GAA LAW IS AN ASS

And Fitzgerald is riding it for all he’s worth, going about his business and suffering little, while Tipperary’s Jason Forde could pay a very heavy price for his minor indiscretion

COME gather around folks and let us explain some journalistic jargon that you may have come across in the week that was in it.

You might have read last Tuesday morning that ‘Davy Fitzgerald was sweating last night as he awaits the outcome of today’s CCCC meeting’ and assumed that the Wexford manager was in a state of some distress.

The truth is that the only ones perspiring were the unfortunates left floundering behind laptops trying to penetrate the pitch blackness of a GAA disciplinary system which believes that justice is best served in darkness when stone cold.

It would be a full 48 hours after that CCCC meeting before the inbox of the Wexford and Tipperary county secretaries pinged on Thursday morning and the realisation dawned that the only one truly left in the sweat-box was the Tipperary player Jason Forde.

For all its convoluted commitment to fairness – it affords those who pass through it the option of a hearing, an appeal and finally access to an independent arbitration body – the way the GAA disciplinary body processes law can at times come across like a braying ass.

This week was one of those times. That Forde could face a two-match suspension for an ‘assault’ on Fitzgerald grates with the notion of justice on so many levels.

For starters, if two matches does not sound a big deal, it could – if Tipperary go straight through the front door – amount to 40 per cent of Forde’s Championship campaign.

The consequences for him are raised even higher by the fact that he is not an automatic first-choice pick and he is even less likely to be if he misses the first two games of a winning Tipperary summer.

That, of course, should not be a mitigating factor when it comes to the GAA dispensing justice, but there must be a consistency between actions and consequences.

What has landed Forde in this hot water was an act of aggression that was closer to a belly rub than a violent transgression.

The irony is that had he struck a fellow player with his stick, or kicked him, provided it was deemed to be with minimum force, he would have been faced with a one-game ban.

Or had he gathered some spittle in his mouth and spat it out in another player’s face that too would have been deemed by the rule book to have only been half an affront to GAA decency compared to the outside-the-chipper waltz witnessed at Nowlan Park last weekend.

In one sense, it is clear what the rule book intends; it is seeking to ensure that players respect opposing team officials, who are, for use of a better word, non-combatants.

It is a matter of respect but, then again, that is a two-way street.

The reality is that once Fitzgerald decided to cross the line onto the playing pitch, it was he solely who disrespected his status as a team official and when he nudged Niall O’Meara with his elbow, he crossed a boundary that demanded the GAA come down hard and heavy.

For Forde’s part, it can be argued that while he was wrong to get involved, his ‘jostle’ with Fitzgerald did not cross any sacred line because the latter had already discredited his status by his actions.

You can argue that but the rule book, for obvious reasons, can only deal with black and white.

Those that wield it, though, need to see the other colours when it comes to dispensing justice.

Davy Fitzgerald, if the ban sticks, will be barely restricted in what he can do as Wexford manager over the next eight weeks – he will not be on the line for two Championship games and not have access to the dressing room but otherwise his suspension will not prevent him getting around to the business of preparing his team.

Meanwhile, Forde’s season is potentially down the toilet for an incident he did not instigate and which was so utterly insignificant that had he had been involved with another player, it would have been quickly forgotten.

Is there a better way? There simply has to be and it has to be one informed by discretion rather than handcuffing justice to rules.

Of course that will prompt the belly-ache that once you don’t stick to the letter of the law, you will be lost in swirl of confusion.

Really? And that does not exist now?

This is not the first time that Fitzgerald has been the target of a player ‘assault’.

Go check out the 2012 Division 1B final where Limerick’s James Ryan leaves the playing area to hit the then Clare manager with such a forceful blow that Fitzgerald is left physically shaken and in real pain.

Now that was an action which fitted the sanction which the rule book prescribed to Forde this week and yet, back then, nothing was done.

The only difference this time is that in the furore created by Fitzgerald’s actions, the CCCC most likely felt the most forceful way to throw the book at the Wexford manager was by ensuring that Forde was shackled to it for the sake of fairness.

Except there is nothing fair about it.