New York 'Stuff'

[Plain of the Herbs]

Currams must have been a weekender, shur he was hurling for Kilcormac against Belmont.

And what's the New York 'Stuff' they've got in the cans ??

Cheers Kevin for the reports from Stateside. Appreciated.

Certainly three faces that their home clubs badly need home this weekend.

Will be interesting to see which ones appear at weekend and more interesting which ones wont.

Was Currams a weekender or 60 day sanction? The other two boys 60 days are up.

[Hyper]

Fair f....s to him! NYC is some town to show your wares! Btw was he not playing against ballycommon with the large ball recently?

[Doon Massive]

Good to see they are keeping the tradition alive of having one lad on the team in an older jersey
Like Ferbane footballers, always have a couple of lads in guaranteed irish shirts

[TheManFromFerbane]

Good to see they are keeping the tradition alive of having one lad on the team in an older jersey
Like Ferbane footballers, always have a couple of lads in guaranteed irish shirts

It's called staying in touch with your roots

[durra1]

Delighted to see this.

Pity there wasnt more of this over this side of the Atlantic - maybe lads would think twice before they commit common assault on a sports filed and bring disgrace to our games.


Arrest made over US GAA assault

Fri, Sep 09, 2011

A man has been arrested in San Francisco in connection with an assault that left an Irish gaelic footballer with brain injuries.

Mark McGovern (22), from Belcoo, Co Fermanagh, sustained the injuries during an off-the-ball incident in a match on June 25th in Treasure Island, San Francisco.

Pat Power (26), a member of the Celtics Gaelic football team, was arrested yesterday on suspicion of battery.

Lieut Troy Dangerfield of San Francisco Police Department told KUTV the arrest came following a number of statements from witnesses.

Mr McGovern had arrived in the United States just five days before the incident. He was to work in the city for the summer and play with local GAA club Ulster San Francisco.

In a statement, Mr McGovern's family said they were pleased to hear the city of San Francisco was seeking justice for Mark.

“There is no place for this sort of conduct in sports,” the family said.

© 2011 irishtimes.com

[durra1]

Lieut Troy Dangerfield - what a name !

[TheManFromFerbane]

Lieut Troy Dangerfield - what a name !

He had no choice to but to become a cop!

Regarding the assault, I think it's such a fuzzy line, in a game where you have 30 (or in this case 26) lads playing an adrenaline, full contact game, it's only natural that sometimes it boils over. Does that mean that every row merits the police being involved? Where do you draw the line?

Please don't get me wrong on this, I'm not condoning fighting more that I understand that it can happen and it's somewhat natural, and I'm most definitely not condoning a guy getting a box in the side of the head if he was defenceless or walking away, if that's what happened then it's a disgrace and the guy does deserve a prison term. But so far all we know is that the ball was the other end of the field, Mark was hit and it turned out to be in the very wrong place and then we are where we are.

There's too much we don't know yet for me to make a comment, for all we know the guy that hit him could have a multitude of friends who'll say he's a gentleman off the field and wouldn't hurt a fly and is just passionate on the field, ended up getting in a row and hit Mark in the wrong place. It could happen so easily.

Conversely he could be an absolute scumbag, who's made a "career" of intimidating opponents and deserves everything he's got coming to him.

The only thing I do know is that I hope Mark makes a full recovery as quickly as possible and can come home to his family in the same condition he left.

[Lone Shark]

There's too much we don't know yet for me to make a comment, for all we know the guy that hit him could have a multitude of friends who'll say he's a gentleman off the field and wouldn't hurt a fly and is just passionate on the field, ended up getting in a row and hit Mark in the wrong place. It could happen so easily.

Conversely he could be an absolute scumbag, who's made a "career" of intimidating opponents and deserves everything he's got coming to him.

On the point of not judging the incident with scant information, I couldn't agree more. That's the unfortunate part about this - nobody knows if it was a particularly malicious assault, or simply the kind of thing that happens a lot and just landed in a hugely unfortunate way. Or to put it another way, that information is not in the public domain.

However I'm not a fan of the policy of judging these incidents on character. The problem with good character references is that they are a debased currency - everybody seems to have someone who'll say that he's a nice guy off the field, and that he's not a "dirty player". I'd prefer to see these things judged on the basis of the incident, rather than the perpetrator, if that makes sense. Establish what happened, then punish the act appropriately, as opposed to punish the player based on either "you had this coming" or "this wasn't like you".

I'm not saying don't increase the sanction for repeat offences - of course do, but again, it should be judged on convicted offences, not a general perception.

I'm not saying this is what MFF was saying either, just that it's a pet peeve of mine - the rush to defend the good nature of lads who have just committed a violent or cowardly act as is suspected in this case.

[durra1]

I think ye missed my point lads.

My point was I’m glad to see the law becoming involved in this.

Those of us who have played a bit are well aware that punishment can be dished out in the course of the game of which both parties are willing participants in. That’s fine, we all know that.

We are also well aware that on occasions, serious incidents occurs which are entirely disproportionate to any of the rough and tumble that takes place before it take place.

Unfortunately these serious incidents appear to happen more often in our native games that in other games which to me are a source of great regret. Anyone who begs to differ on this is in denial.

Domestically, when these ‘serious incidents’ happen, the law rarely, if ever, become involved.

If I flaked a lad across the head walking down a street with my fist or, with a hurl, under the influence or not, I’d expect to be answering questions under cross-examination in the witness box.

My point is, that same expectation should exist when I decide to flake some fella on a field in the same way.
Of course the accused has a right to prove his innocence as with any accused in the witness box.
The problem with the current system are:-

1. This general assumption within the GAA community that what happens on the field should stay on the field.
2. The reluctance of participants / witnesses to give evidence and make statements to the law.
3. A trust issue with the local police as you have in the six counties.

To take a prominent example that most of us will remember.

Paul Curran on Finbar Cullen.

Those of us in OCP that day will remember the malice with which that uppercut was delivered. It was entirely disproportionate to the pulling and dragging going on before it. Cullen had his face wired up for weeks. Curran knew when delivering the box that he would not be answering questions under cross-examination in the witness box as a result of it. That situation still exists – what – 13 years later.

I know the GAA have disciplinary structures to deal with this kind of thing. But there ought to be a more penal sanction open to lads who by their reckless actions are prepared to, seriously injure an opponent as may or may not have been the case in SF, by way of a criminal conviction.

What I’m thinking of is that the GAA need to get more vocal and proactive about changing this culture from the inside in the same way as the church have been forced to do though mandatory reporting.

[TheManFromFerbane]

Unfortunately these serious incidents appear to happen more often in our native games that in other games which to me are a source of great regret. Anyone who begs to differ on this is in denial.

I completely disagree, I don't know why but for some reason the GAA always get far move coverage on these incidents than Rugby, and more particularily local level soccer. I don't know if there are statistics on this, probably not because most of it isn't recorded, but in my experience there are more 2+ person rows in Soccer than in the GAA and maybe just slightly more in GAA than in Rugby.

[durra1]

MFF

We will have to agree to disagree on this one.

I have no statistics to back myself up but as far as I can see, but it is in my view very difficult to argue that the ‘more serious incidents’ (i.e. those involving violence to officials or hospitalisation to injury or official or player which attract the attention of the press) happen on a GAA field as opposed other fields. Apologists may put this down to a press bias against the GAA but outside of firm statistics, that’s how I see it.


Nobody can deny that there is a particularly high instance of attacks on referees and officials is a real problem in the GAA which in my view, sets it clearly apart from other sports.

It would be interesting to see if anyone had done a study on this.

[TheManFromFerbane]

I think we will unless there are some statistics, which I'm not even sure there could be because the whole knub of the matter is that they are not being reported.

I'd again disagree with you on the attacking referees thing, for example, a number of years ago Michael Mahon was struck whilst refereeing an U-21 game out in Rynaghs. It received loads of attention in the local media and possibly even a little in the national media. That same year a player in a soccer club attacked a referee, (i.e. multiple strikes) and not a breath of it was mentioned in the media.

They are the double standards that I see and but I suppose we'll just have to disagree.... Unless you want to fight about it?

[durra1]

At the end of the day no matter what they say … violence solves everything!

We’ll have to talk some bored statistician into doing a PHD on it.

[Lone Shark]

I think there is still an uneasiness out there about getting the law involved generally, and perhaps it's just that I'm not as familiar with the worlds of local soccer and rugby, but you don't hear of these incidents as much - I'm not saying they don't happen, merely that there aren't as many reports of it. Whether that's due to non-occurrence or better covering up is something I can't answer.

The GAA can only look after itself however, and while there is a lot less tolerance of violence than there once was, I still think that a lot of people feel that it shouldn't go beyond GAA discipline. I'm thinking here of the Kenny Larkin/James McCartan affair, and how Larkin was not universally popular for his decision to take things that extra step.

[Hyper]

LS,are you sitting on the fence here? "the GAA can only look after itself however", as was referred to earlier on this thread re the Church, see where that as got us as people and as a country ....a load of b....x, LS very disappointed in you!