Nevin ponders Carlow future after decision

It was almost dusk when they heard. They gathered at pitch side and listened to manager Cyril Hughes tell them they were gone from the championship and so they broke for the summer.

"The feeling wasn't so much one of anger as devastation. It's just this knowing that you have spent three or four nights a week preparing for this, with no social life and then it's pulled from under you," said Johnny Nevin.

The Carlow player was commenting on the GAA Management Committee decision not to grant Carlow a replay of their Leinster championship game against Westmeath in which six players, four from Carlow, were sent off.

The veteran is a chronicler of the relentless bad years in Carlow, having kicked ball with the county for over a decade. In recent times, though, there was a sense that they had begun to acquire an edge to their play.

"We had our hopes this year. It is difficult to assess what the longterm impact of this will be on players. We won't know until September when lads regroup. Okay, we vowed we'd stand together last night but over the coming months, lads will ask themselves have they the stomach to endure another winter of slogging after this result."

Although he is at pains that the fall-out from the affair has been devoid of personality clashes, Nevin is frustrated that no semblance of blame has not been attached to any specific administrative body.

"As we see it, three of our players were dismissed in the wrong, that was the ruling. One of those was gone after 15 minutes.

The next two were right and then another was wrongly dismissed, again a Carlow man. Did this not influence the outcome somehow?"

"I knew there was something wrong very early after I was booked without having my number noted. That just hadn't been the practice. And I see that the referees met on Tuesday evening to discuss rules or whatever. That's a bit like closing the stable door after the event. But if Niall Barrett hadn't been given the right guidelines, then it's hard on him too," he said.

Nevin has decided to ponder his own inter-county future over the summer, hoping that the club competition will "ease the pain."

Whether he returns or not, this experience has been sobering for him.

"This just underlines that the GAA has essentially forgotten about counties like ourselves. They seem to ignore that it is the participation of the likes of Carlow and the weaker counties that make this competition so special. It wouldn't have the same appeal if it was simply the top 10 counties in the land taking place."

That Nevin was speaking on the same day that the GAA chose to officially launch championship 1999 - 10 days after Carlow had been eliminated - won't have been lost on him.