Rory Gallagher had to go - but the issue of domestic violence doesn’t go away just because he has

At a certain point near the end of last week, when it looked like Rory Gallagher was going to ignore the noise and insist on being on the sideline for the Ulster final, it was reasonable to ponder what that would look like. It felt inevitable that he would be the subject of abuse from pockets of the crowd on the day.

Indeed, that was conceivably going to be the least of it.

[ Rory Gallagher steps down as Derry senior football manager ]

The potential for worse felt open-ended. Would there be arguments in the stands? Would some Derry supporters feel they had to stand up for their manager? Could it spill over and get physical? What if there was a row on the pitch? What if it was over near the Derry bench and Gallagher was close by? What was to stop all hell breaking loose?

All idle catastrophising, maybe. But could you say with any confidence that none of it was possible? No – and that was the point. The Ulster final was heading into dark territory, where nobody could say for sure what the worst-case scenario was or how likely it was that the day would end up there. Gallagher’s Friday-night statement that he would be stepping back from his role immediately reduced the temperature around the situation.

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The phrase ‘stepping-back’ was carefully chosen, all the same. Stepping back is not the same as stepping down. It left open the possibility – however remote – that Gallagher would be able to retake his position at some unspecified time in the coming weeks or months. Though it was thought to be highly unlikely over the weekend, it wasn’t out of the question.

It is now, however.

“Derry GAA can today confirm that Rory Gallagher has stepped down as the county’s senior football manager,” read the statement late on Tuesday night. “Ciarán Meenagh will assume the role for the rest of the 2023 season. Derry GAA will be making no further comment at this time.”

What changed over the weekend? On the face of it, not very much. In the eyes of the law, Rory Gallagher is no more guilty of the domestic abuse allegations made by his ex-wife Nicola now as he was last week. This is still a desperately sad, messy family situation in which three young children are caught up. That was true last Tuesday when the Facebook post went up, it was true last Friday, it’s true today.

[ Jim McGuinness: I was deeply saddened to read the social media post that shocked the country ]

[ Derry win Ulster final on penalties against Armagh as Rory Gallagher goes unmentioned ]

But in reality, plenty has changed. Nicola Gallagher’s interview in the Sunday Independent increased the pressure on Rory Gallagher and on Derry GAA. Rightly or wrongly, a Facebook post can have holes picked in it in a way that doesn’t happen with a face-to-face interview in a mainstream Sunday newspaper.

Beyond that, the mood among the grassroots of Derry GAA evolved over the week as well. In conversations with people on the ground in the middle of last week, it was easy to find a portion of them citing ‘trial-by-social-media’. It was even discernible here and there in Clones on Sunday. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone credible saying it out loud now.

Derry will be in the championship for at least the next month. Given their form, it’s pretty likely that they will be playing at least until the beginning of July and probably quite deep into it. In football terms, anything short of an All-Ireland semi-final will be a huge let-down from here. There was no way Derry GAA could have allowed Gallagher to be front and centre for all of that.

But then, even mentioning the football aspect of this whole situation feels small and cheapening. Domestic violence is routinely ignored as a societal problem. It gets swept away all too readily. Though the statistics are appalling – and worsening – it’s never an election issue and it rarely makes the news.

Yet over half of all murders in Ireland in 2021 were domestic violence cases. Women’s Aid had 26,906 contacts in that 12-month period and almost a quarter of a million page visits on their website. Gardaí received 50,000 domestic abuse complaints in 2022 alone. That’s 137 cases a day. And countless more go unreported.

Rory Gallagher could not have continued as Derry manager. But the issue doesn’t go away just because he has.