Violence is as old as the GAA – as is the usual hand-wringing

The GAA is in one of its periodic bouts of hand-wringing about violence. If the past is any guide it won’t last long. That’s because violence and the peculiar ambivalence it provokes within Ireland’s biggest sporting organisation are, as the ad says, bound together.

It is violence we’re talking about too. There’s no point trying to dilute a punch with words like “rivalry” or “needle” or that classic catch-all cop-out called “passion”. If a picture paints a thousand words then recent social media videos make it dispiritingly plain that only one is required – thuggery.

A Co Down club game last week between Ballyholland and Downpatrick descended into a vicious melee. It came just days after a Derry club game between Slaughtneil and Ballinderry spilled over into the crowd.

They are the latest in a series of incidents which in any other context would paralyse a sport to its core with shamefaced introspection. But not the GAA, which is always and very self-consciously different even when it comes to stupid posturing savagery that soils its reputation.

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Those adjudicating on disciplinary matters must get on with their lives once these committee meetings are over

That difference is stamped all over a broadly circulated video taken at the Ballyholland-Downpatarick game. By any standards how the violence escalates is shocking. But it’s the “ho-hum” tone of the onlookers talking over the pictures that’s almost as striking.

There’s an “oh s--t” or two, but plenty of laughter, and at one stage a notably resigned “there we go”. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world for grown men to charge into a car park and punch the heads off each other.

It’s when the fighting escalates that someone else ventures the real nugget that the match is a replay “because this happened last time”.

Rote outrage

Anyone who’s ever had any sort of contact with Gaelic games recognises that tone of resignation. It’s everything you need to know about how institutionalised such behaviour has become. Scale makes specific incidents stand out, but aggro is as old as the association. As is the usual response.

Condemnatory noises get made, rote outrage about people letting themselves down or such behaviour having no place in the association. The irony-free cherry on top is supposed bafflement as to how this stuff keeps happening.

Claiming to be dumbfounded takes real cynicism. It happens because it’s allowed to happen. Not officially of course. Turning a blind eye to violence isn’t official policy – just official practice. Which means real gall is required to then wondering about the association’s loose relationship with regulation.

Sure enough, these latest incidents have produced plenty of noise. There have been the usual committee meetings and various sub-committee statements issued in a tried and trusted bureaucratic game of pass the parcel.

But there’s been little or no actual accountability of a sort that might act as an effective future deterrent.

There are regulatory excuses for that, not least of which is the localism that makes the GAA so special in the first place. Those adjudicating on disciplinary matters must get on with their lives once these committee meetings are over and rulebook martyrdom is cold comfort wherever you are.

There’s also self-interest when it comes to penalising county players in particular, not to mention the good old-fashioned political horse-trading which is the very essence of GAA administration. But the outcome is a disciplinary picture which basically boils down to how much you can get away with.

Political expediency

So we get hearings turning into fraught exercises in political expediency. Rule books, referee reports and camera films get poured over for loopholes and get-outs by clubs and counties affecting indignation at penalties which in reality are so trivial they deter no one.

It’s no wonder that players take that get-away-with-it attitude to its cynical conclusion on the pitch. If they know underhand behaviour of the sort that blights Gaelic football is particular isn’t going to cost them it’s an obvious cue for the sort of frontier justice we see spattered across our media.

Turning a blind eye has conjured the cult of the “hard man”, usually some hero whose talents run from niggling and sledging an opponent to distraction or if that fails blindsiding them with a sly cowardly dig which in any other environment would get the cops called.

Divorcing that glorification from the sort of scenes that once again have flared up into the public consciousness is impossible. And it's recognisable around the country, a long way from some isolated blight "up there" in Ulster.

Enough really should be enough. There's no point talking afterwards if someone gets seriously hurt or worse

This absurd and dangerous ambivalence is the most fundamental problem facing the GAA. Yet once the initial heat of these stories dies down, the root issue gets conveniently shelved in favour of comparatively trivial debates about rule changes or championship draws.

That’s partly due to a lazy habit of portraying this as some insurmountable problem, like it’s some post-colonial requirement of Gaeldom to have players defending the honour of their own little patch by behaving like animals.

But while the GAA is unique, it’s not as unique as it likes to believe. Just as with any game, anywhere, if the potential cost is greater than the potential reward then people respond accordingly.

Localism

It’s incomprehensible that representative sides in any other code could be involved in scenes that have occurred recently and expect to escape lengthy bans from competition. The GAA should expect no less of itself, starting by acknowledging that localism doesn’t work with regulation.

Adopting a national perspective on disciplinary issues is easier said than done. But a first step is surely central administrative’s acceptance that it has a role in shattering delusions about violence being some vital expression of Irish manhood which comes with tacit official indulgence.

Enough really should be enough. There’s no point talking afterwards if someone gets seriously hurt or worse. The only problem is that all this has been said umpteen times before and nothing’s changed. It leads to the suspicion that ambivalence is really just a GAA synonym for enthusiasm.