Enda McGinley issues stark warning over dangers of GAA attacks
A former three-time All-Ireland winner who works as a Clinical Specialist Physio in the Trauma and Orthopaedics ward in Craigavon Hospital, has insisted that a ‘one-punch fatality’ is inevitable on GAA playing fields if the current cycle of violence is not halted.
Ex-Tyrone footballer and analyst Enda McGinley has found himself alarmed at the proliferation on social media and WhatsApp clips of recent fights during club games including the Tyrone IFC clash between Stewartstown and Strabane, the Derry Reserve Championship tie played last week between Ballinderry Shamrocks and Slaughtneil and — possibly the worst of these incidents — the scenes in Kilcoo of Ballyholland and Downpatrick players jumping a fence to get involved in a fight during a Down league game.
Aside from that, footage has also emerged in recent weeks of referees being assaulted after the game, while over the summer, an Armagh v Tyrone Ulster U20 game was marred by a mass brawl that resulted in seven suspensions, with many overturned on appeal.
The problem certainly appears more prevalent in the northern province over the last couple of months, along with a refusal to accept punishments.
One man attached to a Derry club has already been handed a suspension for an assault caught on camera over the last few weeks, but has chosen not to accept the punishment.
However, McGinley has warned of the potential damage that players can do to each other in fights of this kind.
Everyone has heard of the one-punch fatalities and there are shocking incidences.
“But all you have to do is catch one person correctly and you can do massive damage,” stated McGinley.
“Nowadays, with boys having eight, nine or 10 years of strength training behind themselves, the power in those punches is much greater than before if they are being thrown with intent. And the one area that never gets any stronger is your face and bones, your skull and brains.
“A weight-programme has no impact on those structures and yet you are hitting them with greater force than ever before.”
For the last three years, McGinley served on the GAA’s Medical, Scientific Welfare Committee and the majority of their work centred around the area of concussion.
While he is keen to point out that he himself had been involved in the odd skirmish on the pitch, the nature of such combat is evolving from self-defence to physical attack and urges caution.
People just need to catch themselves on, when that rush of blood is in, I have no doubt that none of them want to do serious damage, but they are caught up in the moment and you are just waiting for the first major, seriously bad story to come out of this,” he said.
“As much as it is bad PR, bad PR goes away. Serious damage doesn’t. I work in the health sector so you are aware that these things that change lives happen in split-seconds and there is plenty of regret afterwards. There needs to be a big dose of common sense entering the discussion.”
While pointing out that a one-punch fatality would almost seem an inevitability, he asked the question, “Not only that, but what if you put somebody into a coma? Leave somebody brain-damaged? Take somebody’s sight?
“You see plenty of people worse off in hospital who are left … I have seen them with head injuries up in hospital and these are normal people, same as you and me and you see them then in the hospital with a bad brain injury. What a sentence for family and everything.”
