How GAA values have been devalued and debased
Canavan insists the Ulster footballing giants are struggling in a PR war when, in fact, they have been losing a battle with indiscipline
THERE are some observers who will contend that the GAA in Tyrone is not back in the dock for the very sound reason that it has never been given the opportunity to leave. Those who argue that the Red Hand County is infected with a virulent strain of violence, and abhorrence to law and order, had plenty of evidence to base a case.
Inside 24 hours, disgrace was piled on disgrace. The footage of an all-in brawl in a Stewartstown-Strabane IFC clash – a game in which five players were sent off – went viral, but no longer had those ugly images faded from our screens when they were replaced by an even uglier one.
The image of Seán Cavanagh’s facial injury – suffered while playing for his club Moy against Edendork, and which left him with a broken nose and concussion – got nationwide attention.
While the referee deemed the incident accidental and the Tyrone County Board yesterday concurred following an investigation, Cavanagh suggested during the week that he wouldn’t make up his mind until he’d viewed the video footage.
However, the game has done little for Tyrone’s football image. Six players were sent off, albeit none for straight red card offences, in a game which produced 27 cards – equating to one card every second minute. Still, this week the county’s greatest player of all time, Peter Canavan, insisted that the negative portrayal of his county is ‘agenda driven’ by the media, rather than being rooted in fact.
‘I do believe that Tyrone are on the receiving end whenever there is negativity attached to Gaelic games. It appears to be pointed up in this direction pretty quickly. I would say there is an agenda going on in that regard,’ Canavan told Newstalk’s
Off the Ball last Monday. Perhaps, there is some truth in that assessment. Ever since they have emerged as a one of the game’s leading forces, they have hardly found themselves being showered with love.
‘There was no violence in 2003 but they were criticised anyway. There is not a county here or down south where incidents don’t occur and there isn’t a word about it,’ the former Tyrone manager Danny Ball suggested in an interview a number of years ago.
There may be truth in that too, but what is beyond doubt is that one county features more prominently than any other when it has come to making the GAA headline news for all the wrong reasons.
Here are just 10 since the turn of the millennium which suggest that rather than fighting a PR war, Tyrone is losing the disciplinary one.
1 Ear to the ground, November 13, 2011
A brawl in a league final between Carrickmore and Dromore spread to the stands in Ballygawley where trouble broke out.
It developed into the lead story on Ulster television bulletins the following day, amid reports that some spectators, including several children, had been left terrified by what they had witnessed.
With good reason, too, after it emerged that one Carrickmore supporter had been rushed to hospital to get part of his ear reattached.
2 Referee punched after ladies game, June 26, 2011:
‘I was checking my score card to make sure everything was in order and then I got a tap on the shoulder from one of the managers to shake my hand and I remember nothing after that,’ recalled 43year-old referee Simon Brady.
His decision to award a match-defining free in the closing minute of a ladies final between Carrickmore and St Macartan’s prompted outrage and ended with a punch which rendered Brady unconscious.
And when the then chairman of the Tyrone ladies county board, Martin Conway, went to his referee’s assistance, he was also struck in the face and suffered concussion. An investigation into the incident led to two GAA members receiving lifetime bans.
3 Sledging of Donegal minor footballer, May 17, 2015
In the aftermath of his team beating Tyrone, Donegal manager Declan Bonner told the media that his team captain Michael Carroll has been taunted over the death of his father, who had passed away after an illness earlier in the year.
It prompted an Ulster Council investigation, the conclusion of which the Tyrone County Board heralded as vindication of their belief that the incident had not occurred.
The Ulster Council pointedly responded, stating that the allegation had ‘not been proven’, which was hardly surprising given the lack of independent evidence.
4 Brian McGuigan eye injury, June 2007
This is how McGuigan recalled the horror eye injury he sustained when playing for Ardboe in a league game against Aghyaran.
‘In the corner of my eye, I can see this boy coming. That’s how late he was. I just remember going completely blind. Just pure black.’ Such was the severity of the injury he sustained; medics suggested the trauma was comparable to that inflicted by a swinging baseball bat.
He would make it back but, arguably, he was never the same player again.
5 The battle of Omagh, Sunday, February 5, 2006
A top-of-the-bill opening round NFL game at Healy Park went off the disciplinary rails with a melee in the fourth minute. It fed into the tension which exploded in two ugly second-half brawls, one of which infamously spilled over onto the sideline.
Both teams finished with 13 men only Tyrone’s Colm Holmes was shown a straight red — while Dublin manager Paul Caffrey was forced to pull subs out of the stand because he feared for their safety. Tyrone boss Mickey Harte absolved
the referee of all blame.
‘If Paddy Russell had been God Almighty he couldn’t have refereed the game today,’ admitted Harte.
But what happened on the field was only the half of it; the aftermath left the GAA disciplinary process in chaos as it rumbled onto a disastrous end.
In total nine players were proposed for suspensions, but all avoided serving bans on ‘technicalities’.
6 Derrytresk/Dromid, Jan 23, 2012
A Junior All-Ireland club semi-final became a national debate and veered from the chaotic to the comedic.
‘What kind of handbag was used, was it a big one or a small one,’ enquired RTÉ’s Joe Duffy off a Kerry listener who had rung in to inform that Dromid’s Kerry star Declan O’Sullivan had been assaulted after the match by an armed Derrytresk supporter.
‘It was a fine one,’ replied the listener. It wasn’t all fun – two Dromid players were left injured after several Derrytresk substitutes and mentors leapt onto the Portlaoise pitch to join a melee.
The GAA responded by suspending seven players from Derrytresk (three from the Kerry club were also banned) which effectively killed off the Tyrone club’s chances of winning the final they had just reached. They were also banned from taking part in the All-Ireland championship for five years.
7 Spitgate, February 9, 2013
Cookstown defeated Finuge in the All-Ireland IFC final, but it emerged that the latter’s Kerry star, Paul Galvin, was spat on during the game. Cookstown countered by claiming their players had been subjected to sectarian abuse by the Kerry club, prompting Galvin to issue a statement.
‘I would like to 100 per cent confirm for the record that I was spat on during the game,’ said Galvin.
‘Furthermore I will utterly and unequivocally distance myself from claims made regarding verbal abuse during the game.’
8 Closed doors, May 2nd, 2015
Normal post-match protocols were not observed when Tipperary denied the Tyrone management access to their dressing room in the aftermath of the Red Hands’ one-point win in the All-Ireland Under 21 final at Parnell Park. ‘There’s a lot of stuff often goes on in these games that Tipperary have to learn,’ claimed the Tipperary boss Tommy Toomey, who was unimpressed by Tyrone’s tactics. ‘We had the boys well versed about what to expect verbally. They’re a fine football team and I don’t really believe that they should be going at that stuff.’
9 One in the eye for Gooch, Sept 25, 2005
After starting brightly, when kicking an early point in the 2005 AllIreland final, Colm Cooper goes to ground clutching his eye.
No one, including Kildare match official Michael Monahan saw the incident but in his autobiography, Cooper claimed that Tyrone goalkeeper Pascal McConnell had left his goal a couple of times previously, jabbing his finger in his face before subsequently making contact with his eye.
10 Mass brawl at Athletic Grounds, June 9, 2018
When the final whistle sounded at the end of extra-time in this summer’s Ulster Under 20 semifinal between Tyrone and Armagh, it prompted an all-in brawl. It came at a heavy price for victors Armagh, who had 10 players suspended for the final with inevitable consequences.
The trauma was comparable to that inflicted by a baseball bat