Seán Moran: GAA approaching crisis point on reputational damage

Nearly 30 years ago, then Dublin captain Tom Carr emerged as a cause celebre. He was sent off in the 1993 league final replay for kicking Donegal’s Brian Murray. It was a blatant offence for which he could offer no mitigation beyond a reasonably well-behaved disciplinary resumé.

Dublin won the league a man short and prepared for the imminent championship. Carr got a sizeable six months, fairly out of kilter with similar transgressions, and embarked together with the Dublin county executive on a quest to get the suspension reduced.

Eventually, it was pared back to four months which expired with the All-Ireland semi-final against Derry, a match lost by Dublin and, as he never got his place back the following year, the ban effectively ended Carr’s career.

The punishment was notable for two things: first, its stringency which the old games administration committee (GAC) was keen to defend; and second, the ramshackle nature of the disciplinary process which left the player at times caught in what felt — certainly to him — like some labyrinthine Kafkaesque nightmare.

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The old structures were clearly insufficient but it took another 12 years for a reformed disciplinary process to be adopted and its provisions have been seen to swing in the opposite direction, giving apparently endless opportunities for exculpation.

The GAC’s argument in favour of the severity of the ban was that it had happened “off the ball”, which resulted in a doubling from the minimum of three months. It was also suggested at the time that the televising of the match had also had an influence.

This wasn’t even live coverage but a highlights programme later that night.

Anyone with a mobile phone is now a ‘citizen journalist’ and throwing a veil of secrecy over borderline-psychotic interludes is no longer feasible

You can appreciate the logic in any such approach. Foul play and violence on the field cause reputational damage to the association and its games.

Three decades later, it appears that everything is televised. Something once as obscure as a provincial intermediate club hurling quarter-final can now aspire to a starring role on RTÉ News, as happened with the Naomh Barróg * vs Oulart The Ballagh match on Saturday.

Anyone with a mobile phone is now a “citizen journalist” and throwing a veil of secrecy over borderline-psychotic interludes is no longer feasible.

Thus, what used to be one of the great facilitators of misbehaviour — “nobody’s watching” — is disabled.

You get the sense that GAA officialdom is frustrated and weary with the constant flow of shakily captured delinquency that pops up on social media and the zero-to-60 speeds at which that becomes national media. Obscurity no longer filters out reputational damage.

Ultimately, that is for the best. It would simply be treating the symptoms rather than the disease were the association’s various units to insist, like Bob Dylan the other night, that everyone attending a club match deposit their phone in a sealed bag.

A friend said consolingly a couple of months ago when the referee coursing season was in full swing, that he knew I was writing about this stuff “every couple of months”.

A slight exaggeration but he was able to recite most of the script: zero tolerance, make the punishment bite, when fixing the deterrent bar, err on the side of draconian and purge watery disciplinary committees.

Reputational damage is at the heart of infraction 7.2 (e) “Misconduct considered to have discredited the association”. Unfortunately, the rule has become somewhat marginalised as a catch-all provision for other, less easily categorised offences — regardless of the discredit they bring down on the GAA.

In the marketplace for games, the sight of players, match officials and spectators getting involved in varying forms of misbehaviour can’t have a positive impact on parents’ choices

It has also been discouraged by the increasing tendency towards legal scrutiny both on behalf of poachers and by the gamekeepers of the Rules Advisory Committee.

Harming the association’s reputation is, however, a serious matter. In the marketplace for games, the sight of players, match officials and spectators getting involved in varying forms of misbehaviour can’t have a positive impact on parents’ choices — any more than concussive and unpunished headshots do in the case of rugby.

It’s ironic because the GAA in general has high regard for all of its virtues and isn’t slow to project them and yet time and time again, these positives are undermined by the reckless disorder in evidence at a small minority of its games. And the organisation appears powerless to inhibit, let alone stop it.

“We play hundreds of games every weekend in a spirit of enjoyment for both players and spectators,” said Leinster chairman Pat Teehan on Sunday, responding to the scenes in Parnell Park, “and unfortunately, we get isolated incidents which are rightly highlighted in the media and elsewhere, because they have no place in our games. We must deal with them in as harsh a manner as we can, but also in a fair manner.”

In October GAA president Larry McCarthy was asked about the reputational damage of misbehaviour and made the same point.

“It does us no good, I can assure you but then, and I’m not defending anything here, in the overall number of games we hold, how many of them go awry like that? Very, very few. But they do get highlighted, and rightly highlighted, and then we deal with them appropriately and quickly.”

That it is a minority is not a compelling defence even though it may seem so to someone who has to organise and administer extensive fixture lists. Unfortunately, unacceptable incidents erupt too often and present an image of an organisation unable to control itself.

Similarly, the natural inclination to be even-handed — successfully navigating disciplinary actions can be like walking on broken glass — does not sit comfortably with the need to be unambiguously harsh on rule breakers.

Perpetrators are often active participants in the community and suspension would of course be awkward but maybe the direction to take is collective punishment of the team

Why do so many people apparently believe that it’s acceptable to behave in a manner that would get them arrested were it replicated on the street? It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that there is no real fear of consequences.

GAA attitudes are in ways supportive of perpetrators. Emphasising that a two-year suspension from the “functions and privileges of membership” is a serious penalty and downplaying that the rule book also encompasses the consideration of “debarment” and “expulsion” is instinctive leniency.

Perpetrators are often active participants in the community and suspension would of course be awkward but maybe the direction to take is collective punishment of the team.

Were a club’s competitive progress jeopardised, indifference to consequence would pretty quickly stop providing tacit encouragement.

In the meantime, the far wider collective of the GAA nationally is being routinely held up to criticism and ridicule.

sean.moran@irishtimes.com

* An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified one of the clubs involved.