Funnily enough, match suspensions as opposed to time suspensions were ushered in five years ago like Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
The need for match suspensions in the GAA makes perfect sense. Too many players were being docked for four weeks and either missing absolutely nothing or potentially missing as many as four or five games when the crime didn’t warrant it.
Some Gaels, in the past, have been hit with 48-week bans, zero match suspensions, and they sat back with their feet up over winter watching the weeks tick away with not even a training session being missed.
So when someone is now punished with match suspensions – one game or two game bans, for instance – it makes more sense. It’s easier to fit the crime but herein lies the problem, the official GAA rule book will tell you:
“A Match Suspension involves only a player being suspended from playing in a game(s) in a specified competition.”
In a specified competition.
So if you’re suspended in a league match, your suspension applies only to that competition.
Presumably, this was brought in to stop guys trying to serve their suspension somewhere more convenient, like a reserve match or a regional game, but what it has actually done is ensured that a punch in the face in the reserve league will have no bearing on your senior career and a straight red in a league match a week out from championship doesn’t matter – so long as you’ve incurred a match suspension and not a term suspension which is used for more serious infractions.
What it has also done is delayed punishments to an awful degree.
“An additional Match Suspension(s) imposed shall be applicable to the next game(s) in the specified competition, even if the game(s) occur(s) in the following year’s competition.”
To put this into actual real-life effect which could not have been considered when making the rule, there’s an example in Derry like there is surely all over the country where a player was sent off in an intermediate championship final in 2016.
Towards the end of the game, trailing by a point, he reacted to a cynical foul with just seconds remaining and was shown a straight red. The fact that his greatest punishment was a hop ball and a loss of possession isn’t even the biggest grievance because the two-match suspension that was handed out will not be served until two years after the crime.
The club played in the championship first round nearly a whole year later in August 2017 and he sat it out, the first of his two game suspension from the same competition.
But that year, the championship format altered and went back to a good old-fashioned straight knockout competition. The club lost that first round in 2017, so their season was ended.
But even now, in 2018, he has only served one of his two match bans and runs the risk of playing no championship at all again this year.
If the team lose in the first round again, he’ll have to wait until 2019 to play championship – because he was sent off in a game in 2016.
Two-match ban
2016 final – red card
2017 first round – suspended
2018 first round – suspended
He could miss championship for three years because of a two-match suspension.
He can play all the league games and reserve championships and county games he wants but he has to wait for this stupid rule to end his ban in championship.
