Dublin’s James McCarthy unlikely to face wrath of CCCC

It will be a surprise if Dublin’s James McCarthy ends up being suspended for the incident with Martin McElhinney after which he was sent off during Saturday’s AFL Division One match against Donegal.

There has been a lot of comment on the Dublin player’s use of the hand to push his opponent away and how in slow motion his thumb makes contact with McElhinney’s eye area and speculation that he may be charged with eye gouging.

Defenders of McCarthy maintain that slow motion distorts what happened and is an unfair way of levelling a charge. In this case they may have a point.

Obviously, in general terms the use of slow motion can be a valuable aid to identifying what took place when used in conjunction with ordinary footage but the slowing down of incidents can also give a spurious appearance of intent.

Viewed in real time, the scuffle between the players takes place and McCarthy’s pushing of his hand in the face occurs in one movement. No observer can say definitively whether he intended to do damage but it’s not clear from the footage.

Mitigate punishment

Perhaps sensibilities in this matter are overly influenced by rugby and the greater number of instances of gouging in that game.

Under rugby rules there is a specific charge of ‘making contact with the eyes and/or the eye area’ and intention is no defence although it can mitigate punishment.

In Gaelic games however there is no such infraction.

No-one would argue that instances of gouging are unknown within football but the opportunities for them to occur are far fewer than in rugby given the nature of the respective games.

When Dublin’s Philip McMahon’s hands were seen around Kieran Donaghy’s eyes in last September’s All-Ireland final, the decision was that he had a case to answer and he accepted the proposed one-match suspension (so the matter never went to a hearing) but denied intent.

In the absence of a specific infraction of ‘gouging’ the incident was dealt with under Category III infraction and Rule 5.17, ‘to behave in any way which is dangerous to an opponent’.

On a practical level, if referee Conor Lane’s report refers specifically to McCarthy pushing McElhinney in the face the matter will rest as there is no longer a mechanism to revisit decisions even when believed to be overly lenient.

If there is no specific reference to the incident it will be up to the Central Competitions Control Committee to decide if the Dublin player has a case to answer. It would be a serious move on the part of the CCCC to decide on the basis of the match footage that McCarthy had a case to answer for something as grave as eye gouging, particularly as there is no rule of strict liability like in rugby. In other words he would have to be charged with intent.

Referee’s report

It further supports McCarthy’s case that McElhinney doesn’t react as if his eye has been attacked whereas any player who feels threatened in such a way will usually instinctively make it clear.

Unless the referee’s report, which wasn’t received yesterday because of the Easter Bank Holiday, contains further information it’s likely – and desirable – that the matter will be at end.