Offaly could be in trouble for fielding Ken Casey v Longford

[Hyper]

On looking at the rules "level" means at which reprentative level i.e inter provincial,inter county,club,college,uni
so therefore ruling is ok but six months!!!!!!!11

[Lone Shark]

Just out of curiosity how long do ye feel he should have got?

Personally I would feel six months was on the heavy side, but taking the broader view, Ken Casey going off to play soccer is no bigger a loss to the GAA than a Referee walking off because he feels like the GAA has no interest in protecting him.

Putting my Offaly hat on, of course it's a loss and I hope to God he gets it reduced and he still gets a full summer with St. Brigid's out of it if nothing else, but even so I can't help but feel that just because he got away with four weeks to begin with that anything in excess of that is unjustified.

Just to take one of the comments out of this ....

.....he lost it for a couple of moments which most young lads would .....

A lot of young lads would - however there are whole sports where this would be unheard of, and that's what we have to be aiming for. Let's be realistic here, we haven't gone into the wording, but it's fair to say the referee wouldn't have cited him unless it was in excess of the run of the mill "f*** sake that was never a free".

[the bare biffo]

LS I know you know this already, Ken Casey got six months for playing while illegal, nothing to do with abusing the ref. No point in trying to confuse the issue.

Billy Morgan got eight weeks for abusing the ref, fair enough I would say.

[Lone Shark]

I'm not trying to confuse it, my apologies if I came across as disingenuous.

In my opinion, and nothing more than my opinion, four weeks for the original offence was very lenient. Had he got six months for that offence, it would have been very harsh.

Obviously to suspend him for an administrative error was excessive, but to my mind if he ends up with a 12 week ban, even though it'll be for the wrong thing, it'll be justice done, assuming the referee's report is correct.

[OffalyManAway]

So LS your saying that the F%$# Up by the county board means that Casey got his just deserts, no harm done, move on.
Have the county board no duty to protect their players by ensuring they correctly enforce suspensions handed down at county level?
You've got to be joking!

[Lone Shark]

Not at all.

I'm saying I think he got off extremely leniently initially, and if he got six months for that offence it would have been harsh but not outrageous. Once again, I stress this is my opinion only, but I think that three months would have been fair.

I never said no harm done, and I agree with our county board in that they did not contest the decision to award Longford the points, and they are contesting the decision to suspend him for six months.

Methinks because I'm struggling to muster up sympathy for a guy who abused a ref ye're mistaking this for thinking I believe he should be hung out to dry.

Once again - how long would you give as a suspension for abusing a ref? I'm not asking what you think will happen, merely what you think would be fair.

[Bord na Mona man]

It all depends how much he abused the ref.
Could anyone hint as to what may have been exchanged between Casey and the referee?
I'm sure we've all abused the ref to various degrees at some stage on the field.

[turk]

Most people have verbally abused people!
It's like when you're a young lad and you tell a big lad or an "adult" to f-uck off - some of them are well able for it - some of them lose the rag altogether!

Or when you're going on the bus as a young lad and you're giving people the fingers. some people think it's good crack - some get extremely irate!!

[As Such Ger]

Lone Shark - your like a dog with a bone, do you ever just let anything go ? He got reported for abusing the ref... category 2 offence... one month penalty. Thats the rules of the association, that what he got and that is all this deserves...end of story.

You are saying that he should have got more, but im sure you dont know what he said and from what i recollect from previous posts you werent even at the match... but no matter what was said, the ref submitted his report and the outcome of this is 1 month.

So, please lets move on from this topic as it is absolutely pointless/waste of time...

(me feels however, that this will not be the last post on this). I await your 10 point response....

[Muck Savage]

Utterly brutal!
Muck!
I could see this coming last week and was hoping that someone in the County board would line on the sword. This is a huge screw up that the GAA need to address. We need to start a Free Casey campaign.

LS
Your fairly sharp witht he auld pen, any chance we could get a letter to the Irish Indo and get one of their reporters to run with it? This is shocking that there's been so much blood spilt on the field of play the last year with Battles and brawls (Tyrone/Dublin, Errigal Ciaran Ulster game, The club hurling gema in Galway) and there was very little suspensions. Now he gets 6 months for a clerical error. Right he shouldn't get off for the abuse to the Ref., but he's done the time for this. If anyone thinks it should be longer then it needs to go into the rule book, but for now he got what the book said.
I'm all for protecting the Ref's, look at the little questions asked of the Rubgy Ref's that's what I'd love to see in GAA. A lot more respect needs to be shown to the Ref's but that's another topic.

[Kevin]

I'm in agreement with As Such Ger and those that appear to be in the camp of his comment:

'...He got reported for abusing the ref... category 2 offence... one month penalty. Thats the rules of the association, that what he got and that is all this deserves...end of story.'

Debating whether the suspension should have been longer for doing so is clouding the issue.

That stated I agree that referees must be protected. My experience has been that people need to be 'conditioned' and that it takes time and patience to see it through. In our competitive youth soccer club (U8 to U18) we take all this very seriously. Almost all the other clubs do as well. I'm not saying that all the challenges are the same to what the GAA is dealing with, but similarities must be numerous.

Here is a link to something we are very strongly encouraged to follow that some might find interesting:
http://www.mnjysa.org/SAGE%20ALL%20pgs% ... Ycopy..pdf

Warning * the file is 2 Megs. Sure there is plenty of basic 'be respectful of everyone' stuff in there and certainly we all know that plenty of bad things happen in America, but the document seems to set a healthy tone and the program seems to work reasonably well from my experience.

Good night.

[Lone Shark]

Dog taking one last gnaw at bone before relinquishing grasp......


I've no wish to cloud the issue. Lest there be any confusion, I think it's ridiculous that a teenage footballer gets suspended for a clerical error from an administrator. I'm not trying to distract from this, I just feel strongly about the protection of refs and I hate the GAA logic of comparing any offence with previous offences that were leniently treated, or worse still, using the threat that a player will go off playing soccer as reason to reduce a suspension.

I accept that under the rules he got four weeks, I just think it's lenient is all. I certainly don't think the GAA as a whole is well served by such suspensions for these kind of offences. Having said that, democracy is what it is, and if I'm ever at an AGM when the issue comes up I'll speak/vote appropriately, but I've no problem accepting that I'm in the minority until then.

I do see these as two separate issues, and in case I've offended anyone, I just didn't see any incongruity in taking a pro-Casey stance on one issue and an anti-Casey stance on the other. (Grossly simplified, but ye get my drift)

As regards writing to the Indo, the only interest they have in GAA rules is when they like to abuse the association for having "backwoodsmen" run the association in the spirit of De Valera and the clergy. Balanced debate on the nuances of the association is not really welcome in Tony O'Reilly's fourth estate empire in my experience. Unless Vera Hughes in Moate feels like writing of course.