Former President of the GAA Nickey Brennan believes any teams found guilty of violent conduct should be thrown out of competitions, after the GAA brawl this weekend.
Brennan was speaking on Tuesday’s Off The Ball about the alleged brawl at half time in the game between Dublin and Tyrone on Saturday.
Nickey Brennan argued that these incidents “while overall in the minority, are unsavoury and cast a dark shadow on the association.”
Footage of the melee, in a tunnel just off the pitch, was captured by an RTÉ camera on the far side of the pitch, along with an overhead shot emerging later on social media.
It highlights once again what some people believe to be a wider culture of violence that is allowed to fester among GAA players.
While more must be done to address the problem and punish those who instigate and take part in such incidents, Brennan believes that the GAA disciplinary system is too easily gamed by legal professionals.
“You know as well as I do that as soon as a penalty is imposed that people will start looking at, ‘how can we appeal this, how can we get out of this’ and they bring ambiguity and confusion,” Brennan said.
“Because it’s a different body that’s going to hear the appeal, from the body that actually issued the penalty or suspension in the first place,” he said.
“So I believe that we actually have a problem in our association in that regard. That the whole process gets muddied the further it goes along and people are not prepared to accept responsibility for their actions,” the former GAA President said.
In order to try to solve the problem, Brennan is of the opinion that throwing offending teams out of competitions should be an option that remains on the table.
“We could try and change the rules so if something like this happens, that it automatically means that if a team is found guilty of doing something that they’re immediately kicked out of that particular competition,” he explained.
“Maybe it’s time that we did have something like that and maybe that’s the only way that we’re going to deal with the matter.
“Particularly, as you had on Saturday night, where it is very difficult to actually identify the people who are mainly culpable for what started the free-for-all in the first place,” Brennan added.
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