Mike Quirke: It’s time to speak up for the good of the game

One of the strongest pillars of the GAA is the overriding ethos of ‘what happens on the field, stays on the field’. 

You can play with your club, college, or county and for the duration of that game, and within the rules, you can hit everything that moves around you. It doesn’t matter if you went to school with the guy, or you’re his buddy through work — if he’s playing against you, you do what you have to do to win.

Once it was over, it was done. Shake hands. Whatever happened is left between the white lines. It’s always been the GAA way.

But I’m not so sure if that model is still fit for purpose.

It was almost like an unspoken rule in the Kerry dressing room, as I’m sure it is in most others, that you don’t go complaining about an incident after the game. If you won or lost, take the result like a man and move on. So it didn’t surprise me in the slightest when Kieran Donaghy came out after last year’s All-Ireland final defeat to Dublin, with the ‘nah, sure Philly was only going for the ball’ line, despite rushing and telling the referee at the time someone had interfered with his eye.

In fairness, what was he supposed to say?

Anything else and he would have been eaten alive for being a sore loser and a cry baby. Take your beating and go back down the road home, goes the logic.

Fast forward to Rory Gallagher’s post-match presser last Saturday night after allegations were made about the irresponsible use of a thumb to the eye of one of his Donegal players… the general theme of his reply: ‘nothing to see here lads, none of our players are complaining about anything in our dressing room… thing of nothing, move on’. More machoism.

But again, what else could he tell the TV cameras? He’s not going to draw any negativity his way by labelling himself or his team as a pack of whingers. It’s not the manly thing to do. You just lick your wounds and get on with it.

But I wonder how both of these scenarios might have played out differently if somebody was walking off the field and could only see out of one eye. I wonder then, would people be so happy to wash their hands of it and preach how it’s just all part of the rough and tumble of the game?

And this is nothing to do with Dublin, I might add. I don’t care that they are All-Ireland champions or if you think I’m trying to bring greater scrutiny and heat on them, with referees or whatever other conspiracy theories you come up with. This is not about a player or any team. It’s about the game.

We all know players sometimes make bad calls in the heat of battle. Snap decisions they regret in an instant and wish they could take back. And it’s not like eye gouging is going to turn into a widespread GAA epidemic or anything, but irresponsibly putting your finger anywhere near another player’s eye should be viewed universally by everybody in the association as a wholly unacceptable action. And it should be punished accordingly.

Cast your mind back to the furore surrounding Paul Galvin slapping referee Paddy Russell’s notebook out of his hand back in 2008. He was suspended for six months for that crime, which was later reduced to three on appeal. It was a strong, hard statement from the association — if you interfere with a referee in that manner, you will be punished severely.

Fair enough. The punishment seemed excessive, but according to the GAA, it fitted the crime.

Philly McMahon was banned from just the first national league game this year after his clash with Donaghy in last season’s showpiece. Go figure.

Slapping a notebook was more punishable that jeopardising somebody’s sight?

What message did that send out? And now it’s happened again.

In rugby, teams have a facility after the game to cite a player for an incident where they feel a grievous unsportsmanlike foul has been perpetrated. There is also an independent citing commission who reviews the games and deals with incidents retrospectively. I believe the GAA could benefit from a similar such mechanism where teams can report a player to appear before a disciplinary group to answer the case brought against him. The Central Competitions Control Committee doesn’t quite fit the bill.

To get there would obviously involve a seismic culture shift within the GAA, away from the enforced after-match code of silence, to a more holistic idea of the players and managers self-policing their own game.

If you spit at a player, use particularly vicious sledging, stamp on someone, go after their eyes or other sensitive areas, you should be held accountable by your peers. Players and teams, shouldn’t feel obligated by a secret code of machoism, to sit idly by and let a wrong go unpunished.

All that will happen, as we have seen, is that it will occur again and again.

Through a rugby-like citing procedure, teams have the ability to stand up and say, regardless of the result; ‘this guy stepped over the line, and we want it dealt with because that has no part in our game’. Players policing players.

It’s unlikely to occur in the short term, and maybe it will never become a part of the GAA’s disciplinary process. But I believe the only way to stamp out the nastier elements of our game is to empower the players to take greater ownership of the disciplinary procedure. Arm them with the tools and the change of environment to feel they have a duty to uphold the spirit of the game. If somebody crosses the line, don’t protect them with silence, no matter who they are.

Instead, be more concerned about protecting the fabric of the game.