Kilkenny and Tipperary due an apology from GAA, says former president Nickey Brennan
WIDEGATE: Former GAA president Nickey Brennan believes his native Kilkenny and Tipperary are both due an apology. Pic: Piaras A Madheach/Sportsfile.
Former GAA president Nickey Brennan believes his native Kilkenny and Tipperary are both due an apology following the scoreline controversy arising from the counties’s All-Ireland SHC semi-final.
Brennan, a former Kilkenny player, manager and county chairman, is in no way calling for the game to be replayed, insisting Tipperary were the better team and deserve to progress to the final where they are due to face Cork on July 20.
Both teams were of the understanding Tipperary had gone four points up in the last minute of normal time when Noel McGrath’s scoring attempt was marked as a point on the scoreboards yet waved wide by the umpire.
The score was later subtracted from Tipperary’s total and they won the game by two points. However, Kilkenny finished the game as if they had to score a goal to force extra-time.
Brennan believes both teams deserve some recourse from the GAA authorities. “I think both teams are owed an apology for what happened. It was human error, I absolutely accept that and human error will happen in games. But get out and make the apology and just move on.
“There's no question here of a game being replayed or anything. It's neither in rule nor it's not relevant in this case. But had John Donnelly scored a goal and Kilkenny won by a point and everyone in the stadium had taken it as a draw, then there would have been hell to pay.”
Brennan found it unusual that neither manager, Derek Lyng nor Liam Cahill, were made aware of the discrepancy during the game. “It was a mess, it was an absolute mess.
“I was in the room with the media people afterwards, I was aware that both team managements did not know about it,” said Brennan, a contributor to Kilkenny Community Radio.
“And of course the big surprise to me was that neither backroom team, whoever they might be, had informed each sideline of the position that was and that they could have tactically altered the way they were playing in the end.
“This has nothing to do with the result per se, it has nothing to do with Tipperary, they did nothing wrong, they are deserving winners at the end of the day.
"It probably prompts questions as to what exactly your backroom team was doing if a thing like this, which had a major potential bearing on the result, was not flagged.”
Brennan has great sympathy for Kilkenny manager Lyng.
“I feel very much for Derek Lyng in this particular instance because he and the lads were working a particular way at the end as the players were to do something.
"So they will feel absolutely utterly let down because given the extra man they will at least feel, whether it would have happened or not I don't know, they might have engineered a draw and gone to extra-time.
"And let's not forget Tipp would still have only had 14 players in extra time."
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