Darragh Ó Sé: The worst thing about Sunday’s melee is politicians making hay out of it

On Monday morning, my phone beeped with a message from the Pat Kenny radio show. That’s never good. If the Pat Kenny show are ringing up a hobo like me, it probably isn’t because they want to discuss the finer points of midfield play. “So you see, Pat, a lot of teams run set-plays off the throw-in now because it’s the one time the opposition can’t get enough men back ...”

Lo and behold, that wasn’t what they were after. They wanted to know would I like to come on at nine o’clock to talk about the violence in Croke Park on Sunday. And straight away, that told me where we were. We were in one of those situations that comes up every so often. The outside world sees a bit of mileage in a GAA story and they all pile in. You’d think there was nothing else going on in the world.

Nobody in the GAA wants to make out that all-in rows are a good thing. Nobody thinks that. And there’s absolutely nobody defending the eye-gouge on Damien Comer. It was an outrageous act and the CCCC will obviously deal with it severely. There will be punishments handed down and so there should be.

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But GAA people aren’t fools either. They know when something is serious and they also know when people from other walks of life are using the association for their own betterment. Especially when politicians decide to rise themselves up to their full height and start throwing down judgments. It would be nearly comical if it wasn’t so obvious.

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Take Charlie Flanagan for example. Now, Charlie has been around a long while. He is experienced in public life, he knows how everything goes and how everything works. And there he was on Sunday night, going on Twitter and calling for the cops to get involved. “Gardai should investigate violent confrontation in Croke Park. Expect some in @rte & @officialgaa to reduce it to ‘handbags’.”

Now remember, this man used to be the Minister for Justice. This isn’t some nobody spouting off on Twitter and throwing around loose words that mean nothing and have no consequences. God help us — this is somebody that people might think they should take seriously. And what’s he doing with his time? He’s declaring that the Gardaí need to be devoting their time to a spell of pulling and dragging at a sporting event.

[ Gardaí confirm they are not investigating Galway vs Armagh brawl ]

Come on now. We are all grown-ups here. We all know the difference between the hold-me-back stuff we saw on Sunday and actual violence. Again, nobody is saying it’s great stuff, nobody is saying it’s a lovely thing to look at, nobody is suggesting that the GAA shouldn’t punish anyone who has broken the rules.

But getting the Gardaí involved? That’s off-the-wall stuff for anyone to be suggesting, never mind someone who not so long ago was in charge of the force. You can just imagine some young Garda in Fitzgibbon Street on Monday morning being told he has to start ringing around to find out about a row on the pitch down the street the day before. “Ah jaysus ...”

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Catherine Martin had to get involved later in the day on Monday. She was asked about it at some press event and couldn’t help but get in there and grab a piece of the action for herself.

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“The eye-gouging incident is appalling stuff,” she said. “Families go to these games. I know of a five-year-old who was at that yesterday, their first match experience. They should have come home talking about what an amazing experience it was.”

I know she’s the Minister for Sport. I know she was only asked a question and gave an answer. But if we know one thing about politicians, it’s that they are highly-skilled at deflecting when it suits them. She could have let it slide by and said it looked bad but it was a matter for the GAA and they should be left to deal with it themselves. But instead she started going on about families with kids and worrying about what they saw.

I was there on Sunday with my eight-year-old and my 13-year-old. All they saw was a mad, exciting game of football, one they got totally engrossed in while they were waiting on their own county to come out and play Mayo. The eight-year-old kept turning to me and asking, “Who are we shouting for here, Daddy?” I was trying to explain that I was neutral in all this because I wasn’t overly sure yet who I didn’t want to meet down the line (if we get that far).

There is no way any child who was in that stadium on Sunday went away scarred by a row. If you think that, it’s a while since you’ve brought a child to a sporting event. Kids who go to matches care about their team, the result and what sweets they’re getting — and it’s very rarely in that order.

I don’t for one second think that an intelligent woman like Catherine Martin believes any different. That’s the worst thing about all this. The politicians who weigh in on these things do it so that they can get noticed and pick up votes. But it’s all silly beggars and they know well it is.

The Taoiseach got in on the act too. Michéal Martin wasn’t going to let it slip by without having his say: “it was a shocking scene. It was a great game of football and awful that it was marred by what transpired at the end of the game.” He did at least say that the GAA will deal with it through their own procedures but he still had to finish up by calling it “quite disturbing and quite upsetting”.

Was it? Were people really disturbed? Were they even upset? I don’t think that really stacks up. Because when it comes right down to it, what did it amount to? If you actually sit down and watch it and be cold and unemotional about it, what do you see?

Unless there’s a camera angle that I haven’t come across yet, it adds up to one extremely bad act by Tiernan Kelly and an awful lot of pushing and shoving outside of that. Plus Kieran Donaghy in a very loud top that he would have been well within his rights to get a clipping for.

You could see it coming. There were subplots going on all around the field as the game came towards the crescendo at the end. It was building up from the moment Ethan Rafferty took the head off Damien Comer coming for an early ball. Comer put that away in the hard drive and kept it for later.

So when Shane Walsh scored a point soon after the first Galway goal, Comer went in and remembered he owed Rafferty that few bob from earlier and let him know all about it. Rafferty body-slammed Comer for his troubles and Comer actually got a yellow card.

But Comer went way up in my estimation — and I liked him a lot already. He was wise to what the temperature of the game was. Armagh put a lot of store in mouthing and sledging — you could see James Morgan at it the whole time with Walsh and Ciarán Mackin, the sub who came on with the glasses, never shut up yapping at Robert Finnerty. Comer basically said: ‘Well if ye want to go down that road lads, I’m here all day.’

So when the two teams went off towards the Cusack Stand at full-time, it was no surprise that Morgan had plenty to say for himself and that Comer was primed and ready to give it all back to him. And next thing you know, a bit of mouthing leads to a bit of pushing and since everybody’s already running in the one direction anyway, you get what we got.

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But what did we get, really and truly? I have been in the middle of those things. Every player has. Sometimes I’ve seen them get out of control and I’ve seen people get hurt. But there is a massive difference between those kinds of rows and what we saw on Sunday.

I know people will say, “Yeah but the eye-gouge is a disgrace.” And it is. But ask yourself this — if there was no eye-gouge, would there be no outrage? Or would politicians and everybody else still be lining up to have their cut at the melee anyway? I get the feeling they would. They’re having their own free-for-all here and I think the eye-gouge is giving them a nice bit of cover to do it.

Tiernan Kelly did a stupid, terrible thing. He was lucky the consequences weren’t worse for Damien Comer. Nobody is arguing anything else. But the reality of the situation now is that there’s a river of shit flowing down the mountain on to this lad from people who know absolutely nothing about him or the sport or anything to do with the situation at the time. And there is no hiding place on this little island.

I hope we don’t get to a place where the CCCC feels it has to weigh in with loads of suspensions now just because this stuff caused a few politicians to do the Holy Mary Mother Of God routine

You’d think politicians would know that better than anyone. You’d think they’d have a bit more understanding of something that happens in the heat of the moment while tensions are running high. Who are they to comment on someone’s life like that? It shows an awful lack of imagination on their part to be getting stuck in for the sake of making a headline. It doesn’t say much for them that they have so little to be concerning themselves with.

For the GAA and for those of us who were there and who were watching on television, it’s an awful pity that this stuff is being allowed to take away from what was 100 minutes of pure entertainment. The Kerry v Mayo game after it couldn’t hold a candle to it. It was one of the best games I’ve been at for a few years and both teams deserve huge credit.

The transgressions should be dealt with. The punishments should be handed down. The row should be assessed in detail and with a fair eye. I hope we don’t get to a place where the CCCC feels it has to weigh in with loads of suspensions now just because this stuff caused a few politicians to do the Holy Mary Mother Of God routine. Whatever decision they make should be fair and rational.

It would be nice if everyone could just grow up and cop on a bit.