl between Dingle and East Kerry players and mentors early in the second-half of a game Dingle won, with the disciplinary authority set to propose the eightweek suspension on foot of that investigation.
Mr Geaney and East Kerry manager Gerry O’Sullivan were both sent off and ordered outside the boundary of the playing field by match referee Paul Hayes after the rolling brawl, which lasted for over a minute, ended.
The CCC met on Monday night to consider the referee’s report and to examine video footage of the incident, and have proposed the sanction for Mr Geaney, who will have three days to respond and either accept the sanction or request a hearing with the Central Hearings Committee (CHC).
The Kerryman understands that there is no proposed sanction for Gerry O’Sullivan who was not found guilty of any offence.
Video footage emerged on social media on Sunday evening of the incident, which shows a man in a tracksuit rush on to the pitch and strike East Kerry player Dara Moynihan, who was immediately attended to by medical personnel.
Arising from separate and unrelated incidents, Dingle player Mikey Boyle required stitches to a head wound and East Kerry’s David Clifford attended hospital on Sunday evening for treatment to a hand injury.
WHO’S to blame? The players and their testosterone-fuelled little minds? Team mentors who should be old enough to know better? Spectators for roaring and shouting from the sidelines, ramping up the (fetid) atmosphere, and then filming and posting online the video nasties that everyone wants to watch but no one really wants to acknowledge is becoming a stain on the GAA? The supporters and the inflated levels of expectation and demand for success they exert on their players? The County Boards for being reactive instead of proactive, and even then for not being very reactive? The GAA authorities in Croke Park for not stepping in and taking a zero-tolerance policy on what can only be described as bolloxology that is now beginning to become the rule rather than the exception across Gaelic games matches the length and breadth of the country of late? The media for, well, just for being the media, and making – as one GAA official in the county told this writer this week – a “mountain out of a molehill”?
In the murky world of Gaelic games euphemisms – melees, fracas, schemozzles, handbags, fisticuffs, let-me-at-him-hold-mebacks – everyone is to blame, yet no one is to blame. Move along, folks, nothing to see here except a bit of jostling and mullocking and fluting around. And that’s all well and good until someone goes down under a punch and doesn’t get up. It won’t be just all fun and games then.
One has to feel a good deal of sympathy for the Kerry County Committee this week. Two fabulously contested semi-finals the weekend before last weren’t without their flashpoints – players wrestling on the pitch, and tussles spilling over the sideline with mentors involved – but all concerned would have hoped that the worst had passed and things would be much more benign for last Sunday’s semi-final replay. Alas, no.
Sympathy for the County Committee, you ask? Well, there’s no accounting for footballers losing their heads in a high-stakes match, and there’s certainly no legislating for a member of a management team going rogue and striking a player. One can only imagine what was going through the Kerry GAA officers minds when things kicked off at the start of the second half in Austin Stack Park last Sunday, and when two mentors were sent off and to the main stand by the
referee?
The Central Competition Committee (CCC) met on Monday night to consider the referee’s report and review the available video footage of the incident and appropriate disciplinary (or is an eight-week suspension appropriate?) action will be taken by the authorities. Whether or not that punishment is accepted is another matter, which will be borne out in due course.
There has already been some mention that the Committee might explore the idea of repositioning the dug-outs in Austin Stack Park behind the perimeter wall around the pitch, so that team substitutes will be situated in the terrace, and away from the sideline. It would beast art but that would also be a reactive measure – not a proactive one – and one that won’t really change anything except helping to stop the spectacle of both subs’ benches unloading on the sideline when all about them are losing their heads.
The problem here is not a bricks and mortar one; it’s a cultural one, which is a phrase we’re hearing uttered more and more lately, but what does it mean? Essentially it boils down to self-control and respect. If players and mentors cannot exercise self-control then you can put your dug-outs on the dark side of the moon, and have 22 referees officiating a game, and it will not stop an all-in fight happening. And if players and mentors don’t have respect for themselves and their opponents then the sledging and off-the-ball stuff that leads to these depressing fights will continue.
Let’s be clear about this: there is little or no respect – proper, ingrained, institutional respect – when it comes to Gaelic games. There’s only lip-service respect. A ‘slap a Give Respect Get Respect badge on the arm of a referee, shake his hand before the throwin and then proceed to spit the foulest of abuse at him’ respect.
A ‘leave your knee in on an opponent and shove him down into the ground when you’re extricating yourself from a tangle’ type of respect.
An ‘accept no liability whatso- ever’ sort of respect where every – EVERY – toot of a referee’s whistle is questioned and cribbed at, and where every disciplinary sanction is appealed and contested and beaten down.
Suggestions that two referees in a game might be a solution are laughable. Does that mean that the abuse meted out will have to be doubled or that each will get away with just fifty per cent of what they’re subjected to now?
Let’s also be clear about this: the vast majority of GAA players and team mentors are reasonable, sane people. Eat-their-dinnerin-the-middle-of-the-day types. They’re passionate about the game they play and the teams they coach. They’re entitled to get impassioned during football matches. They’re allowed to throw their hands up in the air if they feel a referee has made a bad call. It’s even okay if they let the odd ‘fuck’ out of them when things aren’t going their way.
But it’s not acceptable – never was and never will be – to act the absolute moron on a football field or a sideline. It’s not okay to spit insidious abuse at officials or opponents or others on the sideline.
It’s not ‘manly’ or macho to stamp down on an opponent’s hand or to throw back a sneaky elbow.
You’re no hero if you feel you need to whisper some bullshit into an opponent’s ear about his sister or girlfriend, or bawl into his face after you’ve scored a point off him or dispossessed him of the ball, to get an edge.
If you’re third or seventh or tenth man into a brawl – squawking like an agitated goose but really just hiding behind your bigger team mates – you’re nothing but a coward.
Find the video of last Sunday’s brawl and watch Diarmuid Murphy – a Dingle selector – through it all. At the start of the 30-second clip Murphy stands by implacably with his hands behind his back. Once he has to bring his hands around in front of him, partly to steady his balance as players cannon into him, and partly to try to break up a couple of players grappling in front of him. At the end of the clip when the camera goes back to Murphy he has his hands clasped behind his back again. There’s your hero, right there.
There’s a man with self-control and respect for himself and others. An All-Ireland winner who didn’t feel the need to engage in any sort of thuggery. A man who doesn’t need a Give Respect Get Respect badge to understand what the culture of Gaelic games should be about.
No one here is trying to sanitise football to the point where a referee has to have a quiet word with a player for pointing his finger at an opponent as he’s about to score a goal, but is it too much to ask that grown men can play a tough, physical game without resorting to acting like children or thugs?
Sympathy for the Kerry GAA authorities this week? A little.
But they are also the guardians of the game and they have the authority – and a duty – to do more to cut out what is a growing cancer on our games.
Harsh sanctions and relocating dugouts is one thing, but fostering a culture of respect - genuine respect - is the only way it will be sorted. Otherwise the sport is well and truly dead.
Let’s be clear about this: there is little or no respect - proper, ingrained, institutional respect - when it comes to Gaelic games. There’s only lip-service respect.