SIDELINE CUT:In an increasingly violent society, where random attacks and assaults are a daily occurrence, it is up to elite footballers to set the right example, writes Keith Duggan

AS THE debates and recriminations about the Dublin-Meath Fight Club scenes raged on and on this week, I thought about a Roscommon man lying in Victoria Hospital, gravely injured after a beating he took from some charmers on the prowl in Belfast.

You may well have heard about Paul Newton, who was assaulted late at night in downtown Belfast after attending the Connacht-Ulster rugby match in Ravenhill.

Those of us who know the big Roscommon man did a double take when the radio bulletins broadcast the sickening news, because although he is a sportsman, the oval ball did not feature highly on his curriculum vitae. In the northwest of Ireland, Paul is generally known as a basketball player and a football player and, also, as one of the funniest men you could hope to meet. For years, he played hoops with Sligo All-Stars and, win or lose, the highlight of home matches was Newton's impromptu singing, telling the story of the game to the tune of a contemporary pop song.

Six-foot-five-inches tall, tough and big- hearted and frequently gasping for a smoke at the tail end of overtime games, he was such a pain in the backside to play against that he was regularly assigned the task of marking the American moneymen. He gave as good as he got. He also played on a St Mary's team in the Sligo football championship.

I hadn't seen Paul for years but, out of the blue, I got an email from him a couple of weeks ago. As a loyal Roscommon man, he wrote to take me to task on the tone of an article I had written on the John Maughan resignation. He argued, with some validity, that it gave no voice to the Roscommon people who paid in through the turnstiles, and he objected to the fact that many commentators on the issue had used the term "thugs" in describing the behaviour of the fans at some of Roscommon's recent matches.

That was just a couple of days before the Belfast rugby match and the terrible news the big man had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, another victim of the late-night thirst for ultra violence that is sweeping this country, impervious to any border.

Flash forward, then, to the scenes in Navan last Sunday. At the hurling final in Limerick, there was much excited chat about the latest melee to bring disgrace to the GAA nation. As it turned out, the hurling match was of such transcendent quality that all thought of the football punch-up soon evaporated. But that night on the television it dominated, and it has not gone away since.

Paul Caffrey made some fair points during the week. It is true the focus has almost entirely been on the Dublin team. Also, the fight was not as bad as it seemed. What we got was the usual tedious posturing and shaping. Hardly an angry shot thrown. Handbag stuff, as they used to say on The Sunday Game.

And what about the children of Ireland? Well, they probably rushed in to see the edited highlights with their dads only to walk out in disgust at having quit a game of Grand Auto Theft Raider in order to catch this sorry bout of flailing fists. The row itself was not particularly vicious. But that is not the point.

It has been a chastening few weeks for Dublin. The county board might consider releasing the standard Monday morning apology along with the Thursday night team from now on, just to save on administration.

As Caffrey points out, Dublin matches are treated to saturation coverage. This summer, they will play in front of crowds exceeding those that watch the Premiership elite or the millionaire baseball sluggers in Yankee stadium.

The Dublin football team is special. They make the championship. For the GAA, Dublin is the goose that lays the golden egg. That is possibly why the punishment meted out to the Meath and Dublin players was so lame. It suits the GAA just fine that Dublin keep on winning as far as the All-Ireland semi-finals, drawing full houses to Croke Park in the process. Whether they make it to September or not is immaterial because the All-Ireland final will sell out irrespective of their presence. You could understand how the Dublin squad could sort of feel used and, in this instance, hung out to dry by the association and, of course, by the squinty fiends behind the laptops.

It is the business of the Dublin football team and management to decide upon the manner they adopt as they go about playing the game of Gaelic football. Sport has always had its bad-ass teams and hard men. It is full of examples of athletes thriving in the role of the dark anti-hero, on the classic us-against-the-world mentality. How Dublin present themselves is up to them but it would be a shame if it detracts from another fair point Caffrey made: they are primarily a fine, ball-playing side.

On the radio all week, former Meath and Dublin football players, who were no shrinking violets in their heyday, sounded genuine when they voiced their disgust at what they had witnessed. And they spoke about the atmosphere in the stands as well as on the field: simmering aggression and anger that was genuinely dark. Perhaps they felt just a breath of the anger we see and hear about every day. Ireland is becoming faster and more violent. You hear the terror in people's voices when they ring up Joe Duffy to tell about the kid gangs loitering and the lassies fighting and the hardcore drinking.

You hear about the murders, the sad, poisonous stories of failed romance soured to the point of hatred, and the random shootings.

And then you hear about people like Paul Newton, people set upon on the streets for no other reason than they happen to be there.

This is the country we live in now and it is getting angrier. And Caffrey, as a member of the Garda, experiences it in a lot more detail than most of us.

Gaelic games are supposed to be an escape from all that. They are supposed to be a reflection of the better side of Irish tradition and nature. For the most part, they remain that. For the most part, the Dublin football team are an exemplary part of that.

Playing for Dublin is a deep commitment and an honour and does carry with it a certain responsibility. Because when the Dublin football team starts shaping up as though it is two in the morning and the chairs are flying across the dancehall, this country sits up and takes notice and makes comment. That may not be fair but that is how it is.

It is not Dublin's responsibility to the game that matters. It is their responsibility to themselves, as adults and as sportsmen and as a group of people who are setting out to try and achieve something to carry with them for the rest of their ordinary lives.

We see countless examples of how cheaply people treat other people in contemporary Ireland. We see countless examples of the appalling lack of respect. When Dublin and Meath got tangled up the last day, they in turn set an example, whether they meant to or not, for the anonymous masses.

And God forbid that even one nut job or one angry, lonely kid saw glory in the latest GAA "melee" before he got fuelled up on the fizz and amphetamines and headed out for the night. There is plenty of real and deadly fighting going on in the cities and towns without the best footballers in Ireland simulating it on Sunday afternoons.

When the championship starts, the old question will rear its head: How good are Dublin? Well one thing is for certain after last Sunday: they are better than that.