Disciplinary system needs real overhaul, declares Quinn

DUBLIN forward Tomas Quinn believes the GAA’s disciplinary system needs to be slimmed down.

The structure currently used by the association, which incorporates four separate committees, will be under the spotlight again this week after Sunday’s events in Celtic Park.

“The problem you’ll probably see now is there’s going to be suspensions handed out,” said Quinn, who was promoting the new adidas training shoe in Dublin yesterday.

“Then there’s going to be appeals and they’re going to go to the Central Appeals Committee. That’s going to be a mess hanging over teams going in to the summer.

“As a player you don’t like that. You’d like more consistency. The referees have a very hard job but, even in terms of the disciplinary process, you’re either suspended or you’re not. And sometimes you don’t even appeal on what you did. People can appeal on a technicality to the rule. It’s just that kind of thing that probably frustrates players more than anything else. You saw a couple of years ago with Cork and Kerry and Anthony Lynch and Kieran Donaghy both got sent off.

“All of a sudden Anthony Lynch is playing in the replay. That’s just an example. The same could be happening now with Derry and Monaghan. That’s one thing I don’t like seeing – the whole thing dragging on and all that stuff.”

So, any suggestions? “Ideally, it probably should be a game ban rather than a length-of-time ban. You could get suspended for a month and you might miss three games and you might miss nothing. So, from that side of things, that might be a bit smarter. It would be easier if they just had one committee and that was it. Whatever decision they made, you had to abide by it.”

Quinn was on Dublin duty last Sunday, playing a challenge match against Down, but he saw clips of the Derry-Monaghan game afterwards and claimed he was far from surprised by some of the incidents that took place.

Winning at all costs is a mentality that is ever more prevalent in the game, from his own experience, and he feels that playing the fixture in such a tight provincial ground as Celtic Park added a little extra sulphur to the cocktail.

“It has come into the game a small bit in the last couple of years. Everyone has that ‘whatever it takes’ mentality to win, and a lot of people feel that teams are going too far. In some cases they are, and those players will get punished.”

And it isn’t just a an Ulster problem either. Or even one confined to senior inter-county level.

“Some people would say (Dublin) have done it as well. I’m not saying it just happens to us and it’s not just the one province either. You look at every province and it’s happening at the majority of levels as well.

“I laugh when people say that it just happens at inter-county level. You go down to watch any club game, even if it’s a junior club game, and you could get worse. It’s probably not nice to see but it is something that’s in the game.”