In essence what happened was that the game was level in injury time, Clare had a puck out and the play went down the Tipperary end of the field and Clare were awarded a free in front of the posts. However the umpire had raised his hand since the puck-out to tell the ref that a free should have been awarded, a 65 was awarded to Tipperary, from which they duly scored and then mayhem broke out - full report here.
Guards were brought onto the field to protect the umpire and ref, the guareds were jostled:
I am a GAA fan but I have to say that this is being treated in a completely typical way - all the comment on this is about the referee & the umpire. If this had happened in a soccer match then there would be uproar and rightfully so.
The Clare fans have behaved despicably.
The GAA should be seriously be considering a ban on inter county matches being held in Clare, they should consider reducing the amount of tickets available to the Clare GAA for matches that Clare are involved in, they should be considering anything but they won't. This will be dismissed again.
The GAA, actually not just the GAA, but the GAA media, are going to let this happen again and again until we get to a stage where something serious happens and it will be too late. There are far too many stories recently about racist chanting at games, refs being pursued after games and many, many other incidents. This is disgraceful but the GAA will ignore, people will say "Sure it was the Ref's fault" and the like. I do not my game, our national game, disgraced in this manner continually until it turns into something that we are embarassed of.
It is time for the GAA to say enough.
1 comment:
What gets me about these incidents, and with player bans,is the way players/teams are so happy to have their cake and eat it too (not that I think they would not take advantage if they could). Violence that would be an arrestable offence outside the stadia goes by within the confines of the GAA but when players wish to avoid bans they take cases to courts outside the GAA remit (I admit I have no idea on what grounds they take these cases) but I agree the GAA has to do something about all these incidents, it looked like they had hardened with the Galvin ban, but it seems that has been reduced (?)
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