Tyrone’s Martin Penrose to miss Mayo game after filing appeal late

Tyrone’s Martin Penrose will miss the All Ireland football semi-final against Mayo on Sunday week after failing to submit his appeal against his proposed one-match ban on time.

The Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC) set the ban after Penrose was shown a straight red card for striking Monaghan defender Dessie Mone in the quarter-final.

That has now been upheld by the CHC after Penrose and Tyrone missed the deadline to submit the appeal.

“A hearing was requested as he (Penrose) chose not to accept the penalty proposed by the CCCC,” the GAA said in a statement this morning. “The hearings committee found that the request for a hearing was not submitted within the period allowed for doing so and that the original penalty proposed by the CCCC applies.”

The news comes the morning after Conor Gormley’s appeal against an identical ban for his role in the same incident was upheld last night. Unlike Penrose, Gormley’s involvement was not dealt with by the referee at the time.

Tyrone only found out on Tuesday evening that the CCCC had decided Gormley had a case to answer as well.

Manager Mickey Harte revealed on Wednesday night that Tyrone had every intention on appealing their cases as far as possible: “We believe that when Conor goes along,” said Harte, “and indeed when Martin Penrose goes along, that they will put their side of the story of what happened from their perspective. Then we feel that the people making the judgement will be in a better place to make the right judgement.”

Harte was critical of the delay in making known the proposed one-match ban on Gormley.

The CHC only comes into play when the player refuses to accept the penalty proposed by the CCCC: the CHC, following the hearing, must then decide to either impose a penalty or exonerate based on evidence presented during the hearing.

However, if penalty is imposed by the CHC, and the defending party is not willing to accept the imposed penalty, then an appeal can be lodged to the Central Appeals Committee (CAC). If the appeal is unsuccessful, then the penalty remains imposed.

There is, however, still the option to request that an arbitration be lodged to the Disputes Resolution Authority (DRA), who are an external independent body of the GAA and all their decisions are binding.