Croke Park not above the law

As is frequently the case with GAA controversies the current unhappiness between Croke Park and the Garda has its origins in a conjunction of several unfortunate circumstances.

That they should have ended up with a stiff letter from the GAA authorities to the Garda Commissioner and wild charges about the alienation of northern nationalists couldn't have been foreseen when Down and Westmeath agreed to a pre-championship challenge outing last May.

Played in Newcastle, Co Dublin, the match was refereed by Down official Colm Broderick. Westmeath had spent the weekend at CityWest in Dublin and agreed to the challenge if Down would come to Dublin and bring an inter-county referee with them.

The incident at the heart of the controversy involved 19-year-old Westmeath full back Kenny Larkin and Down's veteran All-Ireland winning forward James McCartan. Larkin's jaw was broken in three places, deliberately he alleges, whereas McCartan contends any collision was accidental.

Broderick did not see what happened and couldn't take any action. Westmeath manager Luke Dempsey was furious and asked his Down counterpart Paddy O'Rourke to withdraw his player. McCartan played on. In the aftermath a complaint was made to the Garda and two weeks later an official request that the GAA's Games Administration Committee investigate the affair was made by the Westmeath county board.

This was a matter for GAC because the two counties were from different provinces. Two months were lost as the referee's report was mislaid and the investigation could not proceed until Broderick's account had been considered - even though it was known he had seen nothing.

By August Westmeath were getting annoyed and sent a second letter to GAC. "We could see their player coming on in championship games while our fella was sucking his nourishment through a straw," commented one Westmeath source.

GAC appointed a sub-committee, under the chair of Sligo solicitor Kieran McDermott, to investigate the matter and it decided there was a case to answer.

It was at Croke Park on the day of a meeting of that sub-committee one Saturday in September, attended by McCartan and Down officials, that two plain clothes gardai appeared and tried to speak to the Down player who declined to be interviewed.

The story only appeared last weekend in the Sunday Independent and in the days that followed the focus has been on GAA concern over the actions of the gardaí.

This doesn't appear to have been a particularly well thought out operation by the police. There was no contact with Croke Park to alert the authorities that gardaí wished to interview McCartan after the GAC sub-committee meeting.

Of course the Garda don't have to give such notice but in its absence and without warrants, the GAA authorities were angry about the intrusion onto the their property. If the police wanted to interview McCartan, ran the reasoning, they should have contacted him privately instead of creating a public scene in Croke Park.

These arguments as to the validity of the protocol employed by the gardaí have their merits but the bigger picture remains. A player alleges that because of a serious assault he was unable to play for his county throughout the championship and also suffered difficulties in pursuing his career in that he was inhibited sitting exams that summer.

It is unclear whether the resentment at the action of the gardaí relates to the ham-fistedness of the attempts to interview McCartan or the fact that the matter is the subject of criminal investigation at all. Similarly it isn't known why the PSNI hasn't been asked to do the interviewing in the North given the circumstances but it can be guessed that this would be seen to infringe cross-Border sensitivities.

But the GAA will have to face up to the implications of situations like this. The prospect of coping with the interface between its own rules and procedures and the criminal law will be an ongoing reality. And the Garda won't always be as obliging in providing procedural ambiguity to cloud the affair.

In other words, had the gardaí back in September had their paperwork in order would they have been any more welcome in Croke Park? It's doubtful. One of the issues raised in the letter to the Garda Commisioner was the policy in relation to dealing with sports organisations.

That should be simple enough to answer. Sports organisations should be treated like anyone else. If criminal offences are alleged to have taken place within the ambit of GAA activities the Garda should investigate them as they deem appropriate. Even an organisation as big and pervasive as the GAA can't expect special treatment in how the law is enforced.

Arguments that police investigations compromise the GAA's own procedures are specious. The two processes run on separate tracks and the burden of proof in a criminal case isn't the same as that at a GAC hearing.

Similarly the scare story about players being afraid of gardaí turning up at future disciplinary meetings: if there is a crime to investigate, does it matter where the Garda contact those they wish to interview? The one matter within GAA control that might have taken the heat out of the situation is its own investigation, now running six months after the incident.

It is expected GAC will hand down a decision on the incident soon but it's been a long wait, which gives substance to one possible explanation of why Larkin turned to the law: He might have felt that there wouldn't be sufficient justice in the GAA.