Dublin prevail in ugly game

National Football League Division One A/ Dublin 1-9 Tyrone1-6: The benefits of this win for Dublin may yet be qualified by the time the GAA's disciplinary process has run its course. In the meantime this deeply unpleasant match won't be a matter of ambivalence for All-Ireland champions Tyrone or the GAA in general, which now has to endure the waves of disastrous publicity guaranteed to crash around it in the week ahead.

And there'll be no point blaming the messengers. This was mean-spirited and undisciplined stuff, reflecting credit on neither side. Three mass brawls erupted at different times and featured pushing, shoving and punching.

So many were the incidents of confrontation and casual disregard for the rules that it all blended into an anarchic blur, punctuated by bouts of football that early on established Tyrone as clearly superior but in the aftermath of the final and most serious outbreak in the second half, the All-Ireland champions lost their way and managed only one point for the entirety of the second period.

In a way referee Paddy Russell - who must wonder at the alignment of his planets with these two counties - had himself to blame. After an eighth-minute melee in which punches were obviously thrown, he contented himself with showing two yellow cards, to Brian Meenan and Alan Brogan.

By the end he had shown 14 yellow cards and four red, hardly any of which looked likely to restore order but when two teams are determined not to be bound by disciplinary rules, regulation has no effect.

Meenan was the first beneficiary of Russell's permissiveness back in the eighth minute and the All-Ireland champions were quick to get involved in the face of provocatively heavy tackling, particularly from Dublin's centrefield pairing of Ciarán Whelan and Denis Bastic.

Whelan escaped with one yellow but his partner wasn't as lucky and got the line for two yellows, in the 49th and 68th minutes. Brogan added a red to his early yellow card following the second melee early in the second half.

Brogan's altercation with a member of Tyrone's back-room team as he left the field appeared to trigger the third mass brawl, which took place on the sideline, dangerously close to spectators.

Tyrone's Colin Holmes could perhaps count himself unfortunate to be the only dismissal after this outbreak, which surely warranted the match being abandoned - if such a measure is ever going to be taken.

On the playing front, Dublin will be pleased at the application they showed in keeping in touch when Tyrone were on top for much of the first half. Dublin stayed with them until, trailing by 0-2 to 0-3, they conceded a penalty when Paul Casey brought down Raymond Mulgrew at the end of a move devised by Owen Mulligan and Stephen O'Neill.

O'Neill embellished his fine reputation from such awards by sending Paul Copeland the wrong way and a free from the same player left Tyrone 1-5 to 0-3 ahead coming up to half-time. But Tomás Quinn converted two injury-time frees to leave a flatteringly small three-point margin between the teams.

Quinn converted a penalty earned by debutant Kevin Bonner's robust fielding of a free and a subsequent foul 10 minutes after the break. This remained the only second-half score until nearly an hour had gone.

Dublin grew in confidence to the point where a good move organised by Coman Goggins and Casey was finished by Bryan Cullen to push the Leinster champions in front. Two more frees from Quinn and an exuberant final score by corner back David Henry, capping a good display, followed with only replacement Peter Donnelly replying.

Afterwards the uncomfortable media gathering on the field moved between the team managers, hardly knowing where to begin in terms of questions about the extent of the indiscipline.

Dublin manager Paul Caffrey seemed determined to pretend that public interest would focus solely on his team's gritty and unexpected success over the All-Ireland champions. Asked how did he feel about the likely eclipse of his good result by controversy he replied: "I don't think they're related. I don't know. You had two teams very committed, both going at it. Everyone will have a different version depending on what county they're from."

Caffrey identified another issue, the close proximity of the crowd to the area where replacement players wait in the stand, from where he felt obliged to summon his players before the end.

"Again a lot of the home support were in around where the players were sitting. If anything should come out of this it should be about the safety of the players.

"There was a lot of intimidation going on behind my back. I did bring the players down. It was unsafe."