MICHAEL DUIGNAN: Lockdown is hard but Dublin let us down
ANGER AND FRUSTRATION IS BROUGHT TO BOIL BY THE BRAZENNESS OF THE ELITE
LIKE a lot of people, personally, I’m finding lockdown since Christmas hard going. I think people in general have been in a really tough place. I’d add myself to that. I’m a strong person. I’ve a nice, comfortable house out in the country and I’m able to put food on the table. But like a lot of people, I’ve other things going on as well. My father died last year — his first anniversary was a couple of weeks ago. We didn’t get to give him a send-off. We couldn’t even have a memorial Mass at the time. That’s just hanging there with me. I can’t really tell you what my emotions are but it’s hard on the family.
With the GAA, you’re locked down. That’s such a big part of my life. Work, too, is curtailed.
I was meant to get married on March 19 — and that was called off. Maybe I escaped the noose for another year! We decided months ago to put it off for 12 months, until next March.
Sometimes people see you, a person in the public eye, and I’m not sure what they think you are. To them, you’re a sports player or administrator — I even get a few jibes about my employers, RTÉ, when all I do for them is a handful of GAA programmes a few times a year.
Like I said, everyone has their own things going on and there is a lot of frustration and anger out there right now.
I found great relief in the Offaly fundraiser over the past few weeks. The positivity of it was brilliant. We raised more than €200,000 because so many came together to support our county board, county teams, and their own clubs. It gave us all a huge lift to see people uniting, to hear all the positive
Dessie Farrell is only person who can say why they did it
messages about community. I had the high of that — one tainted somewhat by events on Twitter earlier this week.
I posted a tweet on Monday about underage sport not being allowed back along with the golf and tennis. I play a bit of golf, granted, but it seems to me that this process is being politicised in the sense that those in charge are afraid of being accused of favouring golfers, or the golfing class. It’s the safest thing in the world. Two balls in 150 acres. Then there’s underage sport.
To see the way you’re attacked on Twitter for making a comment about kids exercising is actually worrying to somebody like myself. We’re talking about something that we did throughout last year with underage kids. I would have prioritised their return to play ahead of the inter-county game — I feel that strongly about it.
Go back to this time last year. The level of fear was overwhelming. One of the things we know now is that outdoor sport is safe. The cases in the GAA were linked to celebrations off the field. The actual activity is not a spreader of the disease.
Around that, players travel on their own, they train and go home.
There is no case of Covid stemming from that, that I’m aware of. There was one case out of the 70,000 kids at Cúl Camps — and that was brought into the camp from outside. We have information we didn’t have last April and May. So surely as part of our overall health and wellbeing strategy for the country, there should have been a provision for allowing people exercise.
The GAA plays a huge role in this across the country, through our clubs. Even if we didn’t have matches, I think you could have phased in a bit of training to give people hope. It could even have helped with compliance.
For people with children it’s an important part of life. It’s not just that they’re going to develop as sportspeople, which is part of my responsibility as Offaly GAA chairman, but it’s also vital to the physical and mental health of these kids going forward. I can’t understand why people can’t see that. Do they think people can be locked up indefinitely?
The only measure of our current situation is the figures — how many people have Covid? We all understand how serious the pandemic is and that hospitals have to be protected. But that’s all down, again, to ineptitude of the authorities who failed to grow the capacity of our ICUs.
We’re talking about bringing back underage sport in a very safe and compliant way. The point I feel is missing is that by not allowing it, you’re driving people to be less compliant.
In Dublin, this week, the canals and parks and the beaches were thronged — but not just in the capital, it was all over the country. People have said, ‘Enough is enough’.
This is dangerous because it won’t keep the numbers of new infections down or stop the spread of new variants. We’ve created an environment that is not healthy.
There are things that would have made a huge difference to people — like allowing kids get back to training. We had Covid supervisors in every club, health questionnaires, hand sanitisers, parents were dropping their kids and collecting them.
There weren’t big gatherings of people. They understood they couldn’t do that.
That’s some context for why I take a slightly different view of the Dublin lads being out on a field at Innisfails GAA club early on Wednesday morning — nine lads out on a field isn’t the issue. The issue is that while all this is going on, we’re not far from getting back to inter-county activity from April 19.
For Dublin to do this was disappointing. Every inter-county player in the country, and a lot of club players, are training — on their own or maybe a couple of them are getting together for a kick or puck-around. That’s happening. There’s no point in saying it’s not. Whether it should be happening or not — people have their own view.
Organised training is another thing, though. You’re bringing players together from different families. It’s as much about the spirit of the rules now — people have been through so much, to jeopardise things the day after we got a return date for GAA activity is enough to leave you speechless.
I thought we’d be back on April 5 or April 12 for inter-county. Of course, that’s not the case. I’m not sure how easy it was to get the inter-county elite status restored — but I assume it was a battle. It seems to be more a Government decision than the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET). Roughly 4,000 players will be on the move when every county goes back.
Quite a few of them will be going back into classrooms and other community spaces, so that has to be factored in. They’re training outside. We know it’s safe. I know not everybody out there would agree with that.
You’d wonder why Dublin would have to do this? It was the covert, organised nature of the session, with a coach in attendance, that really stung. Remember, the Cork lads were on a beach doing fitness work. In Down, they said it was a meeting. There were other counties training last year — that’s why I got so annoyed around then and spoke out.
I’m not here to kick the Dubs. But I think it was wrong. And it raises questions.
There were a lot of people saying, ‘What harm?’ But they’re setting an example. If you tell every club and county that you can’t train — and then the most powerful team, the best team, one of the greatest teams of all time, go and do it, it’s very hard for others to not.
If you are getting into the detail, were they very unlucky, and just caught on the first morning back? Were there other training pods? How long has it been going on — if it has been? Who knew about it?
It’s a bit rich if the Dublin County Board are coming out and suspending Dessie Farrell for 12 weeks if they knew about it. Or maybe they didn’t, but tell us that. Would a county team go training without permission or knowledge of the county board?
One of the issues the GAA is dealing with is the financing of the competitions. While we raised €100,000 for the county team last week, that’s only half of our €200,000 deficit. Dublin’s income from sponsorship deals is well documented and one wonders if the funds they receive from the Sports Council is money they really need. With the strain the pandemic has placed on GAA finances, further questions will surely be raised about the current model.
How did Dublin not reckon with downsides of this? Did they think they wouldn’t get caught? Dessie Farrell is the only one who can answer those questions. He’s also a former chief executive of the Gaelic Players Association, an organisation born out of concerns for player welfare. And yet his players were put in that position.
People are now talking about Brian Fenton, Jonny Cooper and Brian Howard, and that’s a shame. Any issues I’ve had with Dublin have been with the funding model, not with these great players who seem like genuine, nice guys and role models.
Now they are being pilloried. It’s a serious embarrassment.
I don’t think those players should have been put in that position. Even the way the county board came out with the suspension of Dessie Farrell smacks to me of an attempt to kill the story.
I do feel sorry for Feargal McGill and his team in Croke Park. The intricacies of this and dealing with NPHET is not easy. The answer from the latter seems to be ‘no’ to everything, just keep us at home.
There was a selfishness to what happened this week, an arrogance — to think, ‘We can do this, we’re Dublin’. There was a risk that the Government could have turned around and said, ‘We’re pulling the plug on the inter-county season now’. Because the perpetrators were Dublin and they are so high profile, it would have sent a message. Lucky for everyone, they haven’t done that.
We’ve all heard chat that a few other counties have been doing the same stuff. I just can’t understand it after all we’ve been through. It’s hugely frustrating.
As the Offaly senior football manager John Maughan said in a radio interview the other night, ‘Here in Offaly, the lads are doing their work on Zoom’. The hurlers are the same.
No matter what stage of life you’re at, this is a big chunk of it you’ll never get back — whether you are starting in national school, doing your Leaving Cert, going to college or going through your working life. We’re going into an Easter weekend when you’re sitting at home or going for a walk.
There is a bit of light with the vaccine. The frustration and the anger comes from what we’re seeing in the Beacon Hospital, or the Coombe. There is a total lack of urgency in getting the vaccination rollout done right.
Get on with it. Do it properly. Everything is next week. That’s not acceptable in business or even in my role here as chairman with the county board. There’s always another bit of a scandal coming out here and there.
What will be the knock-on effects of the pandemic? What is going to show up when this is over? The lack of cancer diagnosis, treatment for cancer, the rates of suicide that we’re seeing — the bill always comes due eventually.
I’m not going to go into the details but a good friend of mine, in his 80s, took his life just a few weeks ago. Just out of pure loneliness. We’ve all these things that are building and building and building in ourselves and across society – which explains the anger.
Back to the Dublin thing — is it front-page news? Possibly. It is Dublin. But all these other things are far more important. And we need to be questioning the Government harder. People bringing home vaccines or providing them to teachers at private schools — this stuff is driving people nuts.
So it’s not what the lads did, but the overall message it sends out. And it’s Dublin, the All-Ireland champions. I don’t understand the logic of it. What, we’ll steal a march on a few teams in Leinster that we’re beating by 15 or 20 points? I can’t get my head around that.
I’d wonder how long it was going on. It raises serious questions about the leadership of Dublin, especially when we’re all meant to be in this together.
Those players should never have been put in that position