Eimear Ryan: Do we need a concerted effort to bring sportsmanship back into the GAA?

Being inevitably filmed, named, and shamed on social media just makes players feel defensive and victimised rather than reflect on their own actions. Deterrents aren’t always the answer

ROLE MODEL: Tipperary's Seamus Callanan and Kilkenny's Richie Hogan always carried themselves well on the pitch. Pic: Matt Browne/Sportsfile

I recently read Mark O’Connell’s excellent book A Thread of Violence about Malcolm Macarthur and the GUBU murders of the summer of 1982. It’s a true crime story that has been told many times in book, documentary, and podcast form, but O’Connell’s book is unique because of his access: during lockdown, he ran into the now-released Macarthur on the streets of Dublin and convinced him to sit for a series of interviews about the two heinous crimes he carried out over forty years ago.

O’Connell is excellent on Macarthur’s slippery use of language. While he accepts responsibility for his crimes, he describes that murderous summer as an ‘episode’, a blip in his usual demeanour. In one electrifying passage, Macarthur claims that he’s not ‘the murdering type’, while O’Connell argues back that he is, given that he did in fact murder two people.