With grim predictability, the first disciplinary row of the GAA season has raised its head early in the piece. The fact that it swiftly got that head taken clean off it at least wins points for irony. Everyone who has seen the footage of the Limerick full forward Seamus Flanagan shouldering into the jaw of Waterford’s Stephen Bennett last Sunday agrees he deserved a suspension for the act. Everyone except the most one-eyed Limerick supporters plus, crucially, referee Liam Gordon and the Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC).
Gordon decided in real time that the collision was accidental. It was, as ever, open to the CCCC to take the matter further. They didn’t, ultimately. Maybe they didn’t think there was a case to answer, maybe they didn’t think they’d be able to make any charge stick. There is a suggestion doing the rounds that on the referee’s mic, Gordon can be heard shouting “accidental” when the two players come together, which may or may not be taken as proof that he dealt with it at the time.
But in reality, all of this is conjecture. At no stage since Sunday has anybody attached to the GAA’s disciplinary system said anything in public about the incident. In the vacuum, the usual maddening dance played out instead.
On Tuesday, the Irish Independent and RTE carried conflicting reports within a few hours of each other, one saying that Flanagan was probably going to escape censure, the other saying the CCCC were likely to review the incident. Neither report was incorrect. Confusion reigned.
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Not for the first time, the thought struck that the biggest problem with the GAA’s disciplinary system is not the work they do but the way they communicate it to the wider public. On the nuts and bolts of deciding who has transgressed and how they should be dealt with, the system is generally excellent. The correct outcome happens the vast, vast majority of the time.
A few weeks back, just before the start of the championship, the GAA gave the media a briefing on the year to date on the disciplinary front. There had been 288 games between football and hurling at various levels. Arising from those, 62 penalties had been proposed by the CCCC. Of those 62, there ended up being just two cases where the infraction wasn’t proven (ie, the player got off) and one where the penalty was downgraded from a category 4 offence to category 3.
The point is, the system works. Virtually all the time, they get it right. Yes, we can all laugh and pour scorn on the alphabet soup of it all but the committees who do the work are fairly thick-skinned about that stuff. Anyone with a better way of doing things is free to come forward and lay it out anytime they like.
Even the harshest critic of the GAA would have to admit that those numbers are pretty conclusive. But if you go to any of the 18 championship matches this weekend and ask aloud for the percentage of players who’ve got off suspension in 2023, what sort of answers do you think you’ll get? Can you imagine anyone going as low as 3 per cent? Of course not.
That’s because somewhere out there in the mist and spray, there’s still this feeling that a route can be found through the GAA’s disciplinary system if you know the right way to go about it. That you’ll be able to get your lad off if you really put your mind to it. The fact that this is almost never true doesn’t stop the general sense of it going abroad.
The association is clearly frustrated by this — hence feeding the numbers to the GAA press corps on the eve of the championship. But why not go further again? Why not, in the awful phrase of the times, do more to take control of your own narrative?
They could live stream the disciplinary process on the GAA website. Since the pandemic, the majority of these meetings and hearings all happen online anyway
The GAA could do two things at a stroke that would improve communication and squeeze the space for theorising and nonsense suspicion. One, the CCCC could release a statement at an appointed time every week during the championship outlining the incidents from the weekend that are under review.
If there are none, they could make a point of saying so. And, just as importantly, saying why. Don’t leave people wondering what’s happening with Player X. Tell them. Even if nothing is happening with Player X. Especially if nothing is happening.
And two, they could live stream the disciplinary process on the GAA website. Since the pandemic, the majority of these meetings and hearings all happen online anyway. Do that and the next blowhard you hear fulminating about the hoors above in Croke Park can just be pointed at the website. You think the Central Hearings Committee did your boy dirty? Here’s the link. Go on, point out where they went wrong. Knock yourself out.
The GAA line on that suggestion is that it would be unfair to open up volunteers to that sort of public scrutiny when they are giving up their free time. Not sure it quite holds water, all the same. For one thing, the players are volunteers too. For another, is it really that big a cost when compared to the benefit? If nothing else, you’d fairly cut down on counties chancing their arm if they knew they’d be doing it in a space where anyone could tune in and watch.
Ultimately though, neither of these moves is likely to be one the GAA makes. And maybe they’re right. Maybe this is the correct way to go about things. Stay quiet. Brief off the record. Let these small firestorms burn themselves out organically. Which is fine, as it goes. Doing the work of the CCCC is enough hassle with being saddled with a public profile on the back of it.
The longer we go on being okay with players getting hit in the head, the more chance there is of it one day being serious
But a player got hit in the head last Sunday with everybody watching. And the player who laid the hit on him is free to play this weekend. Now, you can think that’s fair or it’s unfair, you can have your own personal preference on it. But the one thing you can’t do is disagree with the GAA’s stance, for the simple reason that at no point this week has anyone in the GAA articulated one. In its absence, we must presume they’re okay with what happened.
But the longer we go on being okay with players getting hit in the head, the more chance there is of it one day being serious. And when that happens, the GAA will react the way other contact sports have already reacted.
They will crack down, they will introduce tackle heights, they will insist that accidental hits are just as worthy of a red card as deliberate ones. The game will go through a period of change until headshots disappear, during which suspensions will be handed down for offences that look and feel a lot less dangerous than last Sunday’s.
Decisions on those suspensions will be made by the CCCC of the day. More and more, it feels like the current system is quietly storing up trouble for future iterations.
