Colm Parkinson isn’t buying it.
Jim Gavin came to the defence of Diarmuid Connolly’s ‘good name’ on Sunday with his controversial press conference that hit out at coverage of the Dubliner’s incident with linesman Ciaran Branagan.
The champions had just coasted to victory over Westmeath and there was nothing to talk about from a football point of view, other than a pointless and fairytale argument of changing the championship. But the manager came out fighting over Diarmuid Connolly and it just wrecked up old graves and gave the media something better to chew on.
On The GAA Hour, Colm Parkinson wasn’t ready to accept a number of elements of Gavin’s statement.
Here’s how it went (with Gavin’s points in bold and Wooly’s below).
First of all, we can’t condone any player interfering with match officials, whether it’s in the rulebook or not. That’s the first thing we’d say. Diarmuid accepts he made a mistake and straight-up he accepted the suspension.
“Really, Jim should’ve said no more than that and you would’ve gone, ‘fair play to Diarmuid and fair play to you, Jim, for accepting it because we’ve heard you talking so many times about cynical fouling and the spirit of the game.’
“You would not appreciate a player pushing a linesman like Diarmuid Connolly did. You’re being consistent then, Jim. We’d all think an awful lot more of you and move on.”
For my part, what concerned me was the way his good name was attacked before we even saw the referee’s report.
“Diarmuid Connolly doesn’t have a good name. He has no more a good name in the GAA than I have. Let’s call a spade a spade. We’re not talking about Bernard Brogan or Ross Munnelly here. We’re talking about Diarmuid Connolly or Colm Parkinson. I have to throw myself in there because I’m not going to claim to be whiter than white. Diarmuid Connolly doesn’t have a brilliant name. He mentioned his brilliant name several times
“But what was an interesting one was ‘his good name being attacked before we saw the referee’s report’. What’s a pundit supposed to do? A paid pundit on The Sunday Game. ‘Hang on, lads. We can’t comment on this big incident that happened in the game because we have to wait for the referee’s report to come in’. What kind of a highlights show would you have if that’s the criteria managers want?”
Listen to the full chat below from the start of the show.
