PADDY Tally’s eight-week ban runs out early next week.
He was given the suspension following a Down training session in Newry being interrupted by a visit from the PSNI, who were then duty-bound to confirm to The Irish News that it had happened.
When I say The Irish News, in this instance I mean me.
I wrote the story. It was true. There was never any dispute over that.
But it has also left me with an enormous sense of guilt over the last few weeks.
Down had broken no laws. The officers came, established that it was an elite team training, and went on their way again.
What Down had done was broken the GAA’s rules, which said that no county teams were allowed to train while the current Covid-19 restrictions were in place across the country.
We’ve read in recent days that the GAA had been informed in December that inter-county training could continue and would only learn of the government’s change to its elite status six weeks later in early February.
There are questions for the GAA to answer in terms of why it has not pursued the matter with the government, but really, the answers are quite simple to deduce.
The GAA has made no secret of the fact that it requires government funding to prop up its inter-county championship in 2021, as it did in 2020.
A hand holding out your feed is not one to be bitten at.
So the association’s leadership have watched rugby and soccer continue, safely, at the top level.
It has seen and been well briefed on the evidence that suggest the risk of playing the games themselves is minute.
Yet not only have the association’s leadership shied away from the fight, they’ve actually pushed back against the idea of it.
Paddy Tally was given eight weeks for breaching a rule that really didn’t need to be in place.
County teams could have been training away.
The rule was there, though. Down broke it.
So did Cork. Ronan McCarthy was given 12 weeks.
His case was slightly different for the brazenness with which he took his team to the beach, in full view of the public.
Down at least thought they were holed up in the Abbey, hidden from public view.
They were the two cases of which undeniable evidence were presented. Videos were taken of Cork, and the PSNI attended Down’s session. Neither was in any position to deny.
But are they the only counties to have done it?
There’s more chance of the moon falling out of the sky than that being the case.
Anecdotal evidence of other county teams having trained in the last three months has piled up.
There are many, many club teams going flat out, if reports are to be taken at face value.
Hearing it and knowing it are one thing. Proving it is another entirely.
What has been proven is that the act of training outdoors in itself does absolutely no harm in terms of transmission of Covid-19.
Down were punished partly because of what they did, and partly because the media reported on it.
Paddy Tally received an eight-week ban because of a story I wrote.
The potential damage to his professional image as a lecturer at St Mary’s University doesn’t go past me.
That is one of the enormous difficulties of being a GAA journalist. Writing about their actions around a football pitch can have consequences far beyond it.
You can argue that’s on him. He’s the one that took Down out training.
But it’s on me too. Because if I hadn’t reported on it, then the GAA would never in a million years have dealt with it, even had they known.
For years, the GAA’s disciplinary process has been driven by media trials.
You only need to look at how an editorial call on whether or not to look at an incident on The Sunday Game’s highlight show has appeared to influence so many of the CCCC’s own decisions around pursuing those cases.
Being highlighted on TV didn’t mean you got caught. But not being highlighted almost certainly meant you got away.
I’ve always liked Paddy. Always got on well with him.
When he got the Down job, he granted me an interview at his house in Galbally.
In fairness, he almost had to. I’d tortured him for months about doing a feature on his work in Galway, going on the road with him a day, down to see a training session and how the hell he manages his days.
When The Irish News and St Mary’s hosted a joint skills competitions at the Ranch, myself, Andy Watters and Neil Loughran took part.
At the end of proceedings, Paddy was gathering up cones at the bottom goal. I was standing with a ball in my hands at halfway, out on the sideline on the three-quarter sized 3G pitch.
“Hi, Paddy, if I put this over the bar off my bad foot, you’ve to take me to Galway!”
“Right!”
I’d say if I was there until now, I wouldn’t be able to do it again. My left leg is for standing on. My right leg is my bad leg.
Over the black spot it sailed.
The colour drained from his face. You could almost see him explaining me to Kevin Walsh.
He picked up a ball and quickly shot back: “Off my bad foot, trip cancelled”.
I agreed. He scored. Trip cancelled again.
When we sat in his living room in Galbally a few months later, I hit him with the Mickey Harte question.
What had happened to their relationship?
He went the same colour of white. He didn’t want to answer the question. I let him off, scratched it from the record.
We’d maybe all like to pretend we’re Paxman but the reality for GAA journalists is that we aren’t.
There’s an unwritten code of ethics in GAA journalism that differs from pretty much every other sport in the world.
These aren’t professionals, handsomely paid to sit in front of a microphone. They’re teachers and lawyers and bankers and plumbers giving up their time, putting their faith in your pen that they won’t be made to look bad to their own people.
Dealing with professional amateurs is a delicate, tricky business.
When there’s wrong done, there’s still a duty to call it out.
But it’s become such a secretive world that when you call out an example like Down or Cork, the net only tightens around anyone else who’s equally guilty.
And that leads to the GAA doing its disciplinary business in a very haphazard and unfair way.
Down were unlucky to be the ones that the police came to visit.
Paddy Tally’s ban, and Ronan McCarthy’s, made other people more vigilant but it didn’t stop them.
Two blind eyes have since been turned to counties across Ireland reportedly doing the same thing on repeat.
I wouldn’t go as far as apologising to Paddy, because ultimately the responsibility for that training session lies with him and Down. The story was there to be written and it’s my job to write it.
But I certainly feel guilty about the whole episode.
The fact that the GAA itself has made no effort since to investigate what other counties are doing means Paddy Tally was hung out and made an example of.
To be in any way responsible for that doesn’t sit easy.
The nature of the beast.
