Does Brian Cody have to behave like this?

It's now well over four years since former GAA president Christy Cooney, in what he described as "the most important launch" of his term of office, unveiled the 'Respect' initiative.

Intended to promote “a new approach of fair play, mutual respect and goodwill to Gaelic football and hurling across all grades,” its purpose was to encourage players from juvenile up to compete fairly and respect each other, their mentors and match officials.

Hardly revolutionary in its ambition, the initiative has however been up against one of the most oppressive aspects of Gaelic games: disinclination to accept rules and their enforcement and effective contempt for objectivity. In other words, behaviour that everyone can dispassionately agree is unacceptable becomes a matter of ambivalence if your own team indulges in it.

The disheartening American football precept of “show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser” appears within Gaelic games to have fostered a corollary: “show me a graceless winner and I’ll show you a winner”.

It's almost as if winning All-Irelands has become a licence to say what you want. A year ago Dublin football manager Jim Gavin after winning the All-Ireland was highly critical of what he felt was an inexplicable disparity between frees conceded by his team and those awarded to them.

He explained the timing of his grievances. “In defeat it’s not the place to be saying it so we were never going to bring it up before this unless we were in a position where we could mention it.”

A year before that Donegal manager Jim McGuinness used the occasion of his post-All-Ireland media conference to pick on a journalist who had done nothing dishonourable but had written a book which didn’t have McGuinness’s blessing.

Much admiration

Yet the guv’nor in such matters – as in most aspects of All-Ireland success – is Kilkenny hurling manager

Brian Cody

. It would be difficult to overstate the scale of Cody’s achievements over a 16-year period. His 10 All-Ireland victories are a record for a GAA manager and equalled on the field only by the greatest player of this, or perhaps any, generation

Henry Shefflin

.

There was much admiration for the manner in which Cody won the battle of wits in the All-Ireland final replay and the manner in which he sent out a team, many of whom have gorged on success, at perfect mental pitch for the challenge.

For many that sentiment turned to dismay when it emerged that the Kilkenny manager had used a press conference, 24 hours later, to attempt to discredit referee Barry Kelly, who had officiated at last month's drawn final and whose award of a free to Tipperary in the dying seconds was much disputed by Kilkenny. Maybe Cody feels, like Gavin, that this is the best time to raise such matters but it causes widespread disappointment – All-Ireland champions are after all admired by a large proportion of the GAA public and especially when they are historically great teams like Kilkenny.

In an interview after the 2009 All-Ireland triumph against Tipperary, which made Kilkenny the first county in 65 years to record a four-in-a-row, Cody was asked – entirely reasonably – by RTÉ's Marty Morrissey for his views on the controversial late penalty that had turned the match.

Readjudicate

The Kilkenny manager replied that you’d be busy if you decided to readjudicate all of the frees in a match. There followed:

“Did you think yourself it was a penalty, Marty?”

“I wasn’t too sure but it did seem a little bit dodgy in the replay.”

“I have no idea, Marty. Did you check all the other frees as well to see were they dodgy? [Uneasy laughter] Maybe you should. Maybe you should.”

“What did you think of the referee overall; do you think he allowed a lot to go?

“Marty, please, give me a break. The referee – we’re supposed to say nothing about referees and I make a habit of saying absolutely nothing about referees. Diarmuid Kirwan, I’m certain in my head was going out to be the very best he possibly could be. You seem to have had a problem with him. You tell me.”

What we can deduce from this is some striking double standards. When a controversial decision has benefited Kilkenny, Cody rigorously opts to say “absolutely nothing” about the referee beyond that he went out “to be the very best he possibly could be”.

When however the controversial call – and for the purposes of the argument I’m saying nothing about the merits of either refereeing decision – adversely affects Kilkenny, it’s alright to launch a swingeing public attack on the match official.

Other decisions

Furthermore if a late decision that went your way might be incorrect, then what about all of the other decisions in the match; in other words, swings and roundabouts. If however a late decision that you deem incorrect goes against Kilkenny that’s “criminal”.

As a postscript, it’s worth noting that Kilkenny clearly have issues with Barry Kelly in respect of controversies in the past three years: the late free that led to Galway’s equaliser in the drawn 2012 All-Ireland final, the two yellow cards that led to Henry Shefflin’s dismissal in last year’s All-Ireland quarter-final and this year’s drawn final.

Equally, though, it’s worth remembering that in two of these cases the controversies have been amplified by Kilkenny themselves with Cody’s comments this week and the decision a year ago to challenge the Shefflin sending-off even though it didn’t carry a direct suspension.

The decision by the Central Hearings Committee to rescind the first yellow card was dubious in that it involved re-refereeing the incident rather than demonstrating that it hadn't happened.

Despite these controversies, Croke Park haven’t yielded to the obvious push to get the Westmeath referee excluded from taking Kilkenny matches.

Ideally Brian Cody would simply apologise to Barry Kelly, let the matter go and spend the winter enjoying his unique achievement but what are the chances of that?

There’s nothing unusual about ultra-successful people sometimes behaving unreasonably. Only one man has managed a county to 10 All-Irelands so we don’t have a comparator to help adjudicate whether Cody’s achievements are inseparable from his taste for settling scores.

But you'd hope not. smoran@irishtimes.com