Law and order in the GAA
It’s 1am on September 5, 2015. In 16 hours’ time, Dublin face Mayo in an All-Ireland semi-final replay. Diarmuid Connolly is hoping to be involved but
is sitting in a hallway of the Regency Hotel waiting to hear if the Disputes Resolution Authority will allow him to play. The DRA’s secretary, Jack Anderson, is beside him and telling him to go home but he’s too anxious. He’s got to know.
The surreal nature of the situation isn’t lost on Anderson — on the two previous nights Connolly had attended Central Hearings Committee (CHC) and Central Appeals Committee (CAC) meetings in Croke Park, the latter only concluding against him after 2am on Friday.
But then Anderson also knows Connolly has been given more than a fair shot, this being the third opportunity to clear his name.
As luck would have it, Connolly is given a reprieve, not advanced by his defence but, remarkably, by two of the three sitting members of the DRA panel: Former Supreme Court judge Hugh O’Flaherty and solicitor David Nohilly. They find that he has not been provided with fair procedures, although fellow panellist Brian Rennick objects entirely.
In his two years as DRA secretary, no more important case crossed Anderson’s desk. He intimates he too found difficulty with the decision made by two of the three panel members but accepted it and takes some solace from the GAA having corrected its disciplinary structure to ensure the same argument can’t be made again.
“In some ways, it’s your ultimate case because you have a very high-profile player at a high-profile stage of the championship in a controversial scenario and it’s all very tight, time wise. It goes through the usual GAA process, pretty straightforward, a ban is a ban, and then it comes up to the DRA and it’s overturned.
“My job is like the clerk of the court; you pick a panel and it was a very experienced panel. You may not always agree with it but you have to take what comes out of it. The important thing that comes out of Connolly is there was a small loophole identified and it was closed and it was never successfully appealed since.”
Last year, Ballyboden St Enda’s used the Connolly defence to have Declan O’Mahoney’s red card rescinded so that he could line out for them in their All-Ireland club final. “The hardest decision I had to make,” recalls Anderson. “It was last minute and I had to do it as an interim injunction. They pleaded along Connolly grounds but the loophole was closed and therefore it wasn’t successful.
“The system works. Whether a loophole existed in the first place, they made their decision. It does rattle things a little bit in the sense that one of the lines used in the Connolly decision was that the more serious the consequences, the more serious the case should be treated, and that was seen as being elitist, which is against the GAA ethos. That statement was a little bit out of context. When a player is sent off they are entitled to due process no matter who they are. That was the one thing that lingered for me.”
A sin bin, Anderson feels, could easily have avoided that “will he, won’t he” Connolly conundrum. The Dublin player may have escaped a ban but his performance in the replay, like Lee Keegan’s against Kerry the year previously, was one of a man weighed down by defending himself.
“I remember there was a break and I was sitting beside Diarmuid Connolly. It was one o’clock and I told him he should go home because there was only legal argument left. He didn’t play that well in the replay and that’s the contrary nature of the process. The DRA almost takes on a life of its own and sometimes the participant is almost irrelevant because of all the rules and arguments. You’d like to think the system has corrected itself but no doubt it will be tested again.
“I saw the video multiple times. The referee gets a report from the linesman and he only has the option to brandish a card. What if he had an on-field option like a sin bin?
“That’s one of the things I find about the GAA system — Dublin can win an All-Ireland in six matches, Kilkenny in hurling four matches. So if you send off a Kilkenny player and he’s gone for a match, that’s 25% of his championship season so of course they will appeal.
“But if there was an on-field punishment it’s done and dusted and if Joe McQuillan was able to do that it would have avoided all the off-field stuff.”
Culturally, Anderson, also an arbitrator with the International Court of Arbitration for Sport, makes the point that the GAA still have a lot to learn about accountability — “Davy (Fitzgerald) accepted his punishment, thankfully. I do things for other sports but with the GAA, it always comes down to character.
"The first thing that will be said is ‘that ban is too much — they’ve attacked his character’. Then they’ll say ‘he’s not that type of character’ or ‘we need characters’. But what is it — you want a disciplinary system or you don’t? Sometimes you’re going to get a decision that is a bit harsher but that’s the way.”
Responsibility too — “Jim Gavin complained one time about a player being taken away for a doping test after a game but that’s the nature of it once you sign up. It’s not always comfortable but it’s for the good of sport.”
Anderson knows the disciplinary process can be streamlined. “Sometimes you give players too many goes. There was the famous Dónal Óg (Cusack) story about roulette around the time of the Cork-Clare row (in 2007) and that’s fair enough.
“Sometimes you wonder what the difference is between the DRA and the Central Appeals Committee. Could you merge the two and have a standing final appeal?”
In this newspaper, Anderson has written before about the benefits of a citing commissioner. He maintains the appointment of such would greatly add to the GAA’s disciplinary system.
“The idea with that was a self-contained disciplinary system, whereby the videos would be reviewed by a full-time disciplinary officer on a Monday, recommendations would be made, and if the player or management figure wanted a hearing it would take place on a Wednesday night. If they wanted an appeal then it would take place on a Friday night and everything would be done and dusted. Borrowing from the rugby. But it just wasn’t taken up and the current disciplinary system has set in.
“The only thing I would say, time wise, you’re better off getting it over and done quickly. The guys in the CCCC and Hearings will say it’s not easy to call together a panel and I know myself from the DRA that to be the case, but you’re as well off to get it done quickly. Maybe have standing tribunals with key people on it because when a disciplinary case is initiated and it takes a while to have a hearing, the build-up around it can get incredible and all things can be said so it’s better off to get it done like other sports.
“Manager will say ‘we have an upcoming game and we don’t know if our player is going to be available’. That can disrupt the whole thing. It goes back to the Tony Keady affair and everything then became about Tony Keady and maybe it cost Galway an All-Ireland. Sometimes it’s better off to get it done quickly with the course of natural justice.”
A citing official would put paid to the likes of The Sunday Game become judge and executioner. “I think Páraic (Duffy) seems happy enough with the current scenario and you do have top-class people involved like Liam Keane with Hearings and Matt Shaw with Appeals, who was former DRA secretary.
"They do things quickly and they have full-time secretaries. Sometimes you think the citing goes on in The Sunday Game and there’s definitely a bit of that. Maybe in other sports that would be going on in their sport already and by Monday, we would know what’s happening. To be fair to the players as well.
“What players who have done wrong should be worried about is a citing commissioner going over the video of a game. Punditry like Match of the Day happens but the real stuff would be happening if you had a full-time disciplinary officer. These are tweaks in the process. Effectively, your CCCC can act as the officer — it’s not a big change in that way and more and more matches are being covered by unedited video. The facility is there if you want.”
Whether the DRA continues in its current guise as a standalone, independent body under Anderson’s successor, former Offaly hurler Rory Hanniffy, or joined with CAC, it has saved the GAA not just a pretty penny but face too. Not since its establishment in 2005 has a case gone to the High Court.
“If you are to seek arbitration in the FAI, it’s €5,000. The one thing the DRA does is keep the GAA out of the High Court and €1,000 in that context is very, very little. If something comes in regarding a club, and by tomorrow morning they need to have €1,000, would they have it?
"Most clubs would, actually, if they felt strongly enough about it. In some ways, maybe you should up it to reflect the seriousness of a DRA case, but that’s something for the incoming man to decide. I do think people underestimate the value the DRA have given the GAA. Seeing other sports like horse-racing go the High Court, it costs a huge amount of money and it’s adversarial and it’s not good. We haven’t had one since the DRA.”
Anderson reckons he received an application for arbitration, more often than not involving a club transfer, every two weeks.
“Once a dispute has come to the DRA, it has gone through three or four hoops and positions are pretty entrenched. But the one thing I will say is county officials are often dismissed as blazers, but the work volunteers do on hearings committees and CCCs is incredible. They are the things that really stand out for me.
“The biggest number of cases we have are transfers. We have tried to mediate some of these disputes because the GAA in Ireland is changing. What does the parish rule mean anymore? In many counties, it doesn’t exist.”
Anderson forecasts the GAA’s amateur ethos will be challenged further in the coming years. The introduction of the Super 8 in the All-Ireland senior football championship, he believes, will “compress the obligations” of the players in leading counties.
“There’s almost a push for the semi-professionalism and elitism of the sport,” he says. “I’m kinda old-fashioned in this — I can’t see how the GAA can sustain a semi-professional element. Immediately, you’ve 60 teams or so between the two codes so how many players and backroom team members do you have? How could you sustain that? Rugby can sustain four professional units but it has a big international market, which funds it. Semi-professionalism just about exists in soccer in Ireland.
“The only way you could do it is by being elitist and that fundamentally changes the nature of the GAA. But if professionalism is introduced, there are contracts and dropping a player from a squad is a contractual issue. If you fire a manager early, it’s a contractual issue. If a player wants to move, it’s a freedom-of-movement issue. You have to think of all these things. There is no financial model that makes it viable nor would I like to see it happen but there is going to be a push towards it.
“You’re going to have a process of shamateurism like the NCAA (National College Athletic Association) in America and rugby before it became professional. So how do you regulate that, and we saw the discussions about managers being paid and the idea of vouched expenses? Where are we going with that? It might be time to have that mature conversation. Also, will players say they are losing out on income if they are putting too much into their sport?”
Neither amateur nor professional, top level inter-county players are earning from their pastimes with the help of their social media profiles. At the same time, the likes of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are media through which they are often subjected to abuse and ridicule.
Anderson says: “I saw the Lions tour social media policy this week as to what players can do. The GAA players, because they are part of the community, are vulnerable and barriers seem to fall on social media. Things like defamation and privacy seem to go out the window even though they do apply. You can make yourself very vulnerable by various comments. The obvious advice is not to go on it but a balance has to be struck with being accessible.
“My sport is hurling but I wouldn’t know many of the Kilkenny players to see because I’ve only ever seen them with a helmet on. So, how do you make them accessible? Some people go on social media but then the manager bans them talking to the media and it has cut them off and therefore made them more vulnerable on social media. There are many ways that those who abuse them can be prosecuted and there are guidelines from the GAA, but I don’t think players feed into that.
“Before, you could get abuse going for a drink after a championship match, but now you could receive it anytime and anywhere.
“It goes both ways. We have general social media policies but on social media you have privacy and you also have responsibilities as well. Maybe that’s something the GPA have to consider. It’s to do with this shadowy thing between professional and amateur. If you think a player does something wrong on social media — say he criticises a referee then the GAA can do something about it but outside of that what can you do? It’s an interesting area.”
Just as intriguing for Anderson is the area of gambling, which the GAA recently tried to address by prohibiting a member from betting on a game in which they are involved as a player, manager or official. As the FA during the week slapped Joey Barton with an 18-month ban for betting, it’s topical too and Anderson says there are teachings from it for the GAA.
“The thing about Joey Barton is what are the duties of betting companies to report to a sports body about players betting? Have they any duty? Will they do it? So it’s very hard for the GAA to monitor it. It is a concern I would have for the GAA going further down the line.
“Oisín McConville and Niall McNamee have done fantastic work in highlighting it. But you’ve amateur players who may feel they’re being overused and their work is suffering. What if you have a guy who has a gambling problem and says, ‘I can spot-fix this league match?’ It’s something to keep an eye on, definitely.
“In the UK, they have a very good gambling commission. If they want figures on gambling addiction or what sports bodies are doing about gambling I go to the gambling commission. There is nothing in Ireland because the gambling control bill is lying in the Oireachtas untouched. It’s ready to go but nothing has been done. We have nothing in terms of regulation.
“I notice now as a coach and a player that you can bet from your phone. Is it real money? Do you have inside information? Some championships are based on round-robin groups and if you’ve already qualified with a game to play and you know your team isn’t going fully into it but try a few things you might be tempted to have a bet. All those things come up. The main concern I would have is addiction, because GAA people tend to like all sports and thankfully the likes of Oisín McConville have done great awareness work. Only for them there would be no warning signs in Irish sport.”
Anderson heads for Australia in June where he will take up his position as professor of sport law at the University of Melbourne on July 1 — “Classic Australians, they’ve told me the first important decision I have to make is which AFL club am I going to support.”
The Doon native, though, intends getting involved in a GAA club there too just as he did in his adopted Belfast where he coached a couple of Joe Brolly’s kids in Bredagh GAA club.
“The last thing I’d say is, ‘don’t take Joe Brolly seriously,” he laughs. “What do they say about (Donald) Trump? Don’t take him literally but seriously. With Joe, don’t take him literally or seriously!”
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