Paul Galvin- referee' notebook - is this something you've always wanted to do ?

[el_cuervo_fc]

His one other sending-off in championship football was two years ago and caused by a 'water boy' from Armagh who should have stayed pumping at the well.

Is this the time he kicked the water bottle into the crowd?

[magickingdom]

great article by billy keane, hits the nail on the head..

[rrhf]

Im with Billy on this one, eloquently put as always, and am, genuinely sad for Paul but can I say one thing.
We speculated before the sentence whether Paul Galvin would get 12 weeks , 24 / 48 weeks or even a month.  Therein lies the problem.  We couldnt tell beforehand what would happen yet the incident was clear before our eyes - in reality the rulebook and punishment shedule from top to bottom of the GAA is allowed to be interpretated to suit the occasion / team / character or captain.  If referees are being doubted and castigated that is only because our entire disciplinary executive and rulebook - of whom the referees are but mere implementing footsoldiers is built on moving transcient foundations.  Without a solid transparent discipline structure we are a rabble.   Are we literally making it up as we go along, why are we still doing this?      Ill tell you something for nothing about the GAA  - theres a gaggle of beurocrats somewhere near the top of this organisation and they would need their shoelaces tied for them in the morning.  The intelliegent, commonsensical approach  of thousands of volunteers are lightspeeds away from the waffle and protocol of people that are more interested in putting roofs on Croke Park than players on pitches.  

[orangeman]

RRHF - I read in yesterday's paper that your club mate Hughes got a Longford official 6 months there during their last league game - I really do think that referees take every opportunity they get to make the headlines - is Hughes writing a book do you know ?

[rrhf]

Maybe you could ghostwrite it?

[orangeman]

Wouldbe it worth it ? 

[full back]

Eugene McGee, a man I greatly respect on pitch and page, said the Disciplinary Committee should not be swayed by the fact Paul is captain. I disagree. It will make the sentence almost unbearable if Kerry go on to win Sam without him.

I thought the sentence was a bit harsh - expected him to get half that at the most
But Keane is talking total sh1te
Does he want Galvin let off because he is captain
FFS, it shouldnt matter if he is captain or bit part player, everyone should be treated the same
Keane isnt showing much cop-on

Everyone in the media are gutless fcukers when it comes to their own county i.e Tohill, Liston etc etc

[Hardy]

The "Free The Finuge One" crusade is bigger at this stage than the Lisbon Treaty "Yes" campaign and looks like being more successful. This is the first time I can remember TDs being wheeled out to interfere in the GAA's disciplinary procedures and the constant stream of Kerry politicians, former managers, media personalities and various other luminaries turning up in the media during the week, all with the one message, is unprecedented. The message is something along the lines of "yerra we all know it was wrong, but yerra jayses you can't be giving him a long sentence, and yerra he's a grand lad, works hard, loves his mammy, said he was sorry, yerra, yerra, yerra... "

It's an object lesson in campaigning that the rest of us should learn from. I only wish we'd had the same expertise in Meath when Graham Geraghty got a year, was it, for a similar offence, or when five lads got long sentences for being pushed around by a few Dublin cornerboys (who themselves got off very lightly). Next time we'll know how to do it and I'm warning you now you can look forward to an onslaught of Noel Dempseys, John Brutons, Noel V. Ginnities, Navanmen, Tommy Tiernans, Johnny Murtaghs, Duke of Wellingtons, Sean Boylans, Saint Oliver Plunketts, Red Colliers and maybe even Banjo Sherlock himself.

[Fear ón Srath Bán]

  Nice one Hardy, can't wait for your righteous Meathsome indignation 

[Sky Blue]

Deserves all he got. Hopefully it wont be watered down on appeal.

[Frank Casey]

This is from T. Ryle Dwyer in today's Irish Examiner - a nice piece of historical context IMO.


21 June 2008

Football in Kerry has healed much harsher wounds than Galvin spat

By Ryle Dwyer

THE rest of the country may have been preoccupied with the Lisbon Treaty, but in Kerry the topic of conversation this week was the brainstorm that seized Paul Galvin when he threw a tantrum and slapped the notebook out of the hand of referee Paddy Russell.

The word in Kerry was that Paul saw a bee land on the notebook and he was only trying to protect the ref by swatting the apian intruder.

The bee took off towards the linesman and Paul went to protect him too, and Tomás O'Shea as well. If you believe Bertie won the money on the horses, or that Sinn Féin was concerned about our democracy, you could believe the story of the belligerent bee, too.

Most people in Kerry expected that Galvin would be suspended for two months or possibly three, but not six. That is extreme because nobody was actually hit during Paul's tantrum.

Was this a ridiculous penalty befitting a ludicrous act? Remember the Cork County Board suspended the whole Cork football team for six months because they wore foreign jerseys while losing to Kerry in a Munster final during the 1970s.

If they had won, there would have been no fuss. So they got six months for losing. But sanity prevailed then, and hopefully it will now. It is an amateur sport. Whatever excuses there may be for players losing their cool in the heat of competition, there is no excuse for officials losing the run of themselves in the committee room.

In Kerry, football rouses the fervour of religion, which goes back to the bitterness of the civil war. Some of the conflict's worst outrages were committed in Kerry.

People later remarked that it was ironic the civil war was so bitter in Kerry because they did so little in the war of independence. In fact, there was considerable action in Kerry but, as elsewhere, those most involved tended to talk least afterwards. Those who did not understand what happened do not appreciate the importance of football in Kerry.

A lot was written about the sacking of Balbriggan when the Black and Tans ran amok for a few hours, or the events in Dublin on Bloody Sunday, but the history books say little about what happened in Kerry on the night of October 31, 1920 and the following 10 days. On the first night 13 policemen were shot and two others were kidnapped.

The Black and Tans laid siege to Tralee for the next nine days. The incident received enormous international publicity at the time. One French journalist, reporting for Le Journal de Paris, visited Tralee that week and described it as more terrorised that any town that he had seen in France during the First World War. "The town was as deserted and doleful as if the Angel of Death has passed through it," M. de Marcella wrote. "Not a living soul in the streets. All the shops shut and the bolts hastily fastened. All work was suspended."

The events made front-page news in the New York Times on three different days and the front page of the Montreal Gazette four times during the ensuing week.

On four different occasions during those days questions were asked in the House of Commons about what was happening in Tralee. Yet Dorothy Macardle did not devote as much as a full sentence to those events in The Irish Republic, her magnificent chronology of the period.

In March 1921, the British army was ambushed at Headford Junction near Killarney. The British promptly admitted that seven soldiers were killed and 12 wounded. But the British cabinet was informed that nine were killed, while witnesses counted 12 military coffins, and the IRA believed that 24 were killed and one died subsequently of his wounds.

"Sure that couldn't have happened," one authority on the period told me, "because that would put Kilmichael in the halfpenny place."

Maybe the real story about Headford is not that we do not know how many were killed, but why we don't know. Dorothy Macardle never even mentioned the Headford ambush. Neither did Charles Townshend's British Campaign in Ireland, but The Irish Times described the battle at the time as "one of the fiercest that has yet taken place between crown forces and rebels in the south of Ireland".

After the bitterness of the civil war in Kerry most of those involved just wanted to forget the whole bloody mess and get on with their lives. Some were persuaded to record their stories by the Bureau of Military History for the historical record to be published after their deaths.

Con Brosnan was one who told the story of his involvement in the shooting of District Inspector (DI) Tobias O'Sullivan in Listowel in January 1921. O'Sullivan usually walked home for his dinner. Brosnan and two others waited inside a pub for a colleague to signal the DI's approach from across the street.

When they got the signal, they rushed out with their pistols at the ready and killed the DI in a hail of bullets. It was only in the midst of the firing that Brosnan realised O'Sullivan was holding his five-year-old son by the hand. Although the boy was physically unharmed, one sensed that Con Brosnan never got over that day and regretted what happened for the rest of his life, especially after he had children of his own.

Brosnan was a captain in the Free State Army in north Kerry during the civil war. Afterwards he devoted much of his energy to football and he ensured a safe conduct for republicans to play games.

He joined with republican players like John Joe Sheehy and Joe Barrett. Together they used football to help overcome the bitterness. John Joe Sheehy captained Kerry to all-Ireland success in 1924, just one year after the civil war ended.

In 1929, Joe Barrett captained Kerry to the initial win of their first four-in-a-row. He was selected as captain again in 1931, but he gave the captaincy to Con Brosnan in recognition of the latter's magnificent contribution to Kerry both on the football field and off.

WHEN the histories of the war of independence and the civil war were being written, Kerry people chose to forget and turned their passion to football. It was fitting that another Kerryman — former GAA president Seán Kelly — was a driving force in opening Croke Park for rugby and soccer last year.

There was a lot of anxiety about the playing of God Save the Queen before the Ireland-England rugby international. President Mary MacAleese made a splendid appeal as she reminded people of how the England team honoured their commitment in 1973 after Scotland and Wales had refused to travel to Dublin following Bloody Sunday in Derry.

Her hopes were realised. The British national anthem was played without a note of disrespect from a crowd of more than 80,000 people. The Irish people in the crowd that day demonstrated their pride with an unforgettable rendition of Amhrán na bhFiann. The Irish team was inspired and the record victory over England in the ensuing match was a fitting climax to a great day. It was a magnificent reminder of the power of sport to build bridges. In Kerry, they have good reason to know the healing potential of sport. Let's preserve our sense of humour and keep what Paul Galvin did in perspective. 

[ONeill]

Two things from Keys' article:

What's his track record on discipline?

Galvin has played some 28 championship matches now in five seasons (including last Sunday) and has been sent off twice.

Previously, he got into a twist with the Armagh 'maor uisce', their former midfielder John Toal, during the 2006 All-Ireland quarter-final and was sent off.

In Kerry, however, he developed quite a reputation for picking up red cards during his rise up the ranks from an underage career that mixed hurling and football.

Three years ago he was charged with bringing the association into disrepute and verbally abusing a referee during a north Kerry championship quarter-final while playing for Finuge against Ballylongford in Ballybunion. Galvin picked up six and three-month suspensions to run concurrently, but had the six-month ban reduced on appeal and was able to return.

Hopefully that puts to bed the 'ach he's not a bad fella really' viewpoint to bed. Can you think of any other inter-county player with a similar record outside of Meath?

And:

Kerry say there's another side to the story -- what exactly is that?

Galvin has an attritional, confrontational style on the field that can draw the attention of match officials. As Kerry manager Pat O'Shea noted in his post-match interview last Sunday he is a player "more sinned against".

Apparently Galvin was being checked repeatedly by a Clare opponent and tried to bring this to the attention of the linesman on the terrace side in Fitzgerald Stadium.

Referee Paddy Russell consulted with the linesman, Limerick's Michael Meade, where agreement was reached that yellow cards should be shown to both players as blame for the jostling was apportioned equally.

As it was Galvin's second yellow card it merited an instant red and the prospect of this enraged the captain.

Oh, so that's OK then. When Sean Cavanagh was spat upon and constantly bodychecked v Cavan in 2005 and attempted to flag it to the linesman, he didn't do any slapping of stationery. This goes on at the highest and lowest levels. Galvin's actions were unacceptable.

[johnpower]

Two things from Keys' article:

What's his track record on discipline?

Galvin has played some 28 championship matches now in five seasons (including last Sunday) and has been sent off twice.

Previously, he got into a twist with the Armagh 'maor uisce', their former midfielder John Toal, during the 2006 All-Ireland quarter-final and was sent off.

In Kerry, however, he developed quite a reputation for picking up red cards during his rise up the ranks from an underage career that mixed hurling and football.

Three years ago he was charged with bringing the association into disrepute and verbally abusing a referee during a north Kerry championship quarter-final while playing for Finuge against Ballylongford in Ballybunion. Galvin picked up six and three-month suspensions to run concurrently, but had the six-month ban reduced on appeal and was able to return.

Hopefully that puts to bed the 'ach he's not a bad fella really' viewpoint to bed. Can you think of any other inter-county player with a similar record outside of Meath?

And:

Kerry say there's another side to the story -- what exactly is that?

Galvin has an attritional, confrontational style on the field that can draw the attention of match officials. As Kerry manager Pat O'Shea noted in his post-match interview last Sunday he is a player "more sinned against".

Apparently Galvin was being checked repeatedly by a Clare opponent and tried to bring this to the attention of the linesman on the terrace side in Fitzgerald Stadium.

Referee Paddy Russell consulted with the linesman, Limerick's Michael Meade, where agreement was reached that yellow cards should be shown to both players as blame for the jostling was apportioned equally.

As it was Galvin's second yellow card it merited an instant red and the prospect of this enraged the captain.

Oh, so that's OK then. When Sean Cavanagh was spat upon and constantly bodychecked v Cavan in 2005 and attempted to flag it to the linesman, he didn't do any slapping of stationery. This goes on at the highest and lowest levels. Galvin's actions were unacceptable.

Did Sean Cavanagh get sent off that day when he complained ?

Take your points .I am confused are you saying that Cork City banned him as well.?

The point of the 6 months ban is to protect refs I thought not to punish him for his past indiscretions

[orangeman]

Kerry can't lose here - this will provide the motivation needed to win 3 in a row.

[ONeill]

That really shows up the level of stupidity of this incident, that people are judging the man on his reputation rather than what actually happened and justifying the level of suspension based on his reputation.

What on earth does this mean? Who is doing this?

And if you feel that interfering in any way with a ref is a minor incident then you have a warped sense of right and wrong on the field of play.