Contempt for authority breeds violence in GAA

GAA presidents are occasionally asked for their views on ridiculous subjects. In recent memory, there is the example of an incumbent being pressed on the viability of hurling as an Olympic sport. Not only did he answer it, but he enthusiastically supported an idea that was deluded even for the fevered imaginations of the game’s hardliners. There are other topics with which the ceremonial head of the Association could more usefully busy themselves.

One is the violence that has scarred Gaelic games in recent weeks – thuggery that is the inevitable outworking of an enormous cultural problem in Gaelic games with attitudes to discipline.

This is a scourge that runs from the instinctive disrespect for match officials that is a feature at every level of the organisation, all the way to clowns windmilling punches into opposing players, officials and spectators.

John Horan need do nothing more than state the obvious, and condemn the incidents that have been properly reported and scrutinised this autumn. The president’s words would not solve the problem, but they could signal the start of a meaningful attempt, at long last, to address a problem that is pervasive.

By rights, reports of some involved in recent controversies refusing to accept punishments should leave us all astonished.

But of course they will appeal, because that is the GAA way. Players have got off seemingly unarguable charges to play in some of the biggest matches of a given season.

Guilt is nothing more than an obstacle to be hurdled, a detail to be finessed in an advantageous way by a cute committee man or a vigilant brief. Disrespect for authority is a continuum. At one end is jawing at referees and officials, a cultural commonplace.

At the other is the free-for-all, the brawl that might involve overweight middle-aged men, women, athletes in their 20s and 30s; anyone who dares to stray into the orbit of the violence could get clattered to the ground.

These incidents do not emerge out of nowhere, but rather from an environment that was, for years, too soft on violence. That has changed in recent generations, with knockabout tales of broken jaws and sneaky off-the-ball punches no longer indulged.

But the more general indulgence of rule-breaking persists, and attempts to resist it are repeatedly frustrated.

There was derisive snorting at one of the proposed rule changes published last week, which would see the introduction of a sin-bin but also the possibility of a player committing three yellow-card infractions before getting sent off.

Of course it was too permissive, but proposing an actual, effective sin-bin of the sort used in rugby would prompt outrage and loud sobs of mourning for football’s lost manliness.

This is all part of the same, sorry story.

And none of it can be corrected without great change. Transforming a tradition will not happen easily, but it can only begin with an official will to make it happen. And that can only manifest itself in punishments that are felt.

The violence between Downpatrick and Ballyholland, concentrated off the field of play near parked cars, should see both clubs banned, not only the individuals involved. The same should go for Stewartstown and Strabane after the pathetic fighting in their match in Tyrone.

And county teams who slump to that level of conduct should be suspended from the competition in which their match was played.

When an Under-20 meeting between Armagh and Tyrone took a Wild West turn last June, it was proposed that 10 Armagh players would be suspended for the Ulster final against Derry.

Eight of them won appeals to play in the game. But if the entire team was banned, if the punishment for their part in a wretched episode was forfeiture of a place in the final, then the seriousness of misbehaviour would become apparent. The resistance to such a sanction would be fierce and rulebooks would be ransacked, but a chronic problem requires daring and drastic solutions. The concentration of shameful crowd involvement has been at Ulster matches, but the rot of indiscipline is not confined to one part of the island.

When fights on the pitch tumble so suddenly, so naturally, towards the sidelines, the brawl spreads as quickly and irresistibly as a milk spill. It is not alarmist to predict serious injury and death if these criminal episodes continue.

The problem of violence in Gaelic games is not endemic, but social media serves a valuable function in highlighting these scandalous cases.

They are sickening to watch but, in a culture too tolerant of indiscipline and too dismissive of authority, they are inevitable.