New rules required to tackle gamesmanship

On Gaelic Games:A lack of sportsmanship within the GAA is nothing new and the general reluctance to accept punishment when rules are broken suggests a deep-rooted resistance to discipline

IT IS in a way possible to feel sorry for Aidan O'Mahony. His almost balletic interpretation of someone who had been caught in a sniper's cross-hairs probably seemed the obvious thing to do at the time. Cork's Donncha O'Connor slapped/caressed the Kerry centre back's face, triggering a slow-motion realisation on his opponent's part that the stage was set nicely for some performance art.

O'Connor got red-carded after a quick consultation between referee and linesman and on the match went with both teams now reduced to 14.

It's possible to argue O'Connor might have escaped dismissal had Kerry's Darragh Ó Sé not already been given his marching orders and that O'Mahony's dive helped render the foul all the more vivid but you can't raise your hand to an opponent and then make contact with his face and argue too vehemently about a miscarriage of justice.

For O'Mahony the incident hasn't gone away. It's been played and replayed and there are - unusually in these matters - even those within the county who feel the player embarrassed himself and lowered his reputation as sportsman.

Yet it wasn't exactly a ground-breaking moment as this sort of behaviour is commonplace in the games and doesn't always attract widespread attention. But, like a temporary tryst uncovered in the broom cupboard at an office party, the unexceptional nature of the indiscretion hasn't prevented a great deal of finger-pointing.

Consequently O'Mahony will be more remembered for his role in the situation than O'Connor, who suffered the more severe sanction. There is however a level of hypocrisy about this. At an elite level, Gaelic games are played purely for success and silverware. It's not unusual for managers to encourage and celebrate aggression that by its nature is going to cross the line at some stage.

Fouling is understood as a remedy of last resort for players who can't cope with the ability of opponents. Violence is accepted as occasionally necessary to put manners on markers, who may be guilty of provocation, and depressingly mean-spirited verbal abuse is considered an acceptable part of the weaponry brought into big matches.

Is all of this really a new development? The GAA was founded as a separatist organisation. In the context of the late 19th century, the origins of the GAA and its attachment to cultural exclusivity are all too plain to see.

Faced with sports that were unapologetically instruments of imperialism, Michael Cusack and his fellow founders organised games, which would take the struggle for independence to the playing fields. British games emphasised sportsmanship and discipline for entirely their own reasons. Sportsmanship was a code or etiquette understood by the upper classes, whose preserve organised games originally was. Discipline was useful in a military context and also later when introducing customs of the empire to the colonies.

A cursory glance at the reasons for reviving native games in Ireland reveals ordinary people were being excluded from the establishment organisation of athletics, Cusack's initial sporting interest, and tat the nationalist movement wanted separate pastimes as well as the politics of separatism.

Dr Croke's famous letter accepting the position of patron of the fledgling GAA is celebrated more for the unintentional humour of some of its assertions but the archbishop's underlying views are nonetheless crystal clear in their distaste for England and "her masher habits and such other effeminate follies as she may recommend".

Lacking the imperial inclination towards sportsmanship and discipline, it's arguable the extent to which the early GAA was as interested in those qualities.

Modern-day evidence is all around us. A shocked family friend was last month of the opinion that a rugby team just wouldn't have picked Paul Galvin again after the notorious episode of his flagrant disrespect for match referee Paddy Russell.

It's questionable how firmly rugby continues to hold to such standards in the professional era but the sport remains a kind of Shangri La for those interested in upholding discipline within the GAA - a place where rules are accepted and match officials respected.

We only have to look at how resistant the GAA community is to accepting punishment for breaking rules - as opposed to urging its exercise against others - to know that the concept of sportsmanship has no real traction. Even in the O'Mahony-O'Connor matter, Cork are taking a starkly obvious red-card offence to a hearing.

Diving, feigning injury, felon setting or whatever you want to call it is simply another area of activity - specifically punishable under the rules of the association - that players and teams deploy in order to gain an advantage over their opponents.

Like fouling and abusing match officials it will only be stopped when it becomes an unprofitable exercise. After a summer of initial promise, the GAA's disciplinary system soon got into trouble and strict but fair suspensions began to evaporate. The link between misbehaviour and punishment isn't currently strong.

That of course is no reason not to try to deal with the problem under consideration. For a start the rule book stipulates "to attempt to achieve an advantage by feigning a foul or injury" is punishable by a yellow card. In the context of last Sunday's match that would have been a second yellow for O'Mahony and consequent dismissal.

There have been calls for referees to get tough on this but the main problem is, by its nature, the offence is hard to identify at the time. A player goes down and a referee can decide it wasn't a foul but can he decide that it was a deliberate attempt to achieve unfair advantage? Where possible, yellow cards should obviously be administered but for this offence video evidence is vitally important. The disciplinary system isn't however set up to deal with it because, as a yellow card offence, there doesn't appear much point in pursuing it, as no suspension would flow from its prosecution.

It is therefore imperative that if the GAA want to do something about this sort of gamesmanship, it's going to have to change the rule book to upgrade the punishment and make investigations worth conducting or else introduce some system of punishing cumulative offences - something the association seems to have always had a problem in agreeing.

Otherwise there's no point in all of the hand-wringing unless we expect the likes of Aidan O'Mahony to wither away into a decline in the face of our stern disapproval.

smoran@irish-times.ie