FINES ranging from £5,000 to £10,000 and suspensions of three months or more for kicking an opponent are to be meted out by the Games Administration Committee of the GAA arising from last month's All Ireland football final fracas.

The 12 strong GAC meet next Monday night and they have summoned 15 players, eight from Meath and seven from Mayo, to the meeting.

The players ordered to attend are Conor Martin, Darren Fay, Enda McManus, John McDermott, Jimmy McGuinness, Trevor Giles, Graham Geraghty and Colm Coyle (Meath) and Mayo's Liam McHale, Ray Dempsey, John Casey, Anthony Finnerty, Colm McManamon, David Brady and Noel Connelly.

None of the players, apart from the automatically suspended McHale and Coyle, are expected to escape suspension at Monday's session. Nor is the GAC expected to take a lenient attitude towards those ordered to attend.

Any suspensions imposed will not date back to the replayed final as most of the players involved have since played in games. And in one ease a player has since received automatic suspension. All bans will either come into operation from Monday's meeting or date back to a player's last game.

Mayo's Anthony Finnerty, who like most of those summoned to appear is accused of allegedly "striking or attempting to strike", has since been sent off in the Galway county final. Finnerty plays his club football for Carroroe and was given marching orders after five minutes of last Sunday week's decider against Oranmore Maree in Tuam.

The heaviest suspensions are certain to relate to kicking offences. In this context, it is believed that one Meath player, or maybe two, could find themselves banned from football until next January at the earliest.

These members of the All Ireland champion side are to be dealt with on the basis of allegedly using the boot during the free for all. This offence merits a minimum suspension of three months.

The case for Mayo's John Casey may have to be heard in his absence. A student in Waterford, he is accused of dangerous play and is unlikely to be in a position to attend the meeting.

McHale is accused of striking with the hand and could be given more than the minimum two weeks for his sending off.

Officers of both county boards are not satisfied that they, or their players, will have to answer all the questions. A Mayo official said yesterday: "The GAC themselves will have to answer a number of questions satisfactorily if justice is to be seen to be done."

Mayo contest that they were never involved "in this sort of thing before" and that "their record speaks for itself". They further claim that they were not responsible for starting the trouble.

Players will be accompanied by the chairmen and secretaries of their county boards. But the respective team managers are not invited to attend.

Meanwhile, Dublin captain John O'Leary considers Sunday's shock defeat by Leitrim in Division Two of the National Football League in Carrick on Shannon as "not a particularly poor performance" by his team.

O'Leary said: "They had more motivation than we could muster up for a match like that at this time of year. It obviously meant a lot to them and you could sense this on the pitch. We gave some silly scores away. I blame myself for the goal. I was wrongly positioned trying to cover other options as the player struck the ball well on the run.

"We are disappointed to start like that. We failed to translate our possession into scores."

. Dublin referee Willie Maloney had his nose accidentally broken on Sunday during the Faughs v Seoil Ui Chonail Boland Cup hurling tournament match at Tymon North. Maloney was struck in the face by a burley and spent the rest of the day in hospital. The match was abandoned.