Nolan fearful match ban motion will be delayed
Derek Nolan, secretary of the Grattan Óg club in Longford, has drafted motion 99 which, if adopted, would see the GAA’s much-maligned time- based suspension system finally replaced by a more equitable alternative.
However, Croke Park has also been working on a new match-centred suspension model in recent months and senior officials intend to put forward a proposal of their own in time for consideration at the 2011 Congress.
Nolan’s understanding is that Director General Páraic Duffy will seek to generate a debate on the topic on Saturday at the Slieve Donard Hotel in Newcastle, Co Down, before proposing that a vote be postponed for another 12 months.
“I would be hoping that the Longford delegates at the weekend speak well on the motion and that the other delegates would see the sense in the motion and change the rules,” said Nolan yesterday.
“I just don’t see any sense in putting it to the floor to create some debate and then pull it for next year. In Páraic’s defence, I can see where they’re coming from. If the delegates at Congress defeat this then it can’t go forward for another three years and that is why I’m counting on the Longford delegates to put up a good show.”
Nolan’s motion is a detailed but straightforward document in which, for example, a two-week suspension would be replaced by a two-match ban, four weeks with three matches, eight weeks with four games and so on.
The move to match bans has long been perceived as the way to go by a number of senior GAA officials but, as Duffy will tell delegates in his annual report this weekend, the intricacies of doing so are many and varied.
The Grattan Óg motion makes no mention of whether suspensions picked up at one grade or in one code would be applicable in any other and that may be a sticking point when the issue is addressed in Newcastle.
While Croke Park and Grattan Óg’s might differ in the small print, both are of one voice when it comes to the bigger picture and the need to eradicate the existing farcical situation. Of 68 suspensions imposed at inter-county level in 2009, 18 players didn’t miss a single game while there was a wide discrepancy in time served among players who received identical punishments.
For instance, of the 16 players who received eight-week suspensions, four missed no games whatsoever, one was sidelined for two games, one missed three, five missed four and another one sat out five.
Nolan was prompted to draw up the motion after a juvenile final last year when a Grattan Óg player was struck three times in the head after the final whistle as he attempted to shake an opponent’s hand and was concussed.
“There was a letter in from his parents outlining their disgust at what happened at the game and I followed it up with a letter to the Longford Competitions Control Committee and county board outlining the letter from the parents and my own disgust with what had happened and demanding some action.
“What they did was they suspended him for eight weeks which had no bearing on it because it was the last game of the season and he didn’t miss any football, which I thought was ridiculous.”
Unfortunately, such a story will be nothing new in any county.
“Have no doubt that players know the rules. People are not stupid. People know that if they get sent off in the final game of the season they aren’t going to miss any football because of the way the rule is worded.
“If they knew they were going to miss four games rather than four weeks the following season then they wouldn’t do it. That would count for county football as well.
“It is straightforward,” he reasoned, “and it should be a landslide.”
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