Forde faces CHC hearing over stamping incident

Wexford footballer Matty Forde is now facing a Central Hearings Committee (CHC) investigation over the alleged stamping on Offaly's Shane Sullivan in the Leinster football semi-final last Sunday week.

The CHC met last night and are today expected to give Forde notice of his entitlement to a disciplinary hearing before deciding on any potential punishment.

Forde will have three days to respond and, if he does, the hearing will almost certainly be before Saturday's third round qualifier, which sees Wexford play Fermanagh.

There was controversy last week when Forde was free to play against Monaghan on Saturday evening (where he scored 0-6 of Wexford's 0-8 total) - prompting criticism of the GAA's protracted disciplinary process.

Yesterday, however, GAA president Nickey Brennan defended that process. The CHC had to await the report of match referee Jimmy White, which they didn't get until Wednesday of last week, by which stage, says Brennan, it was too late to arrange a disciplinary hearing ahead of last weekend's game.

"The situation is quite clear," he said. "If the referee's report shows he hasn't dealt with the incident, clarification is first sought from the referee, and the committee in charge can then deal with the issue. I know in this instance the referee was spoken to, but I'm not prepared to state what the outcome was.

"All that comes down to rules and procedures, which we have to follow. The referee has so long to send in his report, then we have to seek clarification from him, and the player then has a number of days to request an oral hearing on the matter.

"Because of the rules in place at the moment, this (last night) was the earliest we could have taken all that on board. Perhaps it is something we can look at, but the committee charged with this can only operate within the timeline laid down under rule."

While the CHC will have reviewed the video evidence of the incident, they also have to decide if it was intentional.

There was further controversy when the incident was shown repeatedly on the giant screens at Croke Park, and Brennan reiterated the GAA's policy of prohibiting such practices - even though it appeared to happen again in Sunday's Ulster final at Croke Park.

"We'll be trying hard to adhere to that and prevent errors like when the Matty Forde incident was repeatedly shown. But there was only one incident on Sunday which maybe was an issue, over on the sideline when Christy Toye was jostled aside by Ciarán McKeever. But the policy is quite clear in that incidents like that are not to be shown."

Brennan also commented on the Munster final in Killarney, when a late shot by James Masters caused considerable confusion before referee Joe McQuillan disallowed the score.

"I only saw the television footage and analysis, which suggested the ball was wide. But I think the only issue was only one umpire waved it wide. If anything that was just a lack of communication between the two umpires.

"We'll just to continue to work on getting greater consistency. But I really don't think video evidence is practical in these kinds of matters. It would be almost impossible in a hurling context, but all this presupposes you have a large number of cameras at every game.

"But the overall number of instances is still relatively small, and it's hard to justify huge expenditure on what is not really a serious and widespread problem. Having said that, we are continuing to pursue the idea of an electronic scoring mechanism. But that's not proving easy, especially in hurling with the speed of the ball."

Finally, Brennan updated the progress of the two committees looking into the football and hurling competition structures.

"They've had a number of meetings, and I'd expect to be hearing back from them by the end of July. Then they'll put those ideas into the public domain for debate."