Laois boss: I’ve never seen such aggression

LAOIS chairman Brian Allen last night described the level of aggression displayed towards stewards in Sunday’s ill tempered All-Ireland Club JFC semi-final in O’Moore Park as “unprecedented.”

Allen defended the number of officials present to officiate at the clash between Dromid Pearses (Kerry) and Derrytresk (Tyrone). The game was marred by two major incidents — a mass brawl before half time and the incursion of supporters onto the field following the final whistle.

The Laois official described the situation as ‘impossible’ to police during a brawl that marred the game before half-time and while no stewards were physically hurt, a number were left ‘fairly shaken’ in the aftermath.

Allen said: “Thankfully none of our stewards received any injury but the verbal abuse they got was very serious.

“There was a good few fairly shaken after it. I was at the game and it was impossible to police what went on before half-time. There is no way the substitutes and supporters could have been stopped from coming onto the pitch. “We had the normal level of stewards as we usually would have when planning for a game.

“It didn’t matter how many stewards you would have had there, they were getting on to the pitch and that was it. It was the exact same at full-time with the supporters of the Tyrone club who went onto the pitch.

“There was an intermediate semi-final starting at 3.30pm and, because of that, there were a number of announcements over the public address asking supporters to stay off the pitch after the junior game.

“But it didn’t matter, they were hell-bent on going onto the pitch and no one was going to stop them. The level of aggression displayed towards our stewards was unprecedented.

“From speaking to them after, and some of them have been stewards in O’Moore Park for a long time, they said the aggression was at a level they had never before experienced.”

Allen does not foresee the county experiencing similar problems when it comes to holding future games and does not expect the unsavoury incidents to deter local stewards from officiating at the venue.