Incensed Boylan casts doubt on series over targeting tactics

International Rules: "My first reaction? To congratulate the Australians on winning the thing."

With those few words out of the way Seán Boylan broke into a far more cutting reaction to what happened in Croke Park yesterday - and for several minutes there was just no stopping a clearly incensed Irish manager.

"I played intercounty for 20 years, was involved with management for 23, and as far as I'm concerned what happened out there in the first quarter is not acceptable in any code of sport. It's not acceptable on the street.

"All week Graham Geraghty has been targeted. We were told what was going to happen to him. And the people got their way. When you have Tadgh Kennelly, Colm Begley, Shane Ryan, Graham . . . Do you know how many interchange players we had left? Three. How that can be termed as playing with the spirit of the game is beyond me.

"I said when the series happened last year that I felt officialdom had an awful lot to answer for. But I've never seen a more biased umpire in my life than I saw out there today. There's the interpretation of the rules that we've been practising starting back in May, and then of course when they come over they keep changing. I don't accept that.

"I believe it's wrong that you deliberately go out to target someone in such a way as they get hurt. I don't mind physical, man-to-man, and I've no problem being beaten on the scoreboard if a team plays better than us. But we had players there today and the biggest problem was to restrain them, because you could have ended up with a fisty-cuffs match from start to finish. Don't tell me that's sour grapes, because anyone who knows me has never seen that with me. But for people to say that we started this is pure and utter bullshit. As sportspeople we let ourselves down with what happened out there today. And that can't go on."

Someone then managed to interrupt and asked Boylan if he felt the series is now in doubt.

"Correct. No question. I have never seen our president (Nickey Brennan) as annoyed or vexed in my life . . . He's honoured me with this job, and I brought in the people I felt would help me perfect the rules, as they were specifically stated. But I am telling you, from last week, and even from yesterday, things have been changed. And it's all coming straight from the Australians. Because they're the ones who keep changing everything.

"They either want to make this a series, to foster, and to develop as an international series, or do we want to have it just to show I'm stronger than you, bigger than you, and can knock the head off you, can give you the knee in the back, and that's acceptable."

In fact Boylan was so disgusted with what he was seeing in the first quarter he walked over the Australian coach Kevin Sheedy and told him the game was up. "It was very simple what I said," he explained. "I told him that was it, the end of it. I took them off after the first quarter. But the players changed my mind. They said they wanted to go out and have a good go at it. They wanted to play football."

And his own role as manager, is that in doubt now as well? "That's all up for grabs, that's all I'm saying. But as it was today I wouldn't want to be a part of it. It was unreal what was pulled and what wasn't pulled. I mean tell me any sport where that goes on, boys been taken out, that the game goes on? And let the ball into the back of the net?

"There's not a blessed thing wrong with the game the way it was designed. But you cannot in any walk of life target someone to the extent that you're going to hurt them, and damage them, and take them out of it."

Irish captain Kieran McGeeney was sitting next to Boylan throughout this soliloquy, but finally got to say his few lines. "There's no point in asking me questions that you know the answers to," he started. "You saw it as well. I don't cry about getting beat and stuff like that. They're a great running team and that, but if you want to box, we'll put on our gloves, we'll go bare knuckle, whatever . . . We don't mind it physical, that's part and parcel of the game, but what happened today. I mean with Benny Coulter. It doesn't take a brave man to elbow someone in the face.

"If someone grabs you by the neck, what are you going to do: 'Sorry, excuse me'? Ireland is full of boys that like to fight. We could get the whole lot of them here if that's what the case may be. So we hit back. I'm not going to stand there and get pushed around. But people have to call the rules as they see it, not as they want to see it."

Brennan, with the power to pull the plug on the series if required, had the look of a man who had seen enough, but that call was for another day: "The attendance today was quite staggering, but what those people had to witness in the first quarter today was completely unacceptable.

"I'm extremely disappointed with what went. But we're not going to draw conclusions today, rush into big decisions."