‘Snitching’ on GAA club team mates

The GAA sent out an email in recent days, to all club secretaries, county PRO’s and chairpersons to effectively ‘snitch’ on their own players if a club has a grievance in relation to the availability or otherwise of their county players.

Or if they feel county teams are holding collective training sessions before the appointed date of commencement September 14 th.

They are asking the official secretary to email Croke Park with the details, and to become a tell tale, and effectively do the dirty work for them.

‘Ratting’ on your friends and team mates is a no-go-area.

This comes in the wake of club players being asked to effectively become ‘guinea pigs’, to test the waters in competitive contact games while trying to observe the two-metre distancing rule during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This puts the club player in a catch 22 situation - whether to play in support of their team mates - and run the risk of potentially taking the Corona virus home to his or her family - or opting out of all contact sport to keep them safe from infection.

No amatuer player should be placed in this impossible position.

Referee’s and match-day officials are also in a similar situation.

Headquarters needs to look again at both of these directives before countless players opt out, and the mini club season becomes farcical or worse - a ‘ ’sick’’ joke?

Yours faithfully,

Tom Towey,

Cloonacool,

I wish to avail of your pages to record an unfortunate event that happened to me on a recent visit to Bundoran. I need to explain that I have had 2 lobectomies due to lung cancer and had been in self-imposed isolation since March 1st.

My daughter and son in-law persuaded me to join them for a few days in Bundoran. While walking on the street and trying to maintain social distance I tripped over a doorstep and had a bad fall.

Some very nice people came to my aid and an ambulance was called. The medics were really professional and my daughter is a nurse so I felt in good hands and didn’t want to go to hospital because of the Covid risk. They insisted that I go because I had head injuries and shoulder pain and hypertension and assured me I would be seen to promptly. My head was bandaged and I was wheeled into SUH at around 5.15 p.m. by the very helpful ambulance medic. Within minutes a lady put an I.D. tag on my wrist.

I need not have worried about Covid 19 because I sat in my wheelchair until 9.10 approx. and nobody came anywhere near me in that time. I tried on three occasions to attract some attention to my discomfort but was generally brushed off. I feel sad and guilty at recording this incident during a time of valiant effort in the health service but there it is. At around 9 p.m. I called my son in-law to collect me and notified the receptionist I was leaving: I considered that it wasn’t worth the risk and that if I had a serious head injury it would have manifested itself by then.

Sadly, I felt safer outside. Later, at around 11.15 pm a doctor rang my daughter looking for me, as she was my contact number. I won’t elaborate on the entire conversation but he did say they were very busy. I would dispute this in some other forum as many people came later and left earlier than I. My conclusion has to be that my age, medical history and injuries didn’t rate very highly.

(full name and address with editor).