Football

Peter Canavan has sympathy for banned players with Rian O'Neill cited

Donegal and Armagh at the final whistle of their clash in Letterkenny Picture: Margaret McLaughlin
Donegal and Armagh at the final whistle of their clash in Letterkenny Picture: Margaret McLaughlin Donegal and Armagh at the final whistle of their clash in Letterkenny Picture: Margaret McLaughlin

PETER Canavan has launched a staunch defence of players cited for disciplinary misdemeanours resulting from the Donegal-Armagh NFL fixture last month - and believes a flawed precedent was set after the unsightly events of the Armagh-Tyrone fixture earlier in the season.

In the latest disciplinary twist last night, Armagh's top attacker Rian O'Neill was handed a proposed one-match ban after Orchard officials appealed the original suspensions handed to O'Neill's team-mates Ciaran Mackin, Aidan Nugent and Stefan Campbell.

Donegal declined the opportunity to appeal one-match bans given to Odhran McFadden-Ferry and Neil McGee of Donegal following the League clash in Letterkenny on March 27.

Speaking ahead of tomorrow night’s Holy Trinity College auction event for Niall Laird’s artist’s impression of Tyrone’s Kieran McGeary, Canavan was at odds with the five red cards that came out of the February 6 League clash between Tyrone and Armagh and now the proposed player bans from the Donegal-Armagh game.

Canavan remains unconvinced the punishments handed out meet the perceived crimes of the players.

Referring to the no-nonsense approach of referee David Gough in the Armagh-Tyrone tie, and now referee Paddy Neilan issuing five player bans from the Letterkenny game, now six with O'Neill joining them, Canavan said: “You don’t make it worse by making two mistakes. In my opinion, how one team can be singled out over another – four to one [Armagh-Tyrone]?

“I think if anybody was caught up in dangerous or foul play then they deserve to be dealt with. I wouldn’t be going down the road because the book was thrown at Tyrone so there has to be six or seven suspensions from Donegal versus Armagh. I don’t agree with that.

“I would have thought after the Tyrone and Armagh game, teams would have been very careful at putting themselves at risk especially prior to the Championship. It puts the referee and officials in a quandary: are the Tyrone-Armagh red cards to be a one-off or is this the way it’s going to be from now on?

“If you were comparing like with like, there would have been many more suspensions [from Donegal-Armagh] – not that I agree with them.”

“The very most that that [Armagh-Tyrone] incident warranted was one player from each side red-carded, no more,” Canavan insisted.

“It was a case of a referee trying to make a statement... A lot of neutrals would have said the same.”

Tyrone and Armagh appealed the bans but all were upheld on the grounds that the players who were cited had ‘contributed to a melee’.

From his report, Roscommon referee Paddy Neilan cited five players for falling foul of disciplinary rules during the end-of-match shenanigans of Donegal and Armagh game on March 27, and last night Rian O'Neill became the fourth Armagh player that resulted from the appeals process.

All four Armagh players could miss their Ulster Championship collision with Donegal on April 24, while McGee and McFadden-Ferry will definitely be absent for the hosts.

“If players were in it but doing nothing, then they shouldn’t be getting suspended. Maybe there are other ways to deal with it. [In the Donegal-Armagh game] There were a lot of mentors and officials on the pitch and Croke Park want to be looking at that every bit as much as the activity of the players because a lot of the players in the Tyrone and Armagh game were simply pulling players back.

“Without going through it with a fine-tooth comb I didn’t see any punches being thrown in the Donegal-Armagh match. You simply don’t want to see anybody who wasn’t involved being punished in the wrong.”