Seán Moran: Is GAA careless in enforcing suspensions?

Dublin have been blazing a media trail this summer. Not content with the conventional stuff during the early part of the season – how they have destroyed the fabric of the Leinster football championship and what has happened to their hurlers – the county has been delivering reams of what we used to call newsprint for their off-field initiatives.

At this stage Diarmuid Connolly must be all the more profoundly regretting his push on match official Ciarán Branagan, as despite his evident desire to wave the traffic past on this particular controversy his own camp seems reluctant to let it go.

Manager Jim Gavin’s comments on the unfairness of its broadcast coverage revived the matter just after the player and county appeared content to accept the 12-week suspension – and in the process started a spat in the Sunday Game.

There followed Jonny Cooper’s media appearance on Monday of this week when he almost casually referred to Connolly’s presence at training and how his suspended team-mate was getting along.

The GAA isn’t the only sporting context where politics matters

---

GAA undermining its own disciplinary system by furtiveness

---

Seán Moran: Connolly case shows limitations of disciplinary process

---

GAA weekend that was: Is Leinster getting competitive?

---

“Diarmuid is around,” he said. “Not around for everything, he’s involved in the training aspects, as in the on-field things. But then he’s on his own training programme with gym-based stuff and obviously keeping up his own conditioning. He’s obviously not going to get any game time, if we are to progress, so it’s just trying to stay at that level.”

The problem with this intermittent level of involvement is that it breaches the letter of the rule under which Connolly was suspended, which provides 7.3 (c) III (a) for suspension from “all functions, privileges and competitions under the association’s control”.

He needn’t worry though. The strong sense when it comes to the administration of this rule is that although it covers training, no one is actually going to organise a bust and report anyone for not observing the terms of his punishment.

Controversy

Back in April there was the controversy of Wexford manager David Fitzgerald's eight-week ban from the same activities as Connolly. The authorities made it clear privately that once the suspension was in force there would be no attempts made to monitor its strict enforcement (beyond match days) even though it was known that he was attending training sessions in some capacity.

A wealth of anecdotal evidence indicates that similar suspensions in other counties are not strictly – or at all – observed either.

The disinclination to police these suspensions can be understood. They’re actually a matter for the individual counties in that the infraction being committed is a separate one of not obeying the terms of the ban rather than what led to it in the first place. And what are the chances of a county taking to task its senior manager or one of his players?

This is a point that formed the ideological basis of GAA director general Páraic Duffy’s decision to launch an association-wide debate on payment to managers: either enforce rules or don’t have them.

In that particular case more than five years ago the GAA voted to enforce the rules and re-affirm a commitment to amateurism but in effect continue with the practice of turning a blind eye to widespread payments.

Unfortunately what’s happening at the moment is more of the same disparity between rules and practice and it’s not just the fault of Connolly and Fitzgerald, who are just highest-profile subjects this year.

An argument was made at the time of the Tipperary-Wexford match, which led to Fitzgerald’s suspension, that managers and coaches realistically have more in common with players than administrators and this should be reflected in match bans rather than time-based suspensions, which are handed down to officials, who break rules on governance and other protocols.

Were that to be accepted at next year’s congress, it would do away with the embarrassment of rules that are not enforced.

Broken the rules

Congress needs to decide in a variation on the amateurism question – and it is hoped in a more honest way – whether delegates want a manager found to have broken the rules to be suspended just for match days or from everything, training, media duties, fundraisers, etc.

The same applies to Connolly. If there is no appetite to prevent him from all activities within the association, why not make the punishment for what he did simply applicable to match days?

One administrator posed a reasonable caveat in this respect: the blanket, time-based suspension Connolly is serving prevents him from playing at all levels and in all codes so is it acceptable that someone found to have crossed the line in his behaviour towards a match official be allowed line out with his club or other team.

That could be quite easily included in an amended rule, either prescribing what in Connolly’s case would be a three-match ban for the competition in which it was earned – together with the stipulation that he play for no other team while it is in force – or redefine the 12-week suspension as being from playing, travelling with the team to matches and being in the dressingroom.

Rumpus

This would leave a player free to train, attend meetings, coach the under-10s and open the sale of work.

Dublin's contribution to the work of the media this week also encompassed the rumpus over the venue for this weekend's hurling qualifiers. It took bottle to highlight the unfairness of a young team having to play the All-Ireland champions in their own back yard, but they had a point. The county's hurlers are not obliged like the footballers by the demands of other counties to busy the box office in Croke Park and must travel around for matches.

They had initially been told they’d get a neutral venue but ultimately ended up getting an away draw due to the logistical demands of the double bill – you can’t expect Semple Stadium to function for a big match if you send its volunteer base off to watch Tipp in Portlaoise.

Dublin hurlers – and their anticipated fate – were taken for granted and it’s unreasonable to expect them to be happy about that.

smoran@irishtimes.com