Dublin manager Jim Gavin has dismissed suggestions that his full back Rory O’Carroll could have questions to answer in the wake of a photograph from their All-Ireland semi-final in which O’Carroll’s hand appeared to have come close to the eye of Colm Cooper.
No complaint has been made by Cooper or the Kerry camp and no action will be taken by the CCCC. But Gavin said last night that he had looked into it since Sunday’s game and has no fears for O’Carroll ahead of the final.
“Yeah, it was brought to my attention and I spoke to the player involved and he said it was just a tussle going for the ball. I spoke to a few players and that’s what they saw. I think a single frame just takes one snapshot in time and you need to have a look at the totality of the film to make your own view. I haven’t seen that I don’t think Croke Park have made an issue of it.”
The reason that there was a possibility of an issue arising was the fact that the photo appeared to show O’Carroll’s finger landing around Cooper’s eye area as the Kerry centre-forward was on the ground. However, the GAA would require more than a single still image on its own to take any action and in the absence of video footage or a complaint, there was no possibility of it going any further. Gavin has full confidence in his player and wasn’t worried at any stage that O’Carroll would be in trouble.
“No, there’s a lot of photographs you would see online that would make you say, ‘Oh what happened there?’ But they are just snapshots of a particular time where people are taken off-guard or are in unusual circumstances, not knowing the player involved. I would be loath to think that anyone would say this Dublin team are cynical. I would take a step back if that was the case.”
The Dublin manager insisted that there is a wider picture to consider, in that he expects his players to respect their position as Dublin footballers. One of his objectives upon taking up the job last year was to curb the occasional indiscipline that had cost Dublin in the past.
“We promote them to play good football. If there is any back chat to the referee, we expect the referee to bring the ball up because I certainly wouldn’t tolerate it. And they know that as well. They know they are getting a county jersey and with any county jersey comes a responsibility and a responsibility to the game itself as well as to the jersey.
“They only have the jersey for a certain part of their career. There’s a big tradition of Dublin teams that have gone before them, a big legacy that supports them and they have a duty of care to that. So behaving themselves on the field of play is one of them.”
