Respectful silence speaks louder than words

Christy Cooney described the Respect initiative as the most important launch of his presidency in 2010, but clearly it’s not working out the way he intended

IT’S MORE than two years ago, now, but at the end of January 2010 Christy Cooney described the unveiling of the Respect initiative as “the most important launch” of his presidency.

Intended to foster “a new approach of fair play, mutual respect and goodwill to Gaelic football and hurling across all grades”, the programme was to be rolled out over five years starting at juvenile level. Cooney and other GAA officials emphasised that the idea would be a slow burn but at least the touch paper had been lit.

Even allowing for the expressed gradualism, it was depressing to hear GAA director general Páraic Duffy’s downbeat assessment on Sunday’s Setanta Sports’ iTalkSport programme.

When asked if the initiative was working, he replied: “No. I don’t to be honest. We haven’t made very much progress. The Respect initiative would hopefully have a long-term benefit that focuses on underage players but we have a problem in that regard, you can’t deny that.”

His subsequent comments related to the central part of the initiative, trying to foster greater courtesy towards and respect for match officials but the context of the discussion was last week’s controversy about the Armagh-Laois league match, which shone some light on the murky world of verbal abuse between players.

It is also an important part of the Respect mission that similar decencies be inculcated from a young age between players and their opponents.

In the words of then Kerry panelist – now retired – Micheál Quirke at the launch: “Even small things like getting the kids to line up and shake hands with each other after the game can help in that it will be second nature to them by the time they get to under-16s and minor to shake hands with the guy you’ve just been trying to beat for the past hour.”

According to Duffy the GAA will be discussing the issue with the Gaelic Players Association in the hope of communicating the message amongst county teams that verbal abuse and taunting of opponents is unacceptable and has no place in Gaelic games.

Good luck with that.

Short of training match officials to lip-read there is little that can be done to punish this misbehaviour, which is contrary to rule in both football and hurling. It is as a result all the more important that where detected this infraction is punished even if the stipulated penalty is – considering the chances of being caught – a comparatively un-intimidating yellow card.

The means by which players try to beat opponents is integral to all concepts of sportsmanship and discipline. Sport has no meaning if the participants don’t play by the rules.

Breaking rules to get an advantage is cheating and failure to discourage such behaviour with adequate deterrents simply condones it.

No one can question the effort being made by the GAA to address foul play in a manner that is fair and consistent even if outcomes aren’t always what might be hoped for and that’s fine for fouls and fracas.

Referees are also in a position to report any verbal abuse hurled in their direction and let the disciplinary process take the matter in hand.

But verbal disrespect to opponents is insidious and frequently undetectable. Armagh’s statement last week about the sundry provocations their footballers endured in Portlaoise (a venue rapidly becoming the GAA’s 38th Parallel) was questionable because they had to retract allegations and also for gratuitous use of the charge of racism.

None the less it has done no harm to air the issue, however misplaced the specific grievance.

Like the question of payment to managers, the matter of what behaviour is justified in pursuit of victory needs to be opened up to scrutiny and deliberation.

In a functioning system of enforcement, most sensible managers discourage indiscipline; indulging it damages the team in the concession of frees and the loss of players to suspension.

But how do they treat verbal abuse? Is it encouraged to rattle the opposition? Is it discouraged? Is it left up to the players and a deaf ear turned? Do we know? We don’t even if we suspect the worst.

Managers have acknowledged that players do different things to give themselves an edge, including shouting and roaring at their markers. In the controversial interviews that enforced the end of his inter-county career, Donegal’s Kevin Cassidy revealed that taunting opponents was agreed by the players as a tactic and it’s unlikely that they were the only team to embrace such an approach.

But is it acceptable that opponents can be taunted about the death of family members, their ethnic origin, their identity – barbed when calling players from the cross-border counties “Brits” or in reverse merely intended to offend when bandying around put-downs like “Free Stater” – the demoralisation of a broken marriage or their sexuality – all of which have been heard on an intercounty pitch?

We’re all heard about the funny quips, the repartee et cetera but when conversation on the pitch stops being banter – and everyone recognises where that demarcation lies – can calculated insults and expressions of mockery be simply ascribed to natural exuberance?

Being “passionate” functions as one the GAA’s great excuses – as inadequate as the socially more widespread, “I was really drunk at the time,” and just as fatuous.

It’s hard to imagine anyone more passionate about his game than Eamonn Cregan, whose family background hard-wired him into Limerick hurling – a cause he served intensely throughout a long career that knew the elation of winning an All-Ireland but more often the frustration of watching others win it instead.

Contributing to an interview I did with Cregan years ago, then just newly-appointed Clare manager Ger Loughnane remembered a Railway Cup match between Leinster and Munster.

“I was playing beside Cregan, who was centre back marking Kilkenny’s Pa Delaney. They were flaking the daylights out of each other. A ball came into the square and Cregan pulled over his head but Delaney pulled right across him.

“I even went up to Delaney on the way out and told him to be careful but they never spoke a word to each other.”

I asked Cregan about this at a later stage and he shook his head: “No. I never spoke to my opponents on the field.”

In other words, respectful silence.