Ambiguity over who was the person in charge of Donegal appears to have been the reason why the case against manager Jim McGuinness was dropped for lack of evidence by the hearings committee of the Ulster GAA.
Thursday night’s meeting decided that the infraction of fielding an ineligible player had not been proven and pulled the case, which arose when 17-year-old Finbarr Roarty played for Donegal in the McKenna Cup match with Armagh at the start of the month.
Although he has since turned 18, the rule states that, for intercounty purposes, “a player shall have celebrated their 18th birthday prior to January 1st of the Championship Year”.
There doesn’t appear to have been any intention to break the rule as McGuinness referred to the age of his Glenties clubmate Roarty after the match.
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Yet it was a clear breach of a rule that has been on the books for eight years since it was decided to set different minimum age limits for county players and club players.
The penalties for this are also laid out in Rule 6.11: “For breach of lower age limit: (i) Team penalty: on a proven objection – award of game to opposing team. On an inquiry by the committee-in-charge – forfeiture of game without award to the opposing team, (ii) Player: for breach in any grade – 2 weeks’ suspension, (iii) Person(s) in charge of the team in which the breach is committed – 8 weeks’ suspension.”
Accordingly, the disciplinary proposal was that Donegal should be docked the two points for their win, which hasn’t prevented them from qualifying for the semi-finals this weekend. As Armagh hadn’t raised an objection, they were not awarded a forfeit, and a two-week suspension was recommended for Roarty.
On the eight-weeks ban for McGuinness, however, Donegal looked for a hearing. In the early stages of his first year since returning to the position in which he managed the county to the 2012 All-Ireland, he would have been hugely hampered by serving such a lengthy suspension for a large part of the league campaign.
Donegal were relegated to Division Two last year and, with championship status now dependent on league position, McGuinness would if suspended be missing very important fixtures.
The challenge to the proposed ban is thought to have succeeded because of the ambiguity about who is a person in charge of a team. Donegal successfully argued that the rule didn’t specify the manager although that would be the assumption.
When asked about the wording of the rule, one GAA source said that it was to cater for circumstances, such as joint managers or – as was the case with Armagh’s Kieran McGeeney for the match in question – when a manager isn’t present.
It should be acknowledged that there was no appetite to hand McGuinness such a draconian punishment for something that was seen as an error rather than a direct challenge to authority or some sort of stroke to gain an advantage.
That being the case, Rule 6.11 may need to be redrafted to reflect such misgivings.
