Dangerous pitch invasions an affront to reason

On Gaelic Games:It was a shame such an unforgettable day was spoiled by the reckless behaviour of some supporters, writes Seán Moran.

SOME YEARS ago it was possible for two players to commit exactly the same foul in an All-Ireland semi-final of the same championship and for one to be suspended for the final while the other wasn’t.

This arose from an anomaly that saw the second semi-final taking place within four weeks of the final and the first one earlier in August. At the time, the GAA’s rules ordained that suspensions should be of a specific duration rather than for particular matches.

This meant that a straight red-card offence committed one week would result in a player missing the final, but, committed a week previously, it would have no effect.

Match-based suspensions were seen as ‘smacking of a foreign code’ so a sensible disciplinary reform had to wait a bizarrely long time before being accepted – and thankfully no player found himself in the invidious position of sitting out a big day while someone equally culpable and similarly suspended took the field.

For some GAA members, the fact of being different from other sports constitutes a cause for celebration in itself. It’s not sufficient that the games have survived and thrived in an increasingly homogenous world, that they continue to enthral and inspire hundreds of thousands of people and by so doing help to define a unique cultural identity; instead things that are different become intrinsically worthwhile, regardless of their actual merits.

Which brings us to last Sunday. It was, of course, a shame such an unforgettable day, an elemental match and the historic achievement of Kilkenny’s four-in-a-row had to be spoiled by the reckless behaviour of some supporters.

But it was also inevitable.

There had been a fairly hostile reaction to the GAA’s announcement last week that it would be asking supporters to stay off the pitch when the All-Ireland final was over. It was possible to detect that by the very act of requesting some common sense, the association had actually ensured that none would be shown.

It would inevitably become some great point of principle that the people would exercise their ancient and traditional inclination to invade the field and cause injury to themselves and others.

And that’s what happened.

Restraint held for a couple of minutes after the match ended before a group of spectators on the Hill 16 terrace aggressively broke out. In the ensuing fracas, stewards were injured, one sustaining a broken nose.

As had been pre-arranged, the security around the pitch stood down as soon as the cordon was breached and crowds flooded in. Children, wearing the colours of the 32 counties and holding flags as a guard of honour for the All-Ireland presentation, had to be hurried away and, according to Croke Park sources, were visibly distressed afterwards.

On RTÉ Radio's Livelineyesterday there were floods of complaints, nearly all of them giving out not about the reckless endangerment caused by those invading the pitch, but about the GAA for having the temerity to try and prevent the mayhem.

The association is not blameless in this regard. This problem was flagged nearly six months ago at the annual congress in Cork. Central Council was briefed about the dangers posed by these incursions and undertook to embark on an educational campaign.

At the Friday evening session, in remarks wholly endorsed by the GAA’s director general Páraic Duffy, Roscommon delegate Tommy Kenoy said that the association was close to a disaster.

“There is a very real possibility that we will have a serious injury or fatalities,” he said. “We have been within a whisker of that and, but for the intervention of medical staff, we would have been in that territory.”

He was probably referring to an incident last year when there was indeed nearly a fatality. A supporter, being crushed in the mayhem, had to be pulled out of the crowd and was barely resuscitated by paramedics.

Despite this, the “educational campaign” has been hard to discern. Springing it a few days before an historic hurling final was never going to do much for its chances of success. Surely the message should have been drummed home at every match in Croke Park this summer to try and establish a more responsible attitude.

Then again, judging by some reactions to the weekend, no amount of requesting and pointing out the dangers of the practice would have had an impact.

According to one Livelinecaller the invasions are an "essential part of the GAA" and the association's "headquarters are obsessed by money".

In a way he was right. It’s certainly an essential part of the GAA for many to ignore rules when they don’t suit, fly in the face of fact-based warnings and proudly uphold a wholly frivolous attitude to health and safety – as demonstrated for instance by the debate on burn-out amongst young players.

Stadium director Peter McKenna briefed the media last week on the problem.

Pictures of intolerably dangerous situations, compensation claims running into hundreds of thousands of euro and damage to the pitch are all exhibits in the case against crowd misbehaviour.

Players have been assaulted after All-Ireland finals by opposition “fans” who we can charitably suppose were drunk and yet the fact that the GAA is “different” to other sports in having to endure this hooliganism is a badge of honour? Is it an “essential part of the GAA” that victorious captains, like Michael Fennelly on Sunday routinely have to plead for the crushing to ease?

The charge that Croke Park is obsessed by money is another of the great clichés. You could be excused for thinking that the GAA is some publicly quoted plc for all of the guff that erupts into circulation at times like these.

Leave aside the reality that every compensation claim is because of a broken limb or some other physical injury that someone – who mightn’t even have been wittingly involved in the turmoil – setting out for an All-Ireland final presumably didn’t want to sustain on the day.

Money has to be found somewhere. The GAA is going to be short €30 million in capital grants this year because the economic crisis has caused all such funding to be halted. What club projects might have been assisted if that cash hadn’t been requisitioned to make restitution for blatant misbehaviour?

The fact is the GAA redistributes about 80 per cent of its revenues to fund games and infrastructural development. Would everyone who has been whingeing about the staging of the U2 concerts like to identify what area of GAA expenditure they would like to cut in order that such commercial ventures could be dispensed with? The only “essential part” of the GAA’s culture that is showcased by pitch invasions is the desire to suit yourself at the expense of everyone else and in complete defiance of reason.

e-mail: smoran@irishtimes.com