McCague right to see red over cards

ON GALEIC GAMES/Sean Moran: When it was put to Seán McCague nearly 10 years ago that he might run for the presidency of the GAA, he dismissed the notion saying that because he had been chairman of the Games Administration Committee, he was unelectable.

At the time it made sense. Not alone had he been chairman of the GAC but he had been a fairly hardline disciplinarian. His rationale about a possible presidential candidacy may have been politically evasive but it also touched on an eternal truth with the GAA: no one who administers or enforces rules is particularly popular.

McCague ultimately ran for office and made a bit of a selling point of his capacity for hard decisions and he was comfortably elected. But his original sentiments must have shimmered back into view in recent weeks. The president is too busy to reflect on such things but had he the time, he would have recognised the eternal symptoms. Units within the association regularly feel rules shouldn't apply to them and that when they do skulduggery and sinister agenda are at work.

McCague has been reaping a whirlwind since his recent ruling in relation to that knotty branch of jurisprudence, the overturning of the red card.

In Tipperary there is great discontent that John Boland, a county minor, is going to miss the All-Ireland final this weekend. He will be suspended because of a red card picked up in a minor county championship match between Toomevara and Kilruane McDonaghs.

But the referee, who had straight red-carded four players, claimed he felt he was making a mistake but before he had a chance to change the cards he was hit from behind by Tony Delaney, the Toomevara senior who was involved with coaching the club minors and who got a one-year ban. In the mayhem that followed Boland's red card was not rescinded but the referee clarified his intentions in the report. The North Tipperary board and the county board accepted he hadn't intended to dismiss Boland and revoked the card.

But they had reckoned without - or ignored - a presidential ruling by McCague to the effect that red cards could no longer be overturned on the basis of a referee's clarification. At a meeting of the Management Committee last weekend it was spelled out to the Tipperary board that they had little choice but to impose the suspension.

The ruling was a response to the Darragh Ó Sé controversy in Kerry, where a referee's report overturned a red card shown to the county captain.

As word of Ó Sé's exculpation spread, there was scepticism in other counties. McCague was said to be livid. As chair of the GAC in the early 1990s he had stipulated that an immediate ordering-off offence (as a straight red card then was) would attract a mandatory four-week suspension. This was watered down in 1995 to admit video evidence and clarification in a referee's report as grounds on which the red card could be revoked.

McCague's ruling to revert to the previous position, while retaining the video exemption, was a response to a situation that was becoming intolerable. Had he done nothing in the face of Kerry's decision to play Ó Sé in the All-Ireland semi-final against Cork, no county player would ever serve a suspension in his own county as long as it had a team left in the championship.

IN order to avoid such anarchy McCague desperately tried to persuade Kerry to do the right thing. In the circumstances there was nothing further he could do. But already the corrosive consequences have been felt.

One Tipperary official remarked in private that if Kerry could get away with it in relation to Ó Sé why shouldn't Tipperary. In Meath a player who similarly had a red card withdrawn by the match referee has played again days later despite being warned he must serve a four-week suspension. His club Blackhall Gaels told a county board official there wasn't going to be one rule for Darragh Ó Sé and another for them.

McCague's direst forebodings are coming to pass. None of the affected units appear to be recognising that although the reactions about different rules are true in a literal sense, the rule in question had to be changed and that in a broader sense the rules are being enforced consistently.

Talk of branding referees liars is inflammatory. The power to retract red cards has simply been removed from match officials. One can feel sorry for Boland who misses an All-Ireland because of a rule just introduced. But had counties proved more dependable in applying the rules the discretionary power wouldn't have been abolished.

Suggestions that legal action may ensue are par for the course but the courts have shown themselves reluctant to interfere in the affairs of a voluntary organisation. Anyway Rule 86 (b) of the Official Guide is a fairly convincing authority for what was done. It states the Management Committee ". . . shall be responsible for the management of the affairs of the association, including its general activities, matters of discipline, finances and the implementation of policies determined by Congress . . ."

The complaint that there's no forum of appeal to review the suspension overlooks the fact that Management was simply stating the new rule and recommending its enforcement rather than actually sitting in judgment on the matter.

Anthony Moyles' case in Meath is different in that he is not involved in any intercounty championship. In such a case it can be argued what a county board does in relation to discipline is its own business. That's not sustainable considering the knock-on effects of suspension (repeating the offence within a two-year period doubles the minimum term of suspension) but largely counties can be trusted to enforce rules - as long as county players aren't involved.

Maybe it would be a good idea to separate red-card offences with a wider relevance - those concerning players still involved in intercounty competition - from those of purely internal significance. Retain McCague's ruling for the former but provide an independent tribunal of appeal that could hear the matter. In other words no county could pass judgment on one of its county players before a championship match.

Meanwhile, McCague will - rightly - hold firm and should reflect on that old parental head-shake: "There's always one to spoil it for the others."