Lynch set for three-month suspension

Clare hurler Colin Lynch may be facing a three-month ban which would entail missing the All-Ireland final should Clare qualify. Last night's Munster Council meeting in the Limerick Inn to consider his conduct in the Munster final replay against Waterford ended without any statement on the player's fate.

Clare team manager Ger Loughnane claimed afterwards, however, that Lynch had received a three-month suspension and that the decision had been made in advance.

The player himself was not at the meeting because of his grandmother's serious illness. The Council would not allow Lynch to be represented in his absence by a solicitor. Clare county chairman, Robert Frost, and secretary Pat Fitzgerald declined an offer to hear the Council's explanation for its decision.

This refusal was because the Council would not allow Ger Loughnane to be a part of the delegation. Neither would the Clare officers inform the Council of the reasons for Lynch's absence, even though the waiting media had been told by Loughnane before the meeting began.

At the end of the meeting, Munster Council PRO Fr Seamus Gardiner read a prepared statement (see panel) outlining the council's decision. Leaving the hotel, Loughnane was highly critical (see panel) of the action taken which means Clare will be without the services of Lynch for tomorrow's Guinness All-Ireland semi-final against Offaly.

Meanwhile Waterford manager Gerald McCarthy will be banished to the stand for next weekend's All-Ireland semi-final against Kilkenny. His punishment is for abusing match referee Willie Barrett in the drawn Munster final match.

At one stage of the evening there had been a confrontation between Loughnane and RTE over a broadcast which had claimed Lynch's grandmother had died. This was a misinterpretation of statements made by Loughnane on his arrival at the meeting.

"Last Monday, Colin's grandmother, whose pride and joy Colin was, sadly had a stroke and unfortunately just a few hours ago, she was taken off a life-support machine. So you will understand that Colin cannot be here tonight. Whatever happens here tonight pales into insignificance (compared) to what has happened to his family over the last few weeks."

In the car park, he upbraided a member of the RTE staff: "Your station announced that Colin's grandmother died tonight. That was never said to you. We said she was taken off a life-support machine. It was an absolute disgrace that your station would put out a statement like that.

"Haven't this family suffered enough? You have a lot to answer for. You have twice as much to answer for putting a family through trauma like this. Nobody ever here said she was dead. You have no respect for Clare. Most of all you have no respect for the Lynch family."

Yesterday afternoon, Lynch failed at the High Court in Dublin, to secure an injunction against the Munster Council's Games and Activities committee hearing his case last night.

Lynch claimed that the committee had no jurisdiction to deal with disciplinary matters and that it had proceeded unfairly against him. Mr Justice Kevin O'Higgins heard that Lynch, during the Munster senior hurling replay at Thurles on Sunday, July 19th, was alleged to have repeatedly struck Waterford player Tony Browne with his hurley.

He denied the offence for which he was booked and claimed the committee had already proceeded in his absence to view a video of the incident and consider a clarification of the referees report, neither of which had been made available to him.

Mr Justice Kevin O'Higgins, however, ruled against player saying that the Munster Council was entitled to delegate to the Activities Committee and adding: "There is no evidence relating to Mr Lynch's fears of being deprived of a fair hearing and there is existing legal authority that the courts must not interfere officiously in the affairs of private associations and must only do so to prevent or remedy matters of manifest injustice."

In an embarrassing development for Loughnane yesterday, the Evening Herald revealed that a meeting between Frank Burke, Galway county chairman and Donie Nealon, secretary of the Munster Council, at which Lynch's punishment was allegedly discussed in specific terms, never took place.

The meeting was raised by Loughnane in a radio interview to substantiate charges of improper procedure in the case but Burke and Nealon have denied the meeting ever took place. Nealon was reported as saying that he wasn't even in Dublin that day.

In response, Loughnane told the Herald: "I do admit I shouldn't have said it. On my way up to Clare FM, I got a phone call from a person in Clare who told me he had witnessed the exchange between the two. It was the one thing I didn't get a chance to check out and I didn't even mean to mention it."