Aidan’s fall from grace a worrying sight for all

NOT a good week for marginal boxing decisions.

Last Sunday most people in Ireland were staggered by the biased boxing judges of Beijing, who failed to score several punches by Kenny Egan that appeared to connect with Xiaoping Zhang.

Later in the afternoon, those who watched the Cork-Kerry All-Ireland SFC semi-final were equally staggered by Aidan O’Mahony’s stagger and fall after Donncha O’Connor of Cork landed a slap on his cheek.

About the only judges who’d have scored O’Connor’s light flick as a punch were over in Beijing (and in NO WAY intimidated or influenced by a vast partisan crowd) but no matter.

While everyone has rightly pointed out that Egan was hard done by — even his long-standing rival, English boxer Tony Jeffries, whom he defeated in the semi-final, said Egan was unlucky not to have scored higher — nobody could be that surprised. Olympic boxing judges don’t have a terrific record of doing the right thing: the most infamous example is the shameful home town decision that deprived Roy Jones Jr of Olympic gold in Seoul 20 years ago — despite being named the most outstanding boxer of the same Olympiad!

Yes, that Roy Jones. The man who beat him was South Korean Park-Si Hun, by the way.

Yes, that Park-Si Hun.

And so to last Sunday in Croke Park.

In fairness to Aidan O’Mahony — not a phrase you’d have heard much in the last seven days — he’s not the first GAA player to fall down like that. A lot of the huffing and puffing about the bad habits of other games creeping into hurling and football is just that, huffing and puffing.

It’s no exaggeration to say that every county in Ireland has or had a player give a couple of extra rolls on the ground after a tackle and cock an eye from under an elbow to see if the referee is going to upgrade that black book to a yellow card, or worse.

To take it a step further, it’s now more or less expected that when one team has a run of scores going, or its rhythm is visibly improving, that one of the opposition players will suddenly discover a cramp or groin strain that requires a rest for a minute or two.

The unsubtle suggestion that this is the influence of other, less manly games — trans: soccer — is another example of wishful thinking. GAA teams all over Ireland ransack the internet and contacts in the UK for tips and hints about how professional players (in all codes) prepare, hydrate, train and equip themselves. You can’t limit the professional influence to eating pasta two hours before a game; players aren’t stupid enough to skip the corollary lessons that give a half-inch of advantage.

But stretching the rules doesn’t make it right, or even popular. Everybody celebrates Cristiano Ronaldo’s mesmerising runs now, but it wasn’t so long ago that he was held up as an example of all that was wrong in the western world because he went to ground too easily.

It might seem odd to compare Aidan O’Mahony’s hilarious collapse last Sunday to the activities of a ludicrous Portuguese fop, but if you look at what both men represent, it should give a sense of proportion.

One of them represents a vast international corporation recently acquired by a group of shadowy American financiers. The other represents people who have invested a century’s sweat in one sport to define themselves.

We won’t get into Kerry’s football history. We just hope that last Sunday didn’t represent Kerry’s football future.

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